Navigating a global pandemic causes unexpected changes to the way a restaurant business operates. If 2020 has taught us one thing, it’s that remaining a top operator in the industry today means responding quickly to the rapidly changing market conditions and staying ahead of the curve.
In this blog, we talk with Gary George, Director of Operations for Jersey Mike’s Franchisee MM Subs. Gary has been with Jersey Mikes for 9 years, 4.5 of those years being in his current role. MM Subs operates 15 locations throughout the northern suburbs of Chicago as well as the Madison, Wisconsin market. With a team of approximately 210 employees, MM Subs keeps their focus on providing great subs and great service to their customers in the midst of a global pandemic.
Here’s part of our interview with Gary:
Q: How are you keeping customers and employees safe?
A: The first thing we did was introduce twice-daily disinfecting of the stores of all the customer high-touch points, all the employee high-touch points. So twice a day, after our peak periods, we will go through and disinfect basically the entire store to ensure that we're providing a safe environment for our people. We also have provided hand sanitizers, which is something we've never had at many customer touch-points, as well as for employees. We've gone to daily health screenings as well. All employees, before they come in for a shift, are required to complete a health screen that includes a temperature check just to ensure that they don't have any COVID symptoms or any symptoms that can be passed through the store at this time.
Q: How has the pandemic changed your business?
A: The way that pandemic has changed the way we do business is we've seen a huge uptick in online third party and carry out orders. Prior to COVID, that was all an afterthought. Now it has become the forefront of how we do business. So we've really had to make sure that we have all of our online, basically all of our to-go orders, nailed down and new processes in place to make sure that they're at the forefront of our business and not an afterthought.
Customers are requiring contactless pickup, so we've designated stations inside the stores to make sure that we've met those needs. It's just a whole different way of doing business versus people just coming in, ordering and leaving. We have a lot of less face-to-face contact, a lot of less conversations, and it's really just changed the whole dynamic of how we operate.
Q: How have you been using Zenput?
A: When we originally partnered with Zenput, it was designed for us to bring basically our checklists into 2020. We were still doing paper-based checklists, a lot of things by hand, and the whole goal was to have technology be our friend. So that was the first reason we went with Zenput was just to bring our checklists and temperature logging into 2020. What we found was we can use it for a lot of other things. Now we use it not only for the checklists and the temperature, we use it for sanitizing logs, disinfecting logs. We've actually used it for our managers to be able to order uniforms, to order cleaning supplies, let us know of R&M issues, send us videos through that, of issues they may be having in the store. We now use it for vacation requests. We've just found all these extra uses that make so much more sense. Everything's in one place where it's easily accessible by anybody at any time.
Watch the full interview here:
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