Over the last week I have been thinking that we are in the midst of another movement control order (MCO) i.e. lockdown that my fellow retailers are once again struggling to hang on. There are those who could not carry on their business and have been forced to close down for good. These MCO’s although necessary are incredibly devastating to retailers livelihoods.
Although the government says that all economic sectors are open, a simple visit to any mall will show you that you can be open but no one will visit your store. I keep highlighting the F&B sector because they have to deal with perishables in their businesses. Perishables are one of the main direct contributing costs to a F&B business among others. Not buying enough perishables means that you are essentially not open for business, buying too little means you could end up being out of stock for a lot of your options which might upset potential customers looking to sample your full menu. So in a sense, the F&B business in my opinion is more severely affected by this MCO compared to other types of retail.
So instead of going on and on here are some recommendations I think should work to balance between a full lockdown and allowing fellow retailers to survive this MCO. Please note that I am sharing this in my capacity of what I see in the market, I am in no way a medical professional or have spoken to one. On to the recommendations
- Re-open in store dining – This is the single most brutal blow to the F&B business. Without in store dining it is incredibly difficult for F&B businesses to survive. But you may say, they can do delivery so at least people will buy from them right? Well, what happens when you focus only on delivery, let’s not forget that you are not the only restaurant or café doing so. What would have been a catchment of customers who would come to your store to eat due to constraints such as time or inability to travel far is lost when every customer technically now has the ability to order from anyone and anywhere they want because they are now just working from their homes. As such, what was to be a blue ocean i.e. delivery has quickly become a red one with far too many competitors competing for the same pool of customers. Also, during the MCO period only allow 2 per table and only 20% or 30% of the outlet’s seating capacity can be taken up at any one time. Ensure that every table must be seated at least 6 meters apart. This would at least allow some of these retailers to survive as dining in is essential for their survival.
- Only allow 2 per car to travel during this MCO – This mechanism is extremely useful as it limits essentially families and others from needlessly going out. This rule alone should be able to curtail the authorities who worry that people are going out and not taking this infection seriously.
- 3 Strike Penalty System – this comes to mind based on the recent story of a retailer who was nearly fined for having a staff which was about to go on shift duty but sat down on one of the tables to have their meal first. I can understand why authorities want to issue out fines to errant business owners who flout the rules but I feel it is unfair to compound businesses just on a single incident. As such business should be given the opportunity to have a 3 Strike Penalty upon which you are given 3 opportunities and if you are found to violate the SOP more than 3 times then you should be compounded.
- EMCO – This would be a good measure for locations which are deemed out of control in terms of the outbreak. I am not sure why this option is no longer used by the authorities but it can assist to let hot spots cool down to prevent further spread of infection. These lockdowns can be short for a period of 2 – 3 weeks and special assistance can be arranged to assist those who are affected in terms of food or perhaps other things like groceries.
I am totally in agreement when we say we need to do whatever it takes to overcome this pandemic, but 3 MCO’S on I am a little jaded with our ability to tackle this pandemic and we need to live with the reality that this might be our new normal of having multiple MCO’S until we can ramp up vaccinations and solve this for good.
The landscape at the moment does not look great and in effect perhaps what can be seen as a ray of sunshine in the near future will be the rise of a better class of retailer which is omnipresent, ever engaged with customers and digitalized. Till then take care and stay safe everyone.
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Source: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/how-current-mco-killing-retailers-what-do-timothy-liew-
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