Don't risk a crack in your reputation
“Glass, china, and reputation are easily cracked and never well mended,” American political legend Benjamin Franklin said in the 1700s. In the age of social media and online reviews, this insight has never been more relevant to the food services business. Night after night, event after event you can build a stellar reputation, for one negative customer experience to ‘crack’ it.
Reinforcing what any food services business knows from experience, a good reputation online equals dollars. An academic study cited in the Harvard Business Review, showed that a one-star increase in Yelp (online review site) ratings for a restaurant led to a 5-9% increase in revenue.
On the flip side, bad news travels fast online. According to this recent article, Google tends to bias towards negative content. As the author explains it, “. . . on the information superhighway, when there’s an accident, people tend to be rubberneckers.” For food service businesses this means not just negative reviews, but incidents such as fire or food safety failures can have a significant and immediate impact.
According to insurers GIO, top risks restaurants have to be aware of and prepared to deal with include:
- Fire damage: they identify as the main risk, and include electrical sources as common cause;
- Food poisoning: refrigeration can be a root cause of this major risk area.
- Customer injury: a lesser risk, but still the potential remains for customers to be injured in your premises from equipment failures. Worker safety could be added to this.
You can insure against these risks as GIO suggests to limit the financial impact, but the reputational damage of equipment related problems can be much harder to mitigate.
In terms of the potential impact of commercial refrigeration equipment failures on your reputation, you can reduce the risk relatively easily. In Australia and New Zealand clear standards exist to ensure equipment is mechanically and electronically safe. Ensuring your equipment is compliant can give you confidence it will be safe and reliable, and that there is a credible supplier to provide support.
We’ve prepared an eBook for food services providers “The cold, hard facts about technical compliance”, that helps you understand the key areas of compliance and how to easily check if your equipment is likely to avoid any risk to your reputation.
Download the eBook “The cold, hard facts about technical compliance” or contact SKOPE to discuss your compliance questions.
November 24th 2016
