Go right ahead and leave a cash tip for Debi Kane, a waitress at a TGI Fridays in Corona, Calif. She’ll appreciate the money, but there’s a catch. Under the company’s new pandemic-inspired rules, she will need to drop off those dollars in a back room, then head to a sink, take off her gloves and wash for 20 seconds. Then she’ll wipe her hands with paper towels and wave them in the air for a couple minutes, willing them to dry.
“We’ve all tried to get a new pair of gloves on when your hands are damp and believe me, it doesn’t work,” she said before a shift one morning in mid-June. “So we stand there, waving.”
Ms. Kane is following the new protocols laid out in a 51-page document assembled by Fridays management: “Operations Playbook: Welcome Back Into the Game 2020.” It explains how to adapt the familiar, beloved pageantry of chain-restaurant dining — featuring buoyant servers, unlimited breadsticks, ample portions, entrees with “fiesta” or “dragon glaze” in their name, and value, value, value — to the Covid-19 era.
The playbook has particulars on everything from menus (one-page, disposable) to condiments (single-use containers only) to how diners should be greeted by hosts (with hand sanitizer). Coronavirus-related signs have been mailed to the company’s 314 operating restaurants. “This table has been sanitized by your Fridays Team,” reads one. Another outlines what’s called the “Fridays Clean Guarantee,” a sort of Bill of Rights for lovers of loaded potato skins and pan-seared pot stickers.
After decades of emphasizing ambience, BOGOs and Dollaritas, big restaurant chains like Fridays and Applebee’s are hyping germ-free dining as they try to coax customers back from quarantine. It’s a difficult sell, but a crucial one as the country attempts a lumbering return to normal.
Because for reasons that transcend the merely economic, normal must surely include the immersive theater that is a meal at one of these chains. It is show with a story arc we have memorized: an escort to the booth; a chirpy server introduction; the inevitable “You still working on that?”; the extravagantly proportioned desserts, with names like “brownie obsession.”
We know that every beat of this briskly paced drama — the scent of those sizzling fajitas, the amperage of those light fixtures, the clutter of guitars, signs and surfboards hung on the walls — has been conceived at an industrial park, hundreds or thousands of miles away. This is neighborhood dining as dreamed up in executives suites. The meal is about as spontaneous as a road show of “Hamilton,” and it doesn’t matter. We don’t come for improvised arias. We come for the hits.
The hits are still on offer, but the context is new and daunting. Nearly half of Americans say they will “definitely avoid eating out,” according to polling by Datassential, a food industry marketing research firm. “Cleanliness and sanitation” are the primary concern of those venturing forth, the firm found, well ahead of “value,” “great taste” and “good service.”
Even restaurants that ace the hygiene test may struggle because many diners remain afraid — of other diners.
“We see a lot of restaurants making adjustments, putting in place policies and practices that are reassuring,” said Mark Brandau of Datassential. “But we don’t trust the people standing next to us — that they’ll wear masks, that they’ll keep social distance.”
‘An awesome little badge’
The country’s largest casual dining chains are leading by example, with what might be called sanitation signaling. Several corporations have created a new job: designated scrubber. This is an employee who does nothing but roam the restaurant armed with spray bottles and paper towels, like a bounty hunter for microbes.
The Cheesecake Factory has created this position, as has Fridays, where the “sanitation captain,” as the gig is called there, wears a bright yellow vest more commonly associated with crossing guards. Every Applebee’s has a “sanitation specialist,” which comes with “an awesome little badge,” said Savannah Myers, who has been cleaning the location in Kendallville, Ind., since it reopened in May.
“I carry this caddy around — it sort of looks like a tackle box, and it has my three spray bottles,” she said. Her seven-hour shift is spent wiping down tables, chairs, windows, doors, counters and any other high-touch surface. “I also go around and collect money trays, pens, anything people touch, and I take them back to a sanitizing station and I sanitize those properly.”
Applebee’s president, John Cywinski, said in an interview that Ms. Myers and others with the same pin now have the most important job in the restaurant. “At least from my perspective,” he said. “Our guests are cautious, and it reinforces our commitment to their safety and the safety of our team members.”
Mr. Cywinski has been heartened to hear from franchise partners that the average meal check is higher than it was before the pandemic. “And the average amount of time that people are staying is a little longer, too,” he added. “That suggests diners are ready for a night out. They’re not in a rush to have it over, and they’re not going to skimp. These are people who want to settle in, feel safe and enjoy their meal, take their time and then leave.”
Reducing the sautéed onions
Whether and when diners will return en masse is unclear. On Thursday, the parent company of Chuck E. Cheese’s filed for bankruptcy protection. Brinker International, the parent company of Chili’s, reported in early June that sales at its 873 open restaurants were down 11 percent, compared with the same period last year. That’s actually a heartening figure, said Nick Setyan, an analyst at Wedbush Securities, and similar to results he expects to see at Olive Garden, LongHorn Steakhouse and Texas Roadhouse.
“As capacity constraints expand, we’re actually seeing surprising strength in terms of customers coming back,” he said. “But it seems to vary by geography. So the Midwest, the South and Southeast seem a lot more willing to take the risk. In the Northeast and West Coast, demand isn’t that strong.”
That’s a concern for Fridays, which is based in Dallas but has a large footprint in New England and California. The company had intended to go public in late March — a plan it abandoned as the coronavirus set in. Instead, the company started to hold a standing 9 a.m. Zoom call, seven days a week. During the sessions, a team of about a dozen executives from different departments conceived a socially distanced restaurant, from the entrance to the back door.
The menu was pared down, in part so that the number of cooks would go from five to three. “We reduced the number of sautéed onions, so that we wouldn’t have two people back to back in that part of the kitchen,” said Ray Blanchette, the company’s chief executive. “Fewer sandwiches and salads, too.”
Bye-bye, shrimp and lobster pasta, chicken quesadilla and BBQ chicken salad. Feedback to the company’s call center led to adjustments. Spinach and artichoke dip, for instance, was ditched, then reinstated by popular demand.
To ensure there were no crowds in restrooms, headquarters directed that some sinks and toilets be taped off. Restaurants were sent laser thermometers, for daily employee health checks.
Servers got a new set of instructions, too. They were told to approach each table, pause six feet away, and ask for permission to get closer. Diners are to be asked if they prefer to have food and drinks placed on a nearby tray rather than on the table. Managers were encouraged to rent a tent and set up an outdoor dining space, most commonly in a parking lot.
When restaurants in Texas were allowed to reopen at 25 percent capacity on May 1, Fridays did nothing — other than send executives to check out its rivals.
“For about a week,” Mr. Blanchette said. “We wanted to observe what was happening at our competitors’ restaurants to make sure that our playbook was all-encompassing.”
When Fridays joined the reopening, there was an initial burst of traffic from eager, cooped-up Texans. Then demand dropped a few weeks later, to levels that Mr. Blanchette described as “scary.” Sales were down 80 percent from pre-pandemic figures. With a big assist from takeout and delivery, many have recovered — but only to a still-unsustainable 50 percent decline.
In late May, Mr. Blanchette told Bloomberg that the company planned to permanently close as many as 20 percent of Fridays locations. That was before the current spike in infections in Texas, California and other states. Now, he says the exact number of closings will depend on which landlords are willing to offer some forbearance on rent.
Superb whiskey-glaze ribs
How good are the restaurants at abiding by the new protocols? A pair of recent road trips offered two different answers.
At an Applebee’s in Westbury, on Long Island, the staff stuck to the catechism. Lunch was served at the adjacent parking lot, not far from a Sprint store — strip mall al fresco. The lone waiter wore a mask and gloves. A woman spritzed and wiped tables full time. Service was efficient. When a second side order of onion strings was requested, it was hustled out in minutes.
The Fridays beside the Cross County Shopping Center in Yonkers, however, strayed a bit from the playbook. The first sign came from the hostess, who wasn’t wearing gloves. More worryingly, neither were two of the waitresses working a grassy outdoor area that had tables and umbrellas. (As with the Applebee’s, the indoor part of the restaurant was then closed.) No one asked for permission to approach tables, or provided the option of dropping off food on a nearby tray. One waitress wore her mask below her nose in the way that every mask-fatigued person will recognize.
“I’m not handling take-out orders,” she said, when asked about her lack of gloves, an answer that didn’t seem relevant. “I can put on gloves if you prefer.”
It seems stinting to criticize servers, who are essential workers coping in far-from-ideal circumstances. But they were falling short of Fridays’ own standards. When a reporter asked the company about his experience, the chief operating officer was dispatched to Yonkers.
“He will stay there until I am assured every Manager and Team member is executing according to the new standards,” Mr. Blanchette wrote in an email. “If there is a silver lining, it is that you visited on a day when we weren’t our best so we can see where we need to adjust.”
On the plus side, the wait staff was polite and efficient and the silverware came in plastic wrap. Also, food snobs be damned — the whiskey-glaze ribs were superb. And by 5:30 p.m., there was a line of customers waiting for a table. It included Yonkers native Samantha Clarke, who was making her second visit to this Fridays in two days.
“It was nerve-racking,” she said of her first trip. “Seeing everybody outside after three months of being inside — it felt normal, but it’s not normal.”
Her waitress wore gloves, she said, and offered plastic utensils upon request. Now, on this Sunday evening, she and her boyfriend, Stephon Smith, said they were more concerned about other diners and wondered if Fridays staff would bounce anyone who started coughing in a worrying way.
But these were manageable anxieties, she said, hardly enough to keep her away from her go-to dish — sizzling chicken and shrimp.
“That’s my favorite,” she said, “and I’m about to order it again.”
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