Businesses in all sectors are quickly adapting as best as they can to doing business under the conditions of a pandemic without waiting for government guidelines, as keeping workers and customers safe from the disease is a necessity for turning a profit.
Restaurants, the industry hardest hit by social distancing, have overhauled their businesses to try to survive with closed dining rooms.
“The situation is a net-negative for restaurants, but they do have a chance to make comparable revenue through online sales,” said Krystle Mobayeni, the CEO of BentoBox, a company that assists restaurants with boosting sales through e-commerce
One big moneymaker is virtual classes, such as wine tastings or cooking classes, which restaurants provide to clients stuck at home.
“One restaurant started selling tickets for a virtual pasta making class three days ago, and they have made over $2,000,” Mobayeni said.
Another restaurant earned roughly $16,000 by auctioning its chef to prepare a six-course dinner for the winner. The money raised went to the restaurant staff. A restaurant in New York sold over $20,000 in gift cards within 10 days.
Mobayeni thinks restaurants will continue to take advantage of alternative revenue streams after the pandemic.
“I don’t think that after this experience, there is a restaurant in America that will not understand the value of additional revenue streams outside the brick and mortar,” she said.
Other restaurants are repurposing their dining rooms. In San Antonio, Texas, where dining in is prohibited, establishments such as Big Lou’s Pizza, Bill Miller Bar-B-Q, and the Candlelight Coffeehouse converted their stores into makeshift grocers, allowing customers to purchase their food that otherwise would go bad.
Starbucks is looking at a phased-in reopening in the United States, according to a letter CEO Kevin Johnson wrote to employees on Thursday.
The company has tested new ways to sell coffee to customers that include contactless service, entryway pickup, curbside delivery, and at-home delivery.
Starbucks has been deemed an essential business and remained open, but it closed its cafes in mid-March because of the pandemic, selling coffee and other menu options through its drive-thru windows and app.
Johnson is a part of the White House task force that is looking for ways to reopen the economy.
With social distancing a huge tool in slowing the spread of the virus, the grocery store chain Publix has designated certain hours on Thursday evenings and Friday mornings for first responders and hospital staff.
In Austin, Texas, the grocery store H-E-B provides curbside and delivery services to keep customers from entering its stores. Other grocery stores have built plastic shields at checkout counters to protect workers and customers from infecting each other.
Walmart and Sam’s Club are also deemed essential and announced on March 31 that workers would have their temperatures taken before beginning their shifts. Workers with a temperature of at least 100 degrees are asked to return home but are paid.
Regarding testing, retail behemoth Amazon is testing its employees for the virus after more than 50 of its facilities had confirmed cases.
Amazon has said that regular testing would help keep people safe and help get the economy back up and running. The company on March 20 announced it had invested $20 million to accelerate diagnostic research.
“Given the need, the emphasis initially will be on COVID-19, but we will also consider other infectious disease diagnostic projects,” the company announced April 9.
Verizon, which now requires customers to wear a cloth face covering when visiting a store, will not charge a late fee or terminate service for customers unable to pay their bill because of the coronavirus.
Since the outbreak, Verizon has seen a surge in data usage, gaming up 150%, virtual private network connections from home are up 50%, and streaming up 30%, according to the company’s CEO, Hans Vestberg.
Vestberg said in an appearance on the Fox Business Network Friday that the increase in working digitally, i.e., outside the office, might continue after the coronavirus shutdown has passed.
“It’s going to be a new normal. It’s not going back to how it was pre-COVID, if we talk technology,” he said. “I talked to a lot of the CEOs of the largest corporations in this country, and all of them, of course, are seeing things that they are planning to do over time. Work more digitally.”
Major League Baseball, which suspended all baseball operations that included most of spring training games and delayed opening day, could start the season by playing games in stadiums without spectators. If the organization moves forward with this plan, it could mean that players will need to accept salary cuts. Players’ salaries have already been cut based upon the reduced number of games that could be played this season.
Another sector severely damaged by the coronavirus is the airline industry. It is currently projected to lose $300 billion in global revenue. And on Sunday, the number of travelers passing through Transportation Security Administration checkpoints fell to just 90,510. That’s 2,356,291 fewer passengers compared to a year prior.
Emirates airline, which has restarted flights after a short suspension, is now testing passengers for the coronavirus before they board a flight. Results from the blood test occur within 10 minutes, and the tests are administered where passengers check in for the flight.
Regarding the tests, Emirates Chief Operating Officer Adel al Redha said that “we are working on plans to scale up testing capabilities in the future and extend it to other flights, this will enable us to conduct on-site tests and provide immediate confirmation for Emirates passengers traveling to countries that require COVID-19 test certificates.”
As of Wednesday, Emirates began operating flights from Dubai to London, Frankfurt, Manila, Algiers, Taipei, and Chicago. The airline suspended all passenger flights on March 25.
