The challenge
Allen Slinger, landlord of The Tiger Inn in Beverley’s Lairgate, had closed his premises for four months due to the COVID-19 lockdown. Re-opening would be a major milestone, that took careful planning.
Since taking over as manager, Allen has established an impressive reputation for the Tiger as a grassroots community pub that has become something of a community hub for Beverley folk. Opening again was very much about retaining the confidence of a loyal customer base.
The solution
With our advice and support in creating a COVID-secure strategy, Allen decided to take a number of measures to protect his customers and staff. These included erecting a marquee outside in the beer garden area to allow people to stay dry while queuing and maintain a safe distance from each other.
He made the most of the outside space to accommodate more people, to compensate for losing a bit of space inside due to spreading out tables. A number of screens were put up in parts of the bar, lots of hand sanitiser stations were installed, and signage for safe distancing.
A traffic light system on the toilet doors controlled the number of people using the washrooms at any one time; food and drink became table service-only; and customers follow a one-way system to get around the pub.
We recommended using colour coded equipment for designated areas of the pub to avoid cross contamination, and organised cleaning schedules and reporting to ensure that the Tiger was fully compliant and staff were clear as to what’s required of them.
The results
Allen said Elliott’s have been a fantastic help to him in getting this right.
He explained: “We’ve worked with Elliott’s for some years now and so we already had robust hygiene measures in place, but they’ve helped us to take those up a notch in order to comply with the extra-stringent COVID-secure requirements.
“Other hygiene supply companies source you the products and leave you to it but that’s not the case with Elliott’s. What you get is full, end-to-end support and a hygiene strategy matched to your business’s needs.
“Janette and her team were just brilliant in advising us on things like the types of sanitisers we need to be using, signage options and things like that. Janette came up with ideas we hadn’t even thought of and was really thorough as always.
“Knowing that we have all the necessary procedures and equipment in place means our staff are absolutely clear what everyone’s supposed to be doing and what information we need to record to be in keeping with COSHH safe working standards, and therefore there’s no risk of things going wrong.”
