Navigating Updated COVID Guidance
In 2020, our little plover learned that wearing a mask was the best way to protect their community.
A letter from Michael and Lauren about updated COVID-19 guidance.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit last year, it shook our small business to its core. Suddenly, we weren’t just making coffee anymore. We were essential workers.
Part of our responsibility of being an essential business operating during the height of the pandemic was ensuring the safety of our team and community. Over the course of the past 15 months, we’ve adjusted our entire service model to keep our customers and team safe—moving to outdoor service, requiring face masks, limiting the number of customers inside, and only doing to-go food and drinks. This process was heartbreaking for us. Andytown was founded on bringing customers together and providing amazing customer service—both of which is near impossible with severe COVID-19 precautions. But we pivoted because we knew that the best way to serve our neighborhood was to keep everyone as safe as possible.
Through all of this, our team has been incredible. They have rolled with the updated guidance, they have served our customers through the rising case numbers and stuck with us through a forced closure after a former employee tested positive for COVID-19. Working frontline customer service in a pandemic is extremely stressful. Our team was quite literally putting their life on the line to serve our community.
On June 15th San Francisco is lifting most of its COVID-19 safety requirements. We trust the city’s public health officials and policy makers that this is a safe move. After all, San Francisco has been ahead of the game through this whole pandemic and we’ve got the case numbers to prove it.
But for Andytown, we are still taking things slow.
Yes, starting tomorrow, we can no longer require vaccinated customers to wear masks or socially distance in line, while ordering, or waiting for their orders.
You will still see our employees wearing masks while working service. Why?
Cal OSHA has still not clarified mask-wearing guidance for employees. Currently, they say that employees must wear masks if any one person on the team is unvaccinated. Because our staff come into close contact with customers all day and there is no way to tell a customer’s vaccination statues, we are recommending that all customer-facing employees continue to wear masks.
There are members of our team who are immunocompromised or live with people who are immunocompromised and they will continue to wear masks to protect themselves and their household members.
Because we have been through a lot of trauma and stress over the past year and team members may want to take things slow. It’s a personal choice to continue to wear a mask and we ask you to respect their decision.
Ok, so we are 100% following the SFDPH and Cal OSHA guidance for mask wearing. But what about our other COVID-19 precautions like no customer cups, no outdoor seating, plexiglass, sanitizing high-touch areas every hour, keeping outdoor service at Lawton and Outer Taraval, and holding off on for-here cups?
For the next month, we are maintaining all of other COVID-19 risk mitigation practices. Last week, I sent out an employee survey to gauge our team’s comfortability on lifting certain precautions. Based on this feedback, and the general uncertainty surrounding COVID, we are going to maintain our other safety practices until we’ve monitored San Francisco’s case numbers for a few weeks.
After we are certain that it is safe, we will slowly start returning to “normal” service. We’ll be providing updates on our Instagram and newsletter. We are happy to talk more about how we are navigating the changing guidance from the city while still working hard to keep our team and community safe in these final stages of the pandemic.
If you would like to discuss any of this further, you can email us directly at lauren@andytownsf.com or michael@andytownsf.com.
Thank you,
Lauren Crabbe & Michael McCrory
Owners, Andytown Coffee Roastersv