In June, the government began to loosen restrictions on business operations. Restaurants are a part of this wave of re-openings. Managers will need to figure out how to handle a crowd of customers in a time of continued caution and social distancing.

Here are five ways restaurant owners can do to reopen.

1. Train your staff online before they show up to work.

The industry’s standards and operations have changed due to the pandemic, and it will be important to communicate new rules and methods to your restaurant employees. Before they come back to work, host a virtual training session for every team.

In these online training sessions, familiarize your employees with new mandates. Perhaps there will be disposable menus or contactless payment systems. It's also important to send out new restaurant policies and guidelines so your team has a reference handy if they need to look something up.

2. Put up safety guidelines and posters throughout the restaurant.

While your employees will be well trained to handle the reopening, your customers may not be at the start. Visual reminders will be crucial to not only keep them safe, but to protect your staff as well. If your cashier station is now contactless, put up signs with visual examples of the new process. Put marks on the floor six feet apart in places where lines may form.

In the bathroom, proper handwashing technique signs should be ubiquitous. Your bathroom policy itself might have to change to one-at-a-time, and signs should reflect that as well. This will inevitably be a learning experience for restaurant managers as the reopen progresses. Once you see patrons disobey a safety requirement multiple times, it may motivate you to create a sign specific to that behavior.

3. Limit the number of customers coming into the restaurant.

As long as some level of social distancing is mandated, your restaurant will need to limit the amount of guests inside your establishment at one time. This may require a change of layout to accommodate a smaller number of seats and more room between tables. This may also affect how you handle a waitlist; instead of letting a crowd wait outside, more reservations might have to be taken ahead of time.

Finally, pickup and delivery locations may have to switch to curbside when your restaurant reopens for seating, just to alleviate the amount of people congregating near the front door.

4. Prioritize the safety of employees.

Your staff will have the most exposure to your rotating number of customers, so it’s important to make sure that they have all the training and gear they need to stay safe both for themselves and your guests.

Invest in the necessary protective equipment to keep your staff safe, and help them feel safe as well. From masks to gloves to sneeze guards around cash stations to thermometers, these items will pay for themselves a thousand-fold if they prevent any one from getting sick. For example, using the right type of sanitizer for restaurants to fight coronavirus can be very helpful, too. Just one case of coronavirus will shut down your restaurant for weeks, so do not skimp on the gear you need to keep your team protected and your business open.

5. Create three separate teams in rotation.

Finally, it might be best to divide your staff into two or three teams to rotate on different shifts. This way, in the unfortunate scenario in which an employee does get sick, you can put one team on leave while the other teams continue coming in to work. While it may be difficult to juggle schedules, this extra layer of “insurance” can keep your restaurant from having to shut down again for weeks on end.

Make sure each team completely cleans and disinfects the restaurant at the end of their shift, taking care to wash any and all used cleaning supplies. You should allocate additional time for shift changes for this new level of deep cleaning. This way, each new team can come in without worry of contamination from the previous crew.

This will be a trying time of change and experimentation. Prioritize safety first, as any misstep may result in closure and lost revenue. Stay diligent and your restaurant should slowly be able to recover its customers and its profitability.