Ingenious. Clean – Part of the New Normal

Visiting a Tim Hortons Coffee shop I experienced what is the new normal as it comes to cleanliness at fast food or for that matter any type of restaurant. You may ask who is Tim Horton? Why not Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts? Plain and simple I like the coffee. If you are Canadian you know who Tim Horton is. A hockey legend. If you are from Buffalo, like me, Tim played for us during the 1972 – 1974 seasons. He also played for Toronto, the Rangers, and Pittsburg. He is in the Hockey Hall of Fame and died in a car accident at age 44. At the time of his death, he had 40 coffee shops. Currently, there are 4,932 shops with New York State having the most in the US.

Now that you have that history lesson, let me share with you ‘cleanliness genius’. When Ann and I sat at our table we noticed a green placard about 1-foot square. It said to us that this table was cleaned and when you are done to flip the card over. The backside was red and said that someone will be along soon to clean the table. So as I was looking for a ‘clean’ table to sit at. Green is go, red is don’t. As I said genius.

What took so long to come up with this? Oh yeah, a pandemic. Why weren’t we doing this right along, forever? Did you ever walk into a fast-food eatery and look for a table that was clean? You wondered if the staff came out front to clean the tables, ever. Did you attempt, on your own, to clean the table the best you could or just leave and eat in the car?

This is a discipline I hope other restaurants take up and it stays. It’s not about the crumbs you leave behind, but the germs. Even without a pandemic, we get colds and the flu, and no doubt this new notification system will benefit our health forever. Let’s not lose some of the new ways of doing things once the pandemic is in the history books.

Are you doing things in your business because of the pandemic that you will continue even when it is long behind us?