Feast or Famine | Hong Kong restaurant group Black Sheep’s Covid-19 pandemic playbook that’s become a global hit
- ‘We need to understand the risks we are putting our people through on the front line,’ says Syed Asim Hussain
- To his surprise, crisis manual has reached 30 countries, been picked up by hotel schools, retail and aviation industries
When Syed Asim Hussain and Christopher Mark, co-founders of Black Sheep Restaurants, decided to release the restaurant group’s SOP: Covid-19 Playbook to other Hong Kong food and beverage establishments earlier this year, little did they know that it would go global.
“Our intention was to share it with contemporaries in Hong Kong but it spread to 30 countries. We’ve been getting emails from Brazil, Japan … It’s being translated into four different languages,” says Hussain.
Emailed out in March (and available on the Black Sheep website, where it’s been downloaded more than 2,000 times), it advises restaurants to “invest in contactless thermometers” to test the temperature of staff and anybody else who enters the premises; create a health declaration form that all guests must sign before entering (and “do not be afraid to turn them away” if they refuse); and to have a good supply of hand wipes and sanitisers available for everyone to use.
In Hong Kong at least, you’d be hard-pressed to find any restaurant – from the cheapest to the most expensive – that has not implemented these measures.
The playbook sent outside the group is actually version three, says Hussain. He says version four will be released soon, covering newer issues such as supply chain distribution. The playbook started off as an internal document to be used within the Black Sheep group, when they realised that the coronavirus was going to hit hard.