Name: How to Reopen: IHOP diners step into reimagined restaurants
Uploaded: 2020-06-25
Duration: 5 min 23 s
Description: IHOP President Jay Johns says the locations will feel the same, but be outfitted with brand new sanitary protocols.

IHOP President Jay Johns says the locations will feel the same, but be outfitted with brand new sanitary protocols.

How to Reopen: IHOP diners step into reimagined restaurants

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Locations will be outfitted with new sanitary protocols.

President Jay Johns says the locations will still feel the same, but will be outfitted with brand new sanitary protocols.

Obviously, we're in a new world now, and a lot has changed. One thing I would say is I just want to make a point that a lot hasn't changed for us as I hop, you know, fundamentally, we've been around for 60 years. We've been serving great experiences for death. It's really about the experience that I have. So the great experiences haven't changed. What has happened is when this immediately took place way to close down a lot of our dining rooms across the country and eventually all the dining rooms. So our business really shifted to being to go in delivery and a total off premise experience. People still wanted their pancake stuff, and now the experience is just more to being how you engage with them as far as getting their pancakes at their house. Now, dining rooms are starting to reopen again. I think there's a lot of pent up demand for people to get out. They want to feel happy again. They want to feel good again. Uh, they want to get out of the house and people are coming to IHOP all over again. Well, unfortunately, we were in the same position as a lot of lot of industries and the restaurants in particular that we, uh we had to deal with preserving cash and making sure that we were going to be able to survive. We, unfortunately on on our corporate side on the IHOP brand, we did have to do some furloughs, um, to make sure that we're preserving cash for our business and we were going to be in good shape. We are paying all of the, uh, the benefits as far as insurance for people that are out on furlough, including their portion that they would pay. So they're not paying anything for that. We did make that commitment to our employees. You get to keep in mind, though, that we are a fully franchise organization. We don't own a single restaurant ourselves. All of the IHOP locations are actually franchise zones. So the franchisees have all those employees, and in some cases, they have to do for those as well. But they've been calling people back to work on a pretty rapid clip right now. As restaurants have been reopening, it's gonna be a little different experience, but some of them will still be the same. You're gonna walk into the building, You're still gonna have that big smile on the logo over the door, so it's gonna look normal. So you get inside. Once you get inside, that's where it's gonna start to change a little bit when they walk in. Now they're going to see sanitizer stations or bottles. They're gonna see employees that have facial coverings on now to protect the employees and the guests. You're gonna walk past auto open tables. There's social distancing. They're going on. We're following the CDC guidelines six ft in, between all the guests and the tables, someone will bring you a menu. It's not going to be the typical old laminated menu that you saw. It's going to be a single two sided piece of paper that you're gonna have your own dedicated menu that we're gonna throw away as soon as you leave. So there's no reusing of menus. There's even gonna be a QR code on that menu that if a guest wants to take a picture of it and then use the menu on their phone zooming in, if they want that they can do that as well. So, uh, there's gonna be differences. Other big difference for us is we have syrup and coffee, and those things are gonna be on an as order basis now. So when they walk in, they're not gonna see anything on the tables. Tables are completely clear. That makes it clutter free and way easier for us to maintain cleanliness and keep things looking fresh and looking perfect for the guests when they walk in the door. I need trust from my guests that we're doing all the right things, and I think that's important. A brand is really a promise. People have an expectation when they see your name, they see your logo. They know what that stands for. They come to us because they know I'm going to get great pancakes. I'm gonna have a great experience, my family and I know I can count on now that it's a clean, safe environment. Mhm Well, I think for the restaurant industry as a whole, it's going to be interesting. Short term, the challenges. Obviously, you've got to get your sales back up to a more normal level or they may not be able to survive. So you got to get the sales back. They been able to get a lot of those sales by going to to go business and to go models. I think that's going to stay with us for a long time. That will be an opportunity when we come out of this that you're going to have a more robust to go delivery business for for your organization. Um, that's important. I think that longer term, there's gonna be a big opportunities for the people that do make it through this. There will be big opportunities on real estate and opening more restaurants and new restaurants, because the reality is if you if you look at all the statistics and all the reports, probably some restaurants are not going to make it, there's gonna be some restaurant buildings out there. They're going to need new tenants, and for the ones that do make it, I think there will be opportunities to expand and build your business again. Once we come back on the back side of this mhm