Restaurants fight panic along with the flu

The last thing restaurants need is a bad (and untrue) rap about being incubators for H1N1. Yet those assertions are out there. Traffic may be down dramatically for the business, but not enough to reassure the nervous sorts who see the lines at a fast-food place as a modern-day malarial swamp.

It’s bunk, of course. The experts have said again and again that the virus causing swine flu can’t be passed through the ingestion of food. That reduces the risk to airborne contact with the virus or touching a contaminated surface, or the same peril a person faces in any public place with a lot of people moving through.

Yes, restaurants collectively serve much of the population on any given day. But, if memory serves me correctly, the average adult stops at a supermarket more than three times per week. The worrywarts aren’t calling for masks and gloves on the checkout line.

Pleasantly, the coverage of restaurants’ reactions to the threat has been overwhelmingly positive. Yesterday, for instance, a spokesperson for the Florida Restaurant & Hospitality Association was given airtime on a Tampa TV station to reassure the public that staffers with symptoms of swine flu are being directed to stay home.

In the same report, the operator of a local independent mentioned that she’s now sanitizing everything from tabletops to salt shakers, and an official of Sweet Tomatoes noted that the serving utensils on the chain’s buffet tables are now changed hourly.

Last month a Texas TV station quoted the same sort of reassurances from a Cici’s franchisee who heads the Texas Restaurant Association. Bob Westbrook stressed that any employee with flu symptoms is sent home. He also noted how kitchen workers are randomly dispatched at five-minute intervals to go wash their hands.

The report added assurances from the local sanitation department that it will check to see if restaurants are wiping down tables between uses and that enough supplies are on-hand to cover the increased handwashing by the staff.

Of course, highlighting the actions of responsible operators makes the irresponsible ones seem all the more loutish. Good deal. Hopefully they'll be stigmatized as the public dangers they are. Sen. Christopher Dodd told a Senate subcommittee yesterday that an employee sick with swine flu could spread it to 10% of his or her co-workers, a statistic he attributed to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

The Connecticut Democrat cited the factoid to bolster his argument that all businesses should be required to provide paid sick leave, something that’s virtually unknown in the restaurant business. It's something the industry will eventually have to adopt. But the trade isn't currently in a condition where it could absorb the cost. So, in the meantime, turn up the peer pressure.

Then again, it’d be difficult for many restaurants to match the efforts of some colleagues. For one thing, some of the steps could be illegal. A restaurant in Canada was reported to the authorities for allegedly turning away the husband of a local woman who was known to have contracted swine flu. The proprietor contended that she was just trying to protect the staff and other patrons.

And then there’s the germophobic effort of Silk and Soya, a new Thai restaurant in Madrid, Spain. To safeguard its guests and employees, the place reportedly takes each staffer’s temperature before a shift starts. News reports indicate that menus are wiped clean after every use, and that servers use cloth napkins to handle plates. Those safeguards are touted as points of distinction for the place--and the focus of its publicity efforts, judging from the coverage it's garnered.

An unrealistic reaction to a manageable risk is apparently not just an American thing.

The top surprises of NRA Show '09

That familiar foot pain is back, and I still haven’t shaken my persona non grata status at the Nathan’s booth (like there’s really a Chicago law on how many franks you can give away to one person). But there were some definite surprises to this year’s National Restaurant Show:

It was a high-commerce show. There’s no doubt that turnout was down considerably from prior years. But vendors say the restaurateurs on the show floor were there to do business. Ones who I knew cited lists of what they wanted to see, from dishes to desserts to new apple products. It seems the economic downturn filtered out the half-hearted shoppers who really came for the free pens and food giveaways, or to say hello to old friends. The ones who still came were there to buy, an assertion heard repeatedly.

Even advocates are airing second thoughts about always buying local. Heightened interest in buying seasonal produce or other types of supplies from local providers was plainly evident during educational presentations or even off-the-cuff conversations. But some converts voiced second thoughts. For one thing, they said, locally grown doesn’t always equate to better quality or flavor. Others noted that some jurisdictions are now requiring foodservice operators that do business with the government to buy equipment and supplies from concerns in the area. That can take quality considerations out of the process, and the price could be a wallop if there's insufficient competition to hold down the charges.

Green and grey can co-exist. Most of the educational sessions I’d selected to attend were focused on green matters, rousing fears of being surrounded by skateboarders in iPod buds who’d call me Gramps. Yet the sessions, which tended to draw well, were attended by the tattooed and un-pierced alike. Interest in sustainability may still be more common among younger dudes and dudettes, but the industry’s green movement is snagging interest from all age groups.

Remember swine flu? The big fear of a few weeks earlier seemed like a dim memory during the show. Sure, there were the 130 hand-sanitizer dispensers that Ecolab had installed for the event, and clearly they were getting a workout. But I had only one person who balked at shaking hands, and I didn’t see one mask. Nor was the matter a common topic of conversation. I attended one education session on H1N1, and it was sparsely attended.

Viral marketing has arrived for foodservice. One of the most-talked-about presentations during Convention Week was the explanation of how a supplier called BlendTec had created a global marketing campaign with a $50 budget. As executives explained to the Marketing Executives Group , whose conference leads into the NRA Show, the solution for the company was YouTube. It posted videos that showed a lab-coated representative using a BlendTec blender to grind up things like an iPhone. Before long, fans were contacting the firm with requests of what they wanted to see minced.

The gee-wiz aspect of the campaign was demonstrated at MEG by a BlendTec representative, who turned a garden-variety garden rake into sawdust with the blender he had on stage. As a gift, he was given a box of chattering teeth--which he then put into the blender.

I didn’t attend the MEG conference, which is off the record for reporters in any case. But I heard about it from a number of people who attended. Virally, you might say.

Restaurant association to offer more flu resources

The National Restaurant Association will post a "tool kit" of resources on its website in the next 24 hours to help restaurateurs deal with the swine flu, a representative said this afternoon during a webinar on the epidemic. 

He did not provide details.

The association's website is restaurant.org. It also has a special page set up to provide information about the flu. 

The webinar also revealed that hand sanitizers can be an effective way of killing the swine-flu virus on hands, provided at least 60% of the type being used consists of ethanol. 

Bruce Cords, an infectious disease expert for webinar sponsor Ecolab, also noted that differentiating between swine flu and other forms of flu may become important when restaurants have to decide when to allow a recovered employee back to work. Viruses like norovirus can presumably last a lot longer and pose more of a risk. 

Among the other interesting tidbits:

--Encourage guests and employees to avoid a recontamination while washing their hands by leaving the water running. The hand washer should grab a paper towel, thoroughly dry his or her hands, and then use the towel to clean off the faucet.

--The swine flu virus only survives on hands for about five minutes.

--However, hard surfaces like kitchen counters can harbor the virus for up to 48 hours, and can be spread to hands on contact for 24 hours.

--The virus almost certainly cannot be spread via the surfaces of foods, like melons from Mexico, because it doesn't survive that long on porous surfaces.

Restaurants adjust ops to swine flu realities

Visits here are spiking as people search via Google for what restaurants are doing about swine flu. My hit-counter program shows what query terms are being input, but not who’s doing the seeking. Are these consumers looking for reassurance, or restaurateurs scouting for safeguards they could readily adopt? Presumably both camps have been active, since there’s surprisingly little information for either.   

A previous post provided a sampling of what restaurants were doing. Here are a few more responses that came to light in recent days: 

Golden Corral has reportedly changed its operating procedures to require handwashing by all restaurant employees three times an hour. According to a news story carried by a Greenville, S.C., TV station, a “Code 100” is called every 20 minutes. That mustering call requires every staffer to immediately wash his or her hands, the report says.

More intense attention is directed at employees who handle money, the story says. Hand sanitizers are positioned near cash registers, where patrons can also give their mitts a shot of disinfectant.   Of course, experts say hand sanitizers aren’t a magic bullet against viruses.

Steak-Out, the steak delivery chain, provides patrons with what amounts to FAQs about swine flu. Included on the handout is ample advice that has nothing to do with being a Steak-Out customer, a PSA of sorts that leaves he impression that the chain is on top of the situation. 

Also provided is this more focused assurance:  

Our commitment to our customers during this outbreak is to make sure Steak-Out employees are following all safe handling procedures including frequent hand washing, proper cooking procedures and making sure only healthy employees are allowed to work, handle, and deliver your meal.

The chain is also looking at ways of lessening contact with customers while fears of contamination still hover in the stratosphere.

Experts have given that general dynamic, evident everywhere from schools to sporting events, the label of “social distancing.”     It's being put forth as the prudent mindset as the tally of infections continues to rise.

And that’s posing a dilemma for the high-society greeters at some playgrounds for the boldfaced-name set: To air-kiss or not to air-kiss, as the New York Times recently put it. 

As James Barron writes…

Julian Niccolini, an owner of the Four Seasons restaurant on East 52nd Street, said there were signs of anxiety in the power-lunch crowd his restaurant is famous for. “For the first time, some people said, ‘I don’t think I should shake your hand’ ” on Thursday, he said, “but most of them shook my hand anyway.” And at a birthday party there that evening, he said, “Everybody was still kissing everybody.”  

 Indeed, some are not giving a kiss a second thought.

Re-thinking show etiquette in the swine-flu era

Rumors of exhibitors giving away logo’d face masks at the National Restaurant Association’s upcoming convention are completely unfounded. Ditto for the promise of free Tamiflu inoculations at one vendor’s booth.  I say that with complete assurance because I made up both notions. (Important note to vendors who now have a figurative light bulb above their heads: A copyright fee applies.)   

But more than a few of the social conventions evident at a trade show may well be reconsidered this time around. For instance, the convention is largely a series of awards ceremonies with several hundred booths, seminars and parties mixed in. A handshake is de rigueur for accepting whatever honor is being bestowed. Might that tradition become a victim of the outbreak?   

The same holds true for the obligatory grip-and-grin photo that accompanies each prize presentation. It’ll be a tough adjustment for photographers, so don’t be judgmental if you see a few shutterbugs sulking around the Jim Beam booth.   

You also have to wonder about the taxi line at McCormick Place, which can look around 3 o’clock or so like Section J of Wrigley Field.  Will people start leaving more space between themselves and the next person in the queue? That could extend the line by two or three more miles.   

My prediction: The Ecolab booth will be particularly busy this year as some attendees stop by and beg for a complete spray-down. 

A sampling of restaurants' responses to swine flu

Certainly everyone in the restaurant business is talking about swine flu. But is anyone doing something about it?

The situation in Mexico City would suggest that health experts view restaurants as a critical control point in the outbreak, to use the HACCP term. Eateries there at Ground Zero have been ordered to stop serving dine-in patrons, though takeout is still permitted.

 
Yet, amid the 24/7 gush of swine-flu coverage, there’s been astoundingly little reporting on what U.S. restaurants are doing to cope. Here are some of the few examples I’ve been able to find: 

 Robbie Singh of Nashville was visiting his fiancé in Morelia, outside of Mexico City, marveling at the number of mask-clad locals he encountered. Tennessean.com picks it up from there:

At the time, he was unaware that the swine flu had started to spread quickly until [he started] receiving text messages from his boss — Michael King, owner of Monell's family-style restaurant. 

"I was worried on several levels," King said. "I wanted him to be OK and didn't want him to bring it back either. Not in a restaurant. I told him to get checked the minute he got back. Then I was alarmed when the cases hit in New York. I had a customer eating with a facemask on, putting it down to put food in his mouth."

 
Singh reported to the local U.S. embassy in Morelia in case of quarantine and the shutting down of airports. He purchased masks and hand sanitizers. He was checked for the virus and cleared at a Nashville clinic Tuesday.

A unit of the Mellow Mushroom pizza chain in the Fort Worth area of Texas provided a preview of the nuts-and-bolts work that many restaurants in the U.S. might soon be undertaking. From the local paper, the Star-Telegram:

Less than a mile from McLean Middle School, where a student was diagnosed with swine flu, Mellow Mushroom was taking no chances. "We bleached down every surface people could touch — tabletops, chairs, booths and the handrails outside," said Mike Guinn, manager of the pizzeria on Bluebonnet Circle in southwest Fort Worth. "Then we went to Albertson’s and picked up about 10 hand sanitizer pump jars and put them on all the counters," he said. "Any one of those [McLean] kids or their parents could have been here." 

The manager said precautions include periodic Lysol spraying of the touch-screen cash registers. 

Disposable flu masks?

"I hope not," he said.

Having a name like Smithfield’s in the Carolinas might not be the ideal when many consumers are still mistakenly assuming that porl might be a source of the swine flu contamination. Unconfirmed speculation says the outbreak of Mexico may be linked to a hog farm that supplies Smithfield's, the giant U.S. meat processor.

The 45-year-old Smithfield’s Chicken chain, a Carolinas favorite, decided to deal with the the outbreak head-on. From QSR magazine:

"I didn't really want to put a sign on the window because that would give people the wrong idea," says Richard Averitte, marketing director for Smithfield's Chicken 'N Bar-B-Q, explaining his strategy for notify consumers about the outbreak.

 The company is taking a proactive approach, having already posted to its Web site, Facebook account, and Twitter feed to reassure consumers the Smithfield menu is safe. Averitte has also conducted several local interviews with radio and television outlets. 

"We just want to keep our customers informed," Averitte says. "I wanted to nip it in the bud right now. I wanted to make it crystal clear, get out all the confusion and questions, and state the facts."

Crisis-management experts may not cite the public respone of the Taco Shop in Palm Desert, Calif., as the consummate example of what do to in a media storm. But at least the manager indicated on the record that the joint is mindful of the situation and is taking action to protect patrons. Less-than-forceful reassurance strikes me as preferable than no reassurance at all—if not the shrug that most places seem to be giving the situation. Here’s the news report from the website of a local news station:

Restaurants across the Coachella Valley are taking some steps to keep their clients and employees safe. 

David Jimenez manages the Taco Shop in Palm Desert, and, with the recent flu alert around the world, he's on alert. 

"We got to follow the Health Department rules. The owner said to contact him if we feel sick, so he can take action."

Finally, kudos to the National Restaurant Association for setting up a website as a resource for restaurateurs who are wondering what to do about the situation. 

More important, the association hasn't responded to the opportunists who are using the crisis to push for paid sick leave, a mandate the industry steadfastly opposes. Pushing back would be as unsavory as the lobbying itself. 

A wrong time to push

Exploiting the swine flu outbreak is like asking the widow at a funeral if the deceased’s season tickets are up for grabs. Yet two camps of interest to restaurants aren’t hesitating to capitalize on the situation.  And that should make the industry feel a little queasy.  

Yesterday an advocacy group in Oregon used an update on the swine flu situation to push unabashedly on its website for paid sick leave within the state. It noted the recommendation of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that anyone who feels ill should stay home from work. Yet, it continued, fewer than half the state’s employers pay their workers for sick time. How can they afford to stay home?

“Will the Oregon legislature join San Francisco, Milwaukee and Washington, DC, in guaranteeing paid sick leave to all workers?” wrote Chuck Sheketoff, the leader of a public advocacy group in the state. “If not, why not?”

The plea was accompanied by what looked like a poster showing a young woman sneezing into a tissue. “She’ll be your server tonight,” it read, “and she’s pretty sure it’s contagious.”  

A similar message was issued Tuesday by a group called the Institute for Women’s Policy Research. It, too, asserted that some employees with swine flu may not be able to stay home because of the wages they’ll lose. That, it suggested, also poses a pronounced risk for school-age children. “Parents who cannot stay home with a sick child are more likely to send sick children to school or day care,” said the statement.

Those and other advocates for paid sick leave make a powerful argument. Indeed, I think the industry will eventually have to find a way to offer the benefit in some shape or form, as I’ve stressed before in this space. There are public health implications that the trade will have a tough time in countering. Public safety, after all, trumps economics.  

But, with so many restaurants struggling to survive even without a pandemic, is now really the time to push the measure? And aren’t these defenders of the average citizen being a little hypocritical in using the dire ailments of some to push a political agenda? It just doesn’t seem right. 

 Then again, at least they’re acting on a worthy principle. Not so the yahoos who are using the flu outbreak to justify their xenophobia. 

They’re pointing to the disease’s origination in Mexico as proof that the people of that nation are barely a step up from animals. It’s the ultimate argument, they smugly assert, as to why we shouldn’t let them immigrate here, and why we should ship back the ones who’ve slipped in. You know how Mexicans are, they say with a wink and a sneer. They’re constantly visiting people from the old country. Now they’re bringing killer germs with them.  

You wouldn’t wish swine flu on anyone. But I confess to feeling the temptation. 

5 questions about swine flu's effect on restaurants

1) Might this be a time when reason prevails?

The buzz on the internet could be characterized as cynicism rather than panic or fear. The consensus seems to be, “Isn’t this just the crisis du jour? And as long as it just gives me the flu, what’s the big deal?” If there’s fear, it’s not of eating pork or going to a restaurant. It seems to be prejudice-tinged worry about contamination from Mexicans. Which leads to….

2) What effect will this have on immigration reform?

From a Yahoo Answers message group:

“Most restaurants are saturated with Mexican workers, and I am sure many know someone that recently or constantly travel to/from Mexico; increasing the chance of contracting the Swine Flu. I personal believe we are at higher risk that we think if we often eat out at our local restaurants.”

Consider this snippet from a tirade on examiner.com, a new network of citizen-journalist reporters and commentators. It comes from Frosty Woodbridge, a popular spokesman for the faction that believes the best immigration policy would be to shoot on sight:

"The current Swine flu spreading across Mexico providesAmericans a glimpse of their future if mass immigration from third world countries continues into the United States.

"It stems from cultural habits that cannot be changed once they migrate over U.S. borders. Third world people lack personal hygiene, collective health habits and educational understandings of how their personal actions promote disease transmission."

Much of the installment deals with toilet-paper disposal norms. I kid you not.

3) Will it affect the turnout for the National Restaurant Association’s big convention next month in Chicago?

4) Does anyone doubt, at least right now, that tourism will be the big loser?

The European Union has already advised residents of member nations to forego all but essential travel to the United States. The U.S. travel industry is clearly worried. The head of its promotional group, the U.S. Travel Association, issued a statement this morning that urges the government to weigh carefully what it says and does about the situation. “We must address the situation with measured, pragmatic responses so as not to cause panic and negative consequences to the economy if health risks are not imminent,” said CEO Roger Dow.

5) Where’s the original reporting on what this means to restaurants?

Where’s the coverage of how the outbreak has affected the sales of places along the border, or in San Diego, or in concepts that might be particularly vulnerable because of its clientele, like Chuck E. Cheese? How about the impact on a chain like Pizza Patron, a brand targeted at the Latino community in the United States?

This is undoubtedly the story of the moment, and restaurants, as the modern-day town square, are in the thick of it. Yet the reshuffling of McDonald’s beverage line-up has generated more coverage so far in the business media. Why are they ceding this story to Twitter?