Column and photos by Emily Scott
While working during a pandemic, I was able to see several different sides of the issues at play and people’s reactions to them first hand. I saw customers grateful we were open, some acting as if everything were normal, and others who took the precautions necessary and then some to keep themselves safe. I saw the store owner work hard to drum up business and keep us open, and employees thankful we did because they needed the restaurant to pay their bills.
I began working at Chicken Salad Chick (CSC) last summer, and I continued to work there over J-Term and once I arrived home to Columbus in mid-March. CSC is a southern restaurant chain which serves 12 different types of chicken salads, egg salad, pimento cheese and several homemade sides, including grape salad and broccoli salad. I work at the Westerville franchise, located about 15 miles north of Columbus. We are the northernmost store in the country.
The franchise owner, Jen Crichfield, and the general manager, Jessie Petrus, were going to train me to be a shift leader when I came home from the summer, but that was moved up when I came back early due to the pandemic. As a shift leader, I have a key to the store and a code for the security alarm, help delegate tasks to other employees and myself, help decide what food will be prepared the next day and handle some of the financials. Basically, I helped Jen and Jessie with what they need to help the restaurant run smoothly.
Chassidy Perry, one of the other two shift leaders, was diagnosed with cancer a couple weeks after I got back from school. She was told she needed surgery and would be back to work in a month. Kimberly Lyons was forced to stay home from work due to a lack of child care. I soon found myself to be the only other shift leader, trying to keep up with a business that was constantly needing to change.
The decision to stay open
At the beginning of the pandemic, when Gov. Mike DeWine and his team continued to close various businesses in the state, the restaurant tuned in to his daily press conferences to see if we would be next.
My first day back at work, I watched videos produced by corporate to begin my training to become a shift leader. I came in around lunch, but the store was eerily empty. There was not the usual lunch rush with the line to the door. A customer came in every once in a while and quickly hurried out. Although we had not been closed, restaurants were told they could only do carry out.
When it became clear we were not going to be forced to close, Jen had to decide if it was worth staying open, or if she should close the doors until things started to creep back to normal.
She decided to stay open, but instead of our normal menu, we would only serve the to-go containers of chicken salad (called Quick Chicks) and some of our sides in containers as well. This allowed us to reduce the number of staff in the store, as well as avoid ordering produce that did not stay good more than a few days that we would potentially not use.
Jen once told me that she could have closed the doors and saved a lot of time, and her family would have been okay. It would have been hard, but she thought they could manage. She decided to stay open for all the employees who could not afford to not work for weeks without their hourly pay. Employees who did not want to work did not have to and would be welcomed back once things got better.
Once Jen made this decision, she did all she could to drum up business. We first started delivering to neighborhoods. Those who wanted to would place their order the night before, then we would put everything together and drop it off at one person’s house where the other neighbors could pick it up. This limited our contact with customers and their contact with each other. These neighborhood runs were a huge hit, and we were soon doing several a day.
One morning, we printed off 60 orders for neighborhood deliveries that day. We could not believe how many there were, and Jen had the employees working that day hold up the long line of receipts and pose for a photo for Facebook.
Not long after, we did our first pop-up drive thru in Powell, where Jen is from, and it was also a success. Many of Jen’s friends and our customers helped us spread the word. Soon, we started doing these drive-thrus several times a week, then one or more every day in different locations around Columbus and the surrounding area. Sometimes we get around 100 orders for a single drive thru, and we laugh thinking of the day we thought 60 was a lot.
The creep back to normalcy
As Ohio and the rest of the country begins to open up, CSC is as well. On May 15 we opened our small patio for seating and on May 21 we reopened our sandwich line and our regular menu with it.
Although we are still only doing take out, we also began allowing customers to come in the store to order, instead of doing curbside only. This came with stickers on the floor to help customers stay six feet apart, a plexiglass barrier between customer and employees, and an employee stationed at our beverage machine to help customers, because nothing can be self-serve.
Since the pandemic began, it was the same 15 employees working throughout the week. As we began opening up, we had to bring back employees who had not been working, as well as hire new ones. All these people needed training on how things were now being run, while how we run things are constantly changing.
The restaurant’s one year anniversary is June 12, and Jen hopes to open our dining room soon after that. When that happens, a new wave of changes will come with it. This definitely is not the first year any of us expected.
Kim is coming back to work soon, and Chassidy has been back for several weeks. Her surgery was a success and she is now receiving chemotherapy and radiation treatments when she is not working. She has worked at CSC with me since the beginning and has been a rock helping everyone through all the changes, even with everything she is facing. She never stopped smiling and laughing, and I know she has given us all hope that our situation will get better.
Spread joy, enrich lives, and serve others
The CSC motto is “spread joy, enrich lives, and serve others”. When I was taught this during my initial training a year ago, I thought it was cheesy, because how could a chicken salad restaurant do all of that?
We really have lived those words the last couple months. Jen has donated our food to countless frontline workers, the elderly secluded in retirement homes and others in need. She partnered with the Mid-Ohio Food Bank to feed their workers and the Ohio National Guard who was helping them distribute resources to the needy.
A year ago, I thought this would just be a job I would have for the summer before I left for college, but here I am, proud to work for a company and an owner who cares so deeply about the employees, customers and community she serves.
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