Back in March, I had extra money for some reason and the pandemic was hitting my small town in terms of things closing and hours being limited, etc. I made a point of going every single day to get pizza from the Little Caesar's.
When I began going, the staff was standing around with nothing to do and they were scared the location was going to permanently close. They didn't have enough business to survive.
I walk everywhere, so when I get pizza, it's very visible. People see me carrying a pizza box down the street and at least once someone asked me "Oh, is the Little Caesar's open?" and I was able to say "Yes! It is!" without violating social distancing.
I began using the pizza portal, which had been there for some time but never got used. One of the early times I used it, someone stared at me the entire time and now mine is not the only order in it.
The Little Caesar's removed the two chairs from their lobby and added hand sanitizer and made some other changes, but the big change is that -- at least in part because of me modeling it -- locals began calling ahead or ordering online instead of walking in and ordering. Even when they walk in, they frequently go sit in their car to wait for their order instead of standing in the Little Caesar's to wait.
They are busier than I have ever seen them in the three years I have lived here and they were hiring new employees during the pandemic. I always have to wait for my order now because they are always busy, yet it is safer than it has ever been for me to get food from there -- which is a constant concern for me because of my incurable medical condition.
Meanwhile, in recent months I have seen multiple local eateries advertised as for sale, presumably because the pandemic is negatively impacting the restaurant business generally.
Ordering online or by phone and getting takeout is a best practice for germ control and it's available right now and we can improve on that model with relatively small tweaks, like making hand sanitizer standard at all businesses, and larger tweaks, like making pizza portal style pick up options available at other eateries. And it in no way requires any government rules trying to micromanage your behavior.
It's about opening up options that actually work and promoting things that are already proven to work and are already available so the economy doesn't have to be strangled by this pandemic. It's an approach that doesn't require us to choose between economic health and physical health. It's an approach that works because it respects the need for both and does so without asking anyone to jump through giant hoops now in hopes of some potential, but not guaranteed, payoff somewhere down the road after x, y or z happens.
Thank you for engaging me.