Janet Kurtz

00:00Welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio, a podcast for and about the people of the Nashville restaurant scene. Now, here's your host, the CEO of New Light Hospitality Solutions, Brandon Styll. Hello, Music City! And welcome to Nashville Restaurant Radio. My name is Brandon Styll, and I'm going to be your host today. And we have got an amazing episode ahead of us. My new friend, Janet Kurtz, who is the president of Kurtz Hospitality Marketing Company. And she is just amazing. We were talking the other day and she said, you know what, I've got, I have so many clients that are hotels and restaurants and what's the next level of clean? What is the thing that we're all going to have to be doing proactively going forward? So I said, let's come on the show. Let's talk about it. She's got some experts and she's brought in Chuck Cummings and Ken Garza. They're with a company called GHP Environmental and Architecture.

01:04I want to tell you a little about them. They were established in 1977. They are a woman-owned company and nationally recognized architectural, environmental and project management consulting firm that has successfully integrated the skills of architects, engineers, program managers, lead facilitators, industrial hygienists and safety professionals. They have offices in Nashville, Tennessee, Jupiter, Florida, Denver, Colorado, San Antonio, Texas and San Francisco, California. Recognized as national experts in environmental health and safety structure assessments and remediations, GHP's co-founder developed much of the early science behind hazards related to asbestos, mold and lead-based paint in buildings. Today, GHP's trained team of EHS experts is specialized in all aspects of environmental health and safety management, serving as a trusted advisor to clients across the US and growing international bases. GHP services include indoor air quality, asbestos mold and lead-based paint, remediation design, noise assessment and project management. So pretty much these guys know exactly what they're talking about when it comes to clean and getting it clean, right and sustaining it. So let's welcome in Chuck Cummings. He is one of the partners and the national accounts representative. Welcome, Chuck.

02:21Thank you, Brandon. Glad to be with you today. We're so happy to have you and Ken Garza, vice president of industrial hygiene. Ken, welcome on. Hi, how you doing? Thanks for having me. We're doing great and Janet, it's always nice to have you here. Oh, it's great to be here, Brandon. Thank you so much. So let's get going. Janet, what was your first thought? You wanted to, we brought these guys in from GHP. Let's get down to it. Let's do it. You know, I think that one of the things that we are trying to help our clients with right now is obviously managing through this experience, but also what is the next step? How are we going to market? How are we going to operate? And in that operation, what cleaning standards need to change? In addition to that, how do we communicate to the public and assure the public that the property is clean? You know, there are hotels that had to make the choice to close. That's obviously on a market to market basis. There are hotels that are making the choice to become alternative care facilities, like quarantining COVID-19 patients and becoming extra emergency rooms for a taxed hospitals system. So it really then becomes, how do we tell the public that, yes, our property is clean? It's safe to travel and visit. And a lot of that, I think, comes from what Chuck and Ken bring to the table, which is this expertise and how we're really going to have to change the way that we've been operating and how we communicate how we clean our buildings.

04:06And so I think that's going to be something that is going to come into play a lot more. But in the meantime, the questions that I have for you guys, and I know we've talked about this a bit, but you work with hotels all over the world. And I'm sure you're hearing from your clients right now in a lot of different ways. What are some of the questions that you, Chuck, and Ken are getting right now from your hotel and restaurant clients? Well, thanks, Janet. I'll lead and start in. We're getting a lot of questions from the hotel owners and operators on really how to maintain the building in its current state. Most of the hotels are empty or unoccupied or just not having guests now. And they're somewhat mothballed, if you will. And so a lot of the questions are coming to us on how to maintain the facility in a good working order in that condition. Of course, primary to all of that is how do we clean? And we're helping owners understand how clean is clean. Well, it's a degree and it requires a lot of thought and a lot of process. But those are some of the typical questions we're getting and that we're helping our ownership groups with. That's great. And this is Ken. We're also hearing from some of our clients. Do we need to stop work activities, projects that we have going on in the facility, environmental projects, or other types of projects during this time? And some of our clients are electing because there's a reduced population in these buildings and less folks to work around, also trying to get some of the projects done that they would have otherwise taken a longer time period and trying to knock those out during this time period. So that's another thing we're also hearing. So that's a great point, Ken. So having been in hotels for over 20 years, I've certainly been there through renovations or through work projects.

06:12And sometimes you're trying to work around, you can work in the rooms on Sunday through Thursday, but you better be done by Thursday afternoon because we have a full house on Thursday and Friday and Saturday. And so having a closed or semi-closed building would allow those hotels to kind of get those projects done. It absolutely does. We have a client right now in New Mexico that, you know, we had a project before all this hit and where we were going to have to work around in the spa area of a hotel, doing some environmental remediation work. And that was going to kind of take a long time because we're working around the spa still being open. Well, now that the spa is basically closed, they're letting us know, come on in, let's get it done. Let's get it done quick. And so we can just be done with it. So, I mean, that's an example. Oh, that's great. That sounds like such a smart thing to do, to be able to knock out those projects that you really had wanted to get done, but maybe, you know, it's getting into the busy season so you can't, you have to put it off until next January or something. So getting into that, you know, and we're talking about before all this hit, before COVID-19, well, now we're in the middle of it.

07:29Hotels are concerned about the cleanliness of their facility. There's a consumer confidence issue as people are, you know, concerned about the place, about travel. They're concerned about moving around the country and staying in hotels or getting on an airplane. We know that there will be a time where we are again back to travel. But what should a hotel be doing now or a restaurant? And they're really two separate questions. But what is the due diligence that a property can do to ensure they're clean, as well as a restaurant, because some of the restaurants are actually operating right now and they've pivoted to carry out only, but what are the types of things that these properties can be doing to ensure cleanliness during this time? Well, that's a two-fold question, as you said, Janet. Some of our clients are taking advantage of this opportunity not only to push forward with capital projects, maybe as Ken just suggested, but they're taking care of a lot of maintenance, preventative maintenance items, and along with taking care of hotels and the air handlers and maybe some of the other F&B items that are of work need, they're also cleaning and they're cleaning with their internal staffs. And if they've had a COVID-19 issue, they're cleaning with professional companies, much like you would in an emergency response, much like a hurricane, let's say. So documenting all of that is what's going to be paramount right now, in my opinion. To bring a hotel back online, folks are going to tie that to a stigma. Is it clean? Is it safe? Should I go in? Should I not go in? And adequate documentation that you have been maintaining the building in good working order, keeping it clean, I think are going to be paramount.

09:21I also think that environmental professionals such as ourselves that write the specifications on how to clean and oversee the work and certify that it's clean will also be key in bringing back a hotel online and giving consumer confidence the ability to want to come back and visit, hold a convention, things like that. You know, Chuck, I think you brought up some good points there. And I wanted to ask just specifically, if I own a restaurant and I, you know, I don't have a lot of money right now and I don't necessarily have the ability to hire a professional team to come in and do a lot of this stuff, what are some of the specific things I can be doing right now? My restaurant's empty. What kind of cleaning supplies do I need? What can I do as a restaurant owner right now? Sure, sure. Again, the maintenance component is where I always go back to. So if you've got a dishwasher that's been out or a garbage disposal that's been out or not in good working order, pulling those things out and replacing those with internal staff serves two purposes. One, you get the item fixed while the restaurant is shut down and you keep your internal staff or your internal maintenance team busy and you keep them viable and it helps them stay in tune with the work orders that on any given day are needed in a restaurant or a hotel.

10:42So that's one element of it, but simple cleaning supplies. We're all cleaning our hands with Corel and other products, antimicrobial, antiviral products, and those are the same products that the facilities normally use and they're still using them now. So I see it as a great opportunity to maintain existing buildings, keep the staffs of the maintenance crews and the engineers of these places viable and working and productive, which is very important right now. And at the end, accomplishing a goal that when you bring the restaurant and or the hotel back online, it's going to be in better working order probably than it was before and we certainly know it's going to be cleaner than it was before. Heck yeah and I have one more follow-up on that. You mentioned that you're cleaning with an antimicrobial or an antiviral. Are those two things that work together, are they the same product or those two separate products and how do we know which one we have? This is Ken. They can be two separate products or the same. Typically, you want to access and look at the EPA and CDC have already approved disinfectants, particularly for this type of virus. And we're not talking about high-level cleaning products that cost tons and tons of money. I mean, these are Cloroxes on there for instance. So there's a list of approved type disinfectants to use. So you can go and access that and have a list of items to choose from.

12:08Excellent. That's great information, guys. Thank you so much. Sure. Absolutely. So okay, so we've been doing this. You talked about documentation. Can you tell us a little bit more about that? Because I think as a marketer, I'm sitting there thinking, well, should we post this to our social media or is it more of an internal documentation so you can say, look, we've done this. These were the processes that we put in place. This is Ken. I think certainly internally for sure. And then to some degree, make it aware to the public in a more concise manner. So for instance, I think Chuck alluded to this previously. You have just regular facilities that are just feeling the crunch, but there's no real COVID-19 related high-profile issues with that particular property. And then you have properties in which in fact it's been reported. Yes, there's an outbreak at this facility, such and such and such. And there's a difference between those two and bringing those two types of buildings up. The one that had the more high-profile aspect to it, you're going to want to spend a little more time on how you're conveying that to the public. The one that there really isn't an issue associated with it. There hasn't been any sort of issue with that. It's just your typical, like we already just discussed, the good hygiene, good practices in the building.

13:36And then as you bring it up, the high-profile buildings, those you're going to, again, want to document internally, the things that you're doing. And then me personally, if I walk into a facility and I can see that that facility is being proactive about how to interact with people, how they're treating their facility, and I can see that as a customer, as a guest, I appreciate that. That includes employees understanding high-contact areas, heightened housekeeping awareness, minimizing person-to-person contact as much as possible, Purell in every corner of the facility, and even to some degree, concise signage talking about your proactivity. I appreciate that. If I'm walking up to an elevator and I press a button, and then I see a sign right in front of me that says, this facility is heightened awareness regarding cleaning and hygiene and ABCD processes, I appreciate that as a customer. Yeah, I would tag on top of what Ken said. I mean, if I'm walking in a hotel in New York City three months from now and I don't see any information that the property has been cleaned to any degree, then I don't know what I don't know. So I want a level of confidence when I walk into a property. I want to know that the property has been cleaned by professionals, it's been overseen by an industrial hygienist, and that continuing cleaning is going on. If I know that, that's going to give me a level of comfort. If I don't see that, I'm going to be wondering about it. I'm going to be concerned, and I'm going to ask questions, and that's it. It's do the cleaning, somehow document the cleaning, but educate your staff in that process so that they can feel comfortable sharing that with the public, because we know questions are going to come. The front desk is probably going to be inundated with questions when someone is checking into a given hotel. Has this property been cleaned? And you want to have

15:41the right response, the correct response. And if you've cleaned it, the training of that staff to how to share that information with the public is going to be key, in my opinion. So, and I'm backing up a little bit here. So maybe you could talk a little bit about your process when you go on property and kind of what your, not so much scope, but how you help properties with that, with this environmental issues that they might be facing. Well, it starts with an interview and an observation process. Very quickly, Ken or myself could tell if the property is taking, number one, the situation serious, and if they're cleaning. I mean, you don't want to recontaminate something that you've already cleaned. So there is a process in cleaning of how to wipe a surface clean, of how to vacuum a surface clean. Air filtration is key to all of that. We talked about cleaning products earlier and the attention to detail. So it would start with the interview process, in my opinion, and then some observations.

16:46And then a little bit of tweaking would go along with that. I mean, housekeeping, internal housekeeping staff, sir, they know what they're doing. They're diligent. They've been in the property. They're familiar with the property, but there's always a tweak here or there that can enhance their process. And essentially what you want to do is make it easier. So once you've cleaned an area, you want to lock that area down. If there's no need to have people go back and re-entrain themselves in an area that's been cleaned, then warden it off and lock it down. It's clean once and there's no reason to go back and clean it again. Ken, I'll let you add to that. Yeah, absolutely, Chuck. So that's a good point you bring up. There's a strategy behind it. You're limiting foot traffic into spaces that are minimally used or less used or going to be less used. Let's say you have five ballrooms in a hotel. Well, you're probably not going to be maxed out on ballrooms right now or ballroom activities. Maybe if you were to have something and as you begin to start up, maybe only use one or maybe only use one or two of those ballrooms and leave the others alone. Less people in less areas is better if, in fact, you have to clean later. Let's say you want your 30% occupancy at the moment. Well, do you really need to have to spread these folks that you're putting in the hotel all around the facility or do you want to limit them to certain floors so that you don't have to have, again, foot traffic, unnecessary traffic in other parts of the facility? Those are really good points. If I have a follow-up here real quick for either of you, what are some of the things that you think people miss on a daily basis? So, for example, I watch people clean tables in restaurants or I see people clean surfaces and maybe they have a sanitizing solution but then they've got a towel and that towel gets used

18:47all day long. Does it matter that that towel's been used all day long? Do we need to use fresh towels every single time? Because I feel like the general public has all become experts. Before people would just write that off and go, no big deal, but now every single person has become a member of the health department. What are some of the things that we're doing that don't really matter? What are some of the things that we're missing? That's a great point and that's often in conversation with clients. I mentioned that concept to them and in some cases it's eye-opening. Let's go back to the hotel setting. Think about someone walking into their hotel room. What's the first thing they do is probably grab the remote control and flip it on and then they are touching this remote control over a period of time until they check out. Well, if you have cleaning staff coming through and maybe they're spraying their towels with sanitizer and who knows how much they're using or if they're using enough or too much, whatever. But then you're wiping down that remote control and then you walk over to the room right next door. You're wiping down that control and then you move over to the next room after that. That surface to rag to surface contact, in my opinion, is a big deal. Folks don't seem to get that. You do, obviously. You notice that, but some folks don't. They'll just transfer contamination from one place to another without not even thinking about it. I was just going to add, it's what we call the dirty mop syndrome where you use the same bucket of water in the same mop and you're just spreading the germs that are in that bucket elsewhere. It's a cognitive response to change the water out of the mop bucket, maybe even change the mop head. Back to your analogy with the towel, let's get rid of the cloth towels. Why do we need a towel to wipe the table down and not use a disposable paper towel type product and then just simply throw it away and grab a new clean towel or paper product before

20:50you clean the next table? I think it's some training and it's some intuitiveness to not spread germs from one spot to the next spot, or in this case, a virus from one spot to the next. To add to the table idea, why not just minimize half of that restaurant? You're only limited to certain tables versus the entire restaurant, you see? Yeah, limit the foot traffic for sure. Folks will come up with better ideas. I anticipate an influx of new products on the market for restaurants and for cafeteria type settings where it's going to be more disposable. It's going to tear off a piece of paper as a tablecloth and put a new one down. We see that in some restaurant change. Some folks have become more intuitive to how to keep areas clean and how to flip a table quickly. That's part of it too, is the time involved in it and the next party that wants to sit at the table. I think all of that is going to dovetail into new ideas, new products, and new techniques going forward. It could be almost a semi-cottage industry if it's not already.

21:59It's interesting that you said that, and that dovetails into one of my other questions. Where can people find the best information on what they should be doing? Where can they find new information? I know we touched on the CDC today, but give us some more thoughts on who might be resources for these properties during this time that might have some updated processes that the properties may want to adopt. Sure. This is Ken. The CDC, yes, they comment on a lot on healthcare-based facilities, but they also comment on other occupied built environments as well that are not healthcare. They actually have a page dedicated to that, so you can go through there and they'll discuss many of the things we've discussed as well as much more. That's the CDC, the World Health Organization. I think they actually have a PDF document that speaks to the accommodations business or the hospitality business.

23:06And so there's some additional resources right there. And I would add, Ken, the American Industrial Hygiene Association, of which you're a member, give guidelines along the lines of cleanliness. ASHRAE gives recommendations on how to mothball a building or shut a building down, how to protect potable water systems from Legionella growth inside of pipes that aren't being used or water isn't flowing that often. We're certainly concerned with those aspects too, along with COVID. So shutting a building down, as we've talked before, and turning everything off and locking the door and walking out just because we're not seeing guests is not the right thing to do. The right thing to do is to maintain your building in good working order in a semi- or quasi-occupied state so that when you do bring it back online, other environmental concerns aren't concerning. It's just that simple. Have you walked into a building that has been completely shut down that isn't just a shell but was shut down for a period of months? And if so, what were some of the experiences you have with that? Absolutely.

24:13That's a great question, Janet. So oftentimes we walk in buildings where the mechanical or the HVAC systems are shut down, and immediately you walk in and you feel the stagnant air. Along with that stagnant air, there might be a high humidity count in there because the temperature hasn't been controlled, the air hasn't been dried out, and there's moisture in the air. And when you have moisture in buildings and you have any degree of dirt in the area, you're going to see visible mold growth at times. So that's probably the most concerning thing we see in a building that's been shut down for a period of time. As I mentioned earlier, once water systems aren't turned on and they're not flowing, the showers aren't running, the sinks and commodes aren't running, and if you've got a potable water system tied to that, you could potentially get a slime buildup inside of that pipe. And in those slime buildups inside the pipe, Legionella can grow, Legionella bacteria. And when you turn the water systems back on, if you haven't flushed that or superheated those systems and you haven't changed out the aerator, let's say at the shower or at the sink, that growth can become airborne and you can inhale that and it can infest in your lungs. So we've all heard of Legionnaire's disease and that's a mode of how a person gets that in their lungs.

25:30Oh wow. That's all really good stuff guys. I can't thank you enough for coming on today and spending the time with us. Is there anything, just if I was to ask you like a quick hit, the most impactful thing you could tell the general public out there, just kind of about cleanliness that people could be practicing right now that isn't wash your hands? What would that be? Well certainly when you're in the public and you're not home-saving, gloves are extremely important, masks are extremely important. But I think again, it's just the social distancing is the best thing we can do right now. We've obviously seen the curve has flattened, but just general cleanliness is where it is now and it's going to be that way in the future. And I think what we're going to see is that not only personal hygiene when you're at your home or your business, but the business, the commercial side of things. I would anticipate that cleaning services around the country and probably around the world are going to ramp up and that's going to be a bigger item. The other thing relative to cleanliness I would add is that insurance companies are probably watching this situation very closely. We know that Wimbledon have been protecting themselves, the tennis tournament protecting themselves against a pandemic for the last 17 years to the tune of about $4 million in a policy each of those years. And this year it paid off to the tune of about $150 million. So the acuity and the awareness of pandemics, viruses in general is going to be high going forward. And for me, I just got two points.

27:14I suspect you're going to see folks wanting to understand, can I have a plan in place for my building more specifically? Much like we have operations and maintenance policies for different environmental aspects of our building, I suspect not many have them for viruses and pandemics and things like that, other than maybe healthcare facilities. So I suspect you're going to get folks really clamoring to have that type of documentation in place. And secondly, yes, you talked about hand hygiene, the six foot distance and all that stuff, but when you're out in public, for me personally, having gloves on and even having a face mask is highly helpful. I know folks have said, well, a face mask is really not filtering the air and all that stuff, but what it is is acting as a sort of deterrent. Most people will touch their face over the course of a day. Well, if you've got gloves on your hand and you've got a mask on your face, it kind of makes you aware of that and you hopefully cease to do those types of things.

28:17So that's another just personal protective equipment type thing to add in there. That's great stuff. Janet, what do you have? I think this has all been fantastic. I think the big thing is once properties have put these practices in place, and I think to your point, Ken, a change of operation is probably going to be the next thing that we see. But to what degree is that then communicated to the public so that the consumers can feel confident that they can go into a facility and know that it is clean? Absolutely. Well, thank you guys so much for joining us today here on Nashville Restaurant Radio. We're temporarily calling it Nashville Restaurant and Hotel Radio. And thank you, Janet Kurt, for being the first and only co-host that I've had so far. You did amazing. My pleasure. Thank you so much for having me again. I really appreciate it. You are welcome back any, anytime. I hope you, the listener out there, enjoyed it.

29:20Thank you, Janet. Thank you, guys. Thank you. All right. So there you have it. I want to say a special thanks to Janet Kurtz for putting a lot of this together. Chuck Cummings and Ken Garza from GHP. If you'd like to learn more about GHP, go to www.ghpandthenumberone.com. All right. So I hope that was educational. Hopefully there's something there you can take with you, put into practice. We're all about proactivity here, so we're going to keep trying to figure out things that you can be doing out there. If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, please hit us up on Facebook. That is at Nashville Restaurant Radio or find us on Instagram at Nashville Restaurant Radio. Thanks for listening, guys. Love you. Bye.