It’s been quite a month or so for all of us as the world grapples with COVID-19 and its consequences, both on a human and business level. I hope you; your staff and families are well and remain healthy and safe during this crisis.
Coronavirus: CV-19
I want to update our status in CHR for the now and the coming months. I am delighted to report we still have no staff or family member afflicted by COVID-19 and we continue to do everything we can to protect their health and their livelihoods as we face the coming months..
I think its safe to say ! we are operating in a stage of “ business as unusual “ ! .
Our design teams are working from home, face to face meetings have been replaced with ‘Zoom’ video conferencing, and conference calls now play a daily role at CHR allowing our clients to build now and for the future beyond COVID-19.
In the last few weeks of COVID-19, we have still been able to help our NHS by providing solutions to brand new field hospitals, from storage solutions to clinical working areas in which equipment has been designed, and delivered in quickly and cost effectively. We also started building a new staff restaurant for the NHS workers at Stockport Stepping Hill. As well as commencing the build of restaurants for other key worker sites such as FEDEX distribution centres, as more and more deliveries are made to us at home, these businesses need to feed the increased staff at distribution sites that provide these vital services to us. We are upgrading factory’ canteens for sugar giant Tate & Lyle in the food manufacturing sector, who have seen a massive increase in demand for its product, and APB who continue to process its prime beef to help keep up with the current demands of the supermarkets.
We continue to re co-ordinate all the ongoing projects that had been put on hold by COVID-19, so we are in a position to re-start projects across many building sites as soon as restrictions are lifted, and importantly we continue to support our key workers by providing emergency front line response to service calls, supporting our NHS, our care homes and our schools, as well as other key worker sites like power plants to keep equipment working and patients and staff and children can access meals every day of the week.
So even though it is ‘business as unusual’ we continue to be of service to you…
Getting back to work planning!
We continue to develop COVID-19 designs and strategies to support business planning to return to work , including restaurants, hotels, leisure, schools, universities and canteens alongside large office accommodation who are contingency planning now to re-open with social distancing in place and need to adapt its business by re modeling its seating and hygiene practice to help them return while ensuring customers can be confident in its approach to return.
We are already seeing the catering business in the work place starting to forward plan & adapt post COVID-19 by changing shift patterns, reducing customer numbers in large restaurant spaces to continue to allow for social distancing, adapting menus to be more delivery friendly, removing self-help offers like salad bars, to more pre boxed ready to go items, creating pop up offers in factory and work spaces to enable the caterers to deliver food to the customer with less risk, and business is continuing to evolve by introducing more on line ordering methods, like click and collect, and installing new customer flow systems as well as installing new anti-virus systems to keep the work place safe.
So, our 27 years of expertise in food distribution has been helping these businesses to start planning now, while our scientists continue to develop a vaccine for COVID-19, we continue to support our industry and our customers.
So even though it is ‘business as unusual’ we continue to be of service to you…
We will end our update here with a thank you or two!
The catering equipment market has been amazing in its support right across our industry including to us here at CHR, with our trade association CEDA working round the clock providing us with clear concise information on many aspects of new technical and health and safety updates from Government and other leading trade associations right across our sector to help us stay safe during COVID-19 and to help us to continue to work with key workers.
For the staff retained across our sector on the furloughed job retention scheme, our trade association CEDA have been at the forefront of personal learning and development, providing on line webinars and training modules while allowing a platform helping staff to communicate with the wider industry, helping to improve people’s well-being in different and somewhat difficult times, by helping everyone to stay connected.
Don’t forget if you need advice or help with planning post COVID-19 we are providing this free of charge to all our customers, and .’Zoom’ meetings can be set up to discuss your unique circumstances while we are in lock down.
To get in touch, please call us on 01772 499774
Or email either sales@chrequipment.co.uk or support@chrequipment.co.uk
#Staysafe #Staypositive #Startplanning
CHR Equipment Ltd