How Can Restaurants Be Prepared Against The New Omicron Variant?

Charu Sharma • December 1, 2021

On November 26, 2021, WHO designated B.1.1.529 as a variant of concern, naming it Omicron. This new strain of SARS covid-19 has heightened tensions in the country. The new coronavirus variant, first detected in South Africa, has sparked a flurry of doubts and questions, prompted new travel bans, and also prompted us to wonder what will happen next.



Scientists are working hard to figure out how Omicron mutations affect the virus's transmissibility and mortality rate, as well as whether existing COVID-19 vaccines are effective against it. 

Given what has happened in the restaurant industry in the past couple of years, it is important that we plan ahead of time. In this section, we will discuss how restaurants can be prepared against the new Omicron variant.



Maintain Cleanliness And Hygiene


  • Before opening the store, this should always be the first step. Always sanitize and disinfect the entire restaurant, both the back and the front. Everything should be spotless, from the doorknobs to the tables and chairs.
  • Dishware, utensils, food preparation surfaces, and beverage equipment should all be washed, rinsed, and sanitized after each use.
  • Check that your ware washing machines are set at the proper wash and rinse temperatures, as well as use the right detergents and sanitizers.
  • While these regulations may seem onerous and time-consuming, it is vital to listen to and follow the instructions of your state and local authorities, as well as to keep things clean – it is the only way to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and protect our communities.



Health Safety And Social Distancing- Always A Priority


  • Social distancing and health safety protocols should always be a priority in a public space like a restaurant. 
  • You should consider avoiding dine-in services for some time, and if not, stopping completely, consider discontinuing operations, such as buffets, and beverage service stations that require customers to use common utensils or dispensers.
  • Start to find techniques to encourage consumers to leave enough space between them when waiting in line for service or checking out, in compliance with state or local regulations.
  • Hands should always be washed with soap and water. If soap and water aren't available, use an alcohol-based hand sanitizer that contains at least 60% alcohol and avoid handling unwrapped or exposed goods.



Employee Protection


If your restaurant is important to you, your staff should be as well. Treat them as though they were members of your family, and provide them with the greatest possible guidance and equipment.



Emphasize the importance of good hand hygiene, which includes washing hands for at least 20 seconds after using the restroom, before eating, and after blowing your nose, coughing, or sneezing.



If you have really strict guidelines for providing leaves, now is the moment to be a little more lenient and affectionate. In these terrible times, don't cut compensation. Be kind to your coworkers and attempt to assist them in any manner you can.



Personal protection equipment (PPE) such as gloves and masks should be provided to employees. Prepare to connect employees with medical resources.



Prepare for a situation when you'll need to hasten an employee’s exit from your restaurant ahead of time. Make sure your team has a plan in place to deal with a sick employee in general. Protecting your staff and ensuring the safety of your other customers is your first responsibility.



Promote Online Ordering


Start pushing online ordering because it is unsafe for people to eat out, yet people still need some flavor in their lives.



Make Use Of Social Media


Take high-quality food photographs and inform them about your services and the cuisine you serve. It's not just about the number of likes on your food photos or the number of followers on your business page; social media can be used for a variety of purposes to boost your online sales. You can add an "Order Food" call-to-action button to your business's Facebook page. This button can boost orders by 3% to 4%. You may also utilize Messenger chatbots to converse with clients who are placing orders in real- time.



Email Campaigns


Restaurant email marketing is a fantastic approach to get in touch with your consumers on a regular basis and form long-term relationships. It might be difficult to distinguish apart in the extremely competitive restaurant industry, when practically every other business uses emails to communicate with their consumers. Restaurant email marketing initiatives, on the other hand, can help you fill tables and foster long-term loyalty if done right.



Provide Incentives


Allowing people to receive rewards for ordering online is a terrific method to improve your online orders. Customers prefer to order via a mobile app or a website when they can obtain exclusive bargains, so take use of these statistics! You may provide free shipping for large orders and repeat customers, as well as a discount on a minimum purchase. Customers will return if you offer loyalty programs with points to gain. Whatever it is, make sure you publicize it widely enough for people to take advantage of it.



Boost Your Posts On Facebook


If you have a limited budget, say $75 a month, boosting a post rather than creating a campaign will save you time and provide similar results. The greatest candidates for boosting are frequently auto-suggested by Facebook. These are high-quality posts that are generating a lot of interaction in the form of likes, comments, and shares. Boosting a popular post allows you to reach a larger audience.



Support Delivery and Pick-up


Until recently, only huge restaurant chains could afford sophisticated technologies and a worldwide data infrastructure to benefit their operations. However, thanks to advancements in cloud computing, these services are now available to even tiny family-owned businesses.

There are a variety of options available, ranging from third-party online ordering POS integrations like FoodKonnekt to restaurant point of sale systems with built-in restaurant online ordering software. Foodkonnekt provides the exclusive option of providing delivery drivers.

You can choose a platform that best suits your needs.



Wrap Up


In these trying times, it's critical that we band together and try to put in place the best possible procedures in our restaurants so that we can face the challenges straight on.


By Thomas mKonnekt January 30, 2026
Exploring How Digital Loyalty Tools Like FreeKwent Support Sustainable Business Growth
By Thomas mKonnekt January 5, 2026
Boosting repeat visits, higher spend, and lasting profits!
By Suchitra mKonnekt December 4, 2023
In the fast-paced world of restaurant marketing, email campaigns remain a powerful tool for engaging customers and driving conversions. However, success lies in the strategy.
By Suchitra mKonnekt October 31, 2023
In the competitive world of the restaurant industry, marketing plays a pivotal role in attracting customers and staying ahead of the competition. However, not every restaurant has a substantial marketing budget to work with.
By Suchitra mKonnekt September 20, 2023
In the competitive world of restaurants, boosting profits while maintaining affordability is a constant challenge. Fortunately, there are creative menu hacks that savvy restaurateurs use to increase revenue without resorting to price hikes.
By Suchitra mKonnekt August 30, 2023
In today's digital age, visuals play a pivotal role in attracting customers. This has led to food photography becoming an essential skill for restaurateurs.
By Suchitra mKonnekt August 16, 2023
Have you ever imagined a world without the internet? We live in an entirely digital world where online marketing channels are the optimal sources of increasing business growth.
By Suchitra mKonnekt June 9, 2023
In today's digital age, the rise of food bloggers has transformed the way we discover and experience restaurants. Their unique ability to captivate audiences with tantalizing food imagery and engaging content presents a remarkable opportunity for small to large restaurant owners in Dallas, Texas & all over the world.
By Suchitra mKonnekt May 10, 2023
Have you heard about these 10 awesome steps that can totally crush it for your restaurant marketing plan? It's true, by following these steps you can easily dominate the competition and attract more customers to your eatery. So why not give it a shot and see the results for yourself? And every restaurant, regardless of size, can benefit from a given restaurant marketing plan. Let's break this down step-by-step to make sure we don't miss a beat. We definitely don't want to risk losing out on the chance to win big with our restaurant marketing plan! So, let's take it one step at a time and make sure we cover all our bases.
By Charu Sharma January 18, 2023
What is Social Media ROI? With social media getting used as a great device in enterprises to grow, it's been more and more vital to track the effects of your social media efforts. The most pressing question now is how to comprehend the consequences of your social media strategy. Are you on the right track when it comes to your content strategy? To understand this you would want to see what is called as “Return on investment”, or ROI.It is nothing more than the returns a company would expect from the time, resources, and minds invested in the company's entire social media strategy. In terms of math, it boils down to: Revenue-Costs/Costs*100. Now imagine you were running a grocery store and you purchased the groceries for $100 and sold them for $150, then you'd get: 150-100/100*100= 50% by plugging these numbers into the formula. Isn't it easy enough? But, in terms of social media marketing, how do you apply this concept? The return on investment (ROI) on your social media campaign is the amount of money you've made.But not all social media efforts are directly attributable to monetary benefits. As a result, all marketers must be able to extract and apply relevant data, as and when required. Why is it important to measure social media ROI? It's crazy how many marketers have no idea what kind of ROI they're getting from which channel or how their social media practices are impacting their enterprise. Since every step, every effort you put into your business has repercussions, this underestimation of social media can cause havoc for your business. As a result, it's past time for you to start treating your social media sites with the respect they deserve. If you've figured out which social media activities are yielding the best results, you can start planning strategies in that direction. For example, you will discover that posting stories on Instagram or running competitions on Facebook generates more momentum on specific days, resulting in increased monetary benefits to your company; as a result, you'll know what you need to do in the future. That’s the power of studying ROI. How to measure social media ROI? Step-1 Identify your goals: Always determine the goals you want to achieve from your activities before calculating returns or even thinking about analyzing the consequences of your social media efforts. Do you want to increase your following? Do you want more people to sign up for your newsletter? Do you want to increase your sales? Following that, you should consider calculating the ROI. Step-2 Understanding marketing funnel: After you've figured out your marketing objectives, you should move on to understanding your marketing funnel. Understanding how social media metrics connect to the customer journey is a crucial first step. Engagement with the consumer, which translates to reach in social media terms, is the first step in the customer journey, as it is in the early phases. Similarly, while learning about your audience in the middle stage, it translates to CPC, or cost per click , and CTR, or click through rate . Finally, at the last stage, encouraging your audience to purchase equates to conversions like sales, subscriptions, downloads, etc. Step-3: Calculate! Now that you have targeted your KPIs and understood what to calculate, now comes the tricky part, calculating them. In order to determine your ROI, you'll need the correct tools. Many built-in technologies, such as Facebook insights, Instagram insights, and LinkedIn insights, provide granular information on how people interact with your material. With these, you can keep track of all of your engagement. You can observe when your audience is active, where they are from, what demographics they have, so on and so forth. You can check how your audience reacted to your ad using Facebook Ads Manager. Another significant tool is Google Analytics. To find out how much traffic and conversions your social media marketing efforts are producing, add Google Analytics UTM parameters to the URL of your social media ads. Why is measuring social media marketing ROI difficult? Due to a variety of factors, social media managers and executives are finding it increasingly challenging to measure social media marketing ROI. Executives are unsure about what to measure. Many people believe that if their content gets a lot of likes and shares, their strategy is good enough; however, this is not always the case. We need to see if our efforts are yielding any quantitative results. Is your product being purchased? Is the quality of your online orders improving? Is your ebook gaining popularity? Always measure all the relevant KPIs and do analysis accordingly. Wrap up: Social media marketing ROI is a parameter that should never be overlooked, if you are putting in genuine efforts in it, and want good results out of it, keep measuring and keep analyzing!