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Restaurant Loyalty and Memories

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 I am not the first and certainly will not be the last person to say that COVID-19 has devastated the restaurant industry.  The shutdowns and scaled back operations were and remain devastating. The restaurants who could not stay in business will hopefully reflect on the experience and do a self-assessment to determine what if anything they could have done differently to continue with their operations. Why is this important? Many reasons but the fact is that most experienced eatery owners have restaurant life in their blood and despite all the challenges and bad memories will start a new restaurant some time in the future and that self-reflection will be critical to their future success. Those restaurants that survive will be stronger and better equipped to handle the unthinkable should it arise in the future. There is one critical point of the experience that I hope is not lost on them. You and I as well as countless others continually supported these establishments with curbside p
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Is it time to mosey down the road?

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  Prior to the COIVD-19 pandemic, we saw business owners reticent to selling their business and deciding to stay on longer than they had previously planned to. What is driving the change? It will come as no surprise that the Coronavirus has pushed many of us to look at their lives from the inside out and ask ourselves some big life challenging questions. This ranges in what is really important to us to what we want the future to look like and what legacy do we want to leave. Coronavirus has also changed the rules on employee needs and how employees must be treated legally, morally, and ethically during an outbreak. This has become overwhelming for many business owners. The responsibility of having employees has never been higher nor have the consequences been more dramatic. Example? An employee contracts COVID-19, did it happen in your office or somewhere else? Either way, there is going to be fallout for the business owner.  Should employees work remotely, and if they do, what do you
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Your business needs a vCIO now more than ever

Before #coivd-19 I always recommended that #businesses engage and utilize the services of a vCIO. For those unfamiliar with what a #vCIO (Virtual Chief Information Officer) does, here is a brief and simple bullet list of primary services usually provided by a highly competent vCIO like myself.  Analyze your current IT infrastructure. Evaluate your internal IT department and/or your external IT Services provider to make certain that they have the proper training, procedures, and processes to properly serve your business for today and tomorrow.  Assessing the various business applications that you are utilizing to make sure that you are getting all that you are paying for and that there are no other options that are less costly and more effective. Assisting with planning for future technology expenses and needs. Confirming that you have the proper cybersecurity defenses for your business and the appropriate security awareness training programs in place. Working with staff to make sure th
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Do you miss the handshake?

Call me "old school" but I still like and value face-to-face meetings, even when it means a car, air, or rail travel to do it. Even though COVID-19 has greatly reduced business travel, even for me, I miss it desperately. This may seem ironic given how complicated business travel had become over the last decade or so. Over-crowded planes, frequent flight cancellations, crammed roadways filled with road ragers, and trains as reliable as a weather forecaster's forecast always made it a pretty miserable experience, but, I still miss it. Perhaps you are wondering why. In virtually every face-to-face meeting I have had in my career something new, unexpected, and positive emerged from that exchange. I cannot say the same for phone calls, text messages, or video meetings. I am reminded of one of my  favorite all-time television commercials  which are so dated that email isn't even mentioned! None of us know when "normal" business travel will return because of the pa
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