Opinion : Lessons from SARS

Learning from SARS and with H1N1 looming large, Madhu Joshi explains the critical aspects of a restaurant’s crisis management plan.

Sooner or later comes a crisis in our affairs and how we meet it determines our future. A guest calls complaining about food poisoning from your restaurant and the media reports it as Swine Flu. What does this do to your business?

You will loose business from those who believe him. Does this sound like a crisis? Nothing is certain in today’s world, so you probably have experienced some sort of crisis. In the age of Twitter and citizen journalism, how you deal with the situation will affect how well you emerge from it. Before all else, it is best to stay prepared.

What is a crisis? It is an unstable time whose outcome will make a decisive difference for better or worse. Crisis communication is a structured approach to handling crisis events, a strategy designed to direct the right information to the right people with maximum speed, minimise misinformation and limit overall damage.

Crisis management is now a specialised area of corporate communication, fast gaining popularity with ‘situations’ such as SARS, terror attacks, fire breakout and now H1N1 more frequent than before.

FHRAI’s ongoing research has indicates that most hotels do not appreciate how to prevent a severe blow to their public image and future business due to crisis events.

It is essential to identify the potential risks which affect your business. For foodservice, the potential risks are food poisoning in restaurants and communicable diseases – the latests being H1N1. Once these are identified, the immediate step is to set up a crisis management system focusing on implementing an effective and timely communication to media, employees/staff, suppliers, guests and all stakeholders.

Crisis communication plans are not complex, even a basic one can be very effective. This is a three step plan to keep things in check; identify the specific problem; develop the solution and communicate the action plan to all concerned.

And to meet these steps, the action plan must include the following:

1. Identify the key target audiences – guests, employees, media and suppliers.
2. Identify the crisis management and communication team – this is absolutely compulsory. The crisis management team should include four key members; owner/CEO, communications head, human resource head, and the safety manager. If you own a single restaurant, then let the spokesperson be ‘you’, the owner. Else, I recommend you engage a PR consultant to handle it for you. The cost for hiring an agency can be per project and will not be too heavy an expense. Protecting your brand image is more important for both short and long-term benefit. 
3. Clarify spokesperson’s role – The crisis management team needs to clearly have a specific spokesperson who will act as the face of the organisation while dealing with media, addressing employees, other external public like distributors, suppliers, etc.

Never ignore the media for it plays a vital role in how effectively the company’s message on the crisis is communicated. Therefore it is extremely important to deal efficiently with them. Any kind of crisis calls for the right approach while dealing with the media, such as adhere to media queries on a timely basis, respect their deadlines and avoid terms like ‘no
comments’ while being patient with all their questions.

Overall, what is required is an effective and timely communication approach to deal with a crisis. This does not require major spends but an open-minded approach and accurate thinking.

A crisis, if handled in the right manner, can earn respect for the organisation and can strengthen both internal and external relations. And the most important step required for this is to have a humane approach and a positive attitude. The rest takes care of itself.

Who is Madhu Joshi?
Madhu Joshi has considerable experience in hospitality and foodservice communication, and is presently the senior manager, PR and corporate communications at Indage Vintners. She can be contacted at madhu.joshi@indagegroup.com