This post is a follow up on our Eating and Drinking After Coronavirus survey, focusing on the comments provided.

As part of the EDAC survey we also requested that the respondents give us their own comments in regard to what the pubs, bars and restaurants can do to make the customers return after the lockdown and also what would make them uncomfortable to see upon return. Most of the comments echoed responses already conveyed in the closed responses part of the survey.

The vast majority of the comments mentioned making sure that the social distancing norms are adhered to as per the government guidelines - including seating layout changes, capacity limits and extreme sanitising measures.

The safety of both the employees and the patrons has definitely been marked as the most important factor with worries of overcrowding and poor hygiene being pretty much the only thing that would make our respondents uncomfortable upon their return to the venues.

To help alleviate those worries the respondents said that they would be looking for clear communication through social media pages about the opening hours and changes that have been implemented so they can feel confident about their decision to come visit the establishment in advance.

Advertising the changes that are being made to the service both in terms of the security measures and menu changes will help bring people back in as well as introducing good deals and offers - 2 for 1 main meals, loyalty cards, bringing back happy hour and discounts.

The last but not least on the list is the staff – the respondents are keen to seen great service from friendly staff giving the visitors the feeling that things will indeed be slowly going back to ‘normal’.

You can read more about our Natural Language Processing and comment analysis here.