Bradley Fisher, CEC, CCA, Executive Chef of Berkshire Country Club, shares his Family To-Go Menu as well as an explanation of club’s strategy to care for employees and members during the coronavirus pandemic.
Like many other clubs across the nation, Berkshire Country Club (Reading, Pa.) is facing the challenges of being morally responsible our their staff and, at the same time, offering members quality take-out options. Over the past three weeks our housekeeping staff as well as the front of the house staff and culinary staff have been focusing on keeping all frequently contacted surfaces clean and sanitized. This include door knobs, light switches, TV remotes, menu jackets, bar stools, and more.
Our club is trying to be proactive and face these new challenges head-on. Last Saturday, Paul Bovenzi, our new General Manager, had the foresight to get the ball rolling and asked me to start developing Curbside Takeout Menu Packages for our membership. We knew something drastic was coming, and that we needed to have a fully-baked plan in place.
The club is currently closed, but our new Curbside Takeout Menu Packages are available. (View packages here.) Members can order any of our six dinner packages for pickup the following day between 4-8PM. Our daily preparation and execution of the packages take place each day and are packaged neatly with a detailed cooking/reheating instructional page included in each package.
It is important for us to offer precooked or semi-cooked food packages that will be easy for our members to execute as well as being safe for time and temperature transportation and storage.
As well as offering the Berkshire membership high quality delicious food, our senior management team wants to be sure to remove the financial burden to our department teams by providing free meals for employees working on special projects around the club during the shutdown. In addition, we are offering limited hours for our hourly staff employees. The club is also paying full-time employee health coverage premiums during this trying time, despite some of the employees not even receiving a paycheck.
The plan right now is to reevaluate our direction each week. No one in Pennsylvania—or the world, for that matter—really knows how long these challenges will last. Nor can we predict the impact it will have on our clubs and our members. We are focused on keeping our staff safe and offering our members access to the delicious, high quality food items they are accustomed to getting at the club.
While we hope the world will someday get back to “normal,” for now, it’s our responsibility as professionals to look out for each other and exercise the safest practices in the industry.
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