COVID-19 and craft beer: Before the Michigan shutdown, New Holland Brewing offered an excellent list of cleaning protocols

States like Ohio, California, Illinois, Washington, Massachusetts, New York, Kentucky, Indiana and onward are mandating certain restrictions on restaurants and bars or asking them to cease operations for a period due to COVID-19. Yesterday, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer announced an order that will temporarily shut down all bars and restaurants in Michigan, to take effect at 3 p.m yesterday.

Before that announcement, New Holland Brewing, makers of famed Dragon’s Milk, released an excellent list of cleaning and safety protocols that it was implementing for its Michigan locations. It’s still a good list, worthy of review, as I’m sure we’ll see it again once breweries reopen. These come via President Brett VanderKamp, and they are a good example for breweries looking to stay open safely and professionally during this crazy moment in history. Via the New Holland website:

• Asking our team members to stay home if they show any symptoms of illness, or if they have recently been exposed to anyone else that is exhibiting symptoms. We kindly ask that our customers follow the same guidelines.

• Curtailing tours of our facilities for the time being. Refunds will be given to guests that have already purchased tour tickets.

• Increased sanitizing protocols for all common areas, such as door handles, light switches, table tops, bar tops, chairs, host stands, etc…

• Increased hand-washing requirements for staff

• Restroom inspections every 30 minutes to ensure that soap dispensers are fully stocked, along with paper towels and toilet paper

• Having hand sanitizer available at our host stands and server stations

• Asking our guests to refrain from standing behind or crowding each other at the bar

• Reducing guest capacity at each property to ensure that we are able to maintain our increased cleaning and sanitizing efforts while continuing to provide an exceptional customer service experience

• Modifying our seating: having less stools at the bar and more spacing between our seated guests to allow for social distancing