Tbh I dislike several aspects of to-go mode deployment. Having to have cut hours but still maintain a dedicated hand-off person has been tiresome. During peak when we have 4 ppl it's okay-ish, but once meals are run, either bar is always having to stop what they're doing to hand out, or if pos/warming slides over, all of a sudden there's a backlog of warming, etc. Our peaks are also weird and part of that is covid, part is normal summer lull, and maybe some as ppl adjust to is being open again? But either we'll have a really staggered but just busy enough stream of customers that we can't get anything else done (bcs not enough staff) or they all come at once and it feels like old times but understaffed. It's odd. Stress wise, meh, I'm not so much stressed. Some customers are super grateful, some are still pretty selfish (re masks, hand off, etc). Or store resumes Cafe seating next week, so that'll be interesting. Just FYI, my faves about to go are no just hanging around for no reason lol, no groups of teens asking for water, and it's less noisy which I'm already so overstimulated with mask and plexis, I'll take it!

At our location, within a week of us transitioning to the grab-n-go model we got word that our DM wanted us to do away with the hand-off and concierge roles.

To adjust for this, the register and handoff were both given plexiglass “sneeze guards/shields”.

It then became the responsibility of the register partner to greet customers and guild them to the register. Then, from there, the bar partner(s) guild them to the waiting area and then out the correct door.

We can’t keep up with the orders, so people are standing in our cafe forever. They also pitch fits about masks, throw trash on the floor, touch everything possible, complain the bathroom isn’t open, it’s just awesome.

Imagine the Running of the Bulls, but with more sighing and snide comments, and probably fewer tips. Honestly, it makes me long for the days when we'd have a crowd of people from the AA meetings come five minutes before close- they were loud, but so polite.

My cafe first opened in May. It went smoothly because not a lot of people knew we were opening. We started with outside pick up. We transitioned to indoor pick up after 1-2 weeks. The transition sucked, people were upset that they had to wear a face mask to come inside. We still have a few customers who refuse to wear a face mask. Our state still mandates them, however people don’t care. We asked them to at least to cover their face with their shirt and wait outside until your order is ready.