It’s been a minute since I have written a blog. We opened back up and the business of being open and operating during COVID-19 took over. That is another blog entirely and I will get to it, but that is not what I want to talk about today. I read yet another fantastic MIBE (Make It Better Everyday) message from my friend and mentor, Anthony Lambatos, from Footers Catering in Denver, Colorado. Seriously – sign up for his weekly MIBE message, his words are gold and always thought-provoking. I read his MIBE message from last week (the inspiration for this post) and knew that I needed to do this same activity with our team. We brought our sales team back into the office this week on an alternating A/B schedule. This is the first time any of them have been at their desks or inside our doors since March 16^th. I have a few tears in my eyes just thinking about the journey we have been on thus far.

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It’s hard to think of celebrating when the COVID-19 pandemic has negatively affected so many.  But it’s important to continue to find joy in our lives — you only live once.

One excellent way to do that is by showing the people we love that we appreciate them.

Father’s Day is designated to show our gratitude for Dad — our first hero. Like other celebrations upended by COVID-19, Father’s Day 2020 will be different this year.

The good news is that it doesn’t take much to keep dads happy. Showing your love is as simple as a tasty, surprise meal and some quality time.

Here are a few ideas for celebrating Father’s Day in the time of COVID-19.

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My name is Lisa Ware and I am the Director of Business Development & Special Projects at Catering by Michaels. I have been writing about our journey through COVID-19. If you have not yet read the previous episodes – be sure to start from the beginning!

The Great Pause

I have been staring at this screen for hours trying to find the words to describe the roller coaster of emotions we have been through in the past three months. My last blog post was all about the abrupt shutdown so forgive me that I am going to fast forward a little bit. The weeks that followed the abrupt shutdown have all blurred together, but the emotions throughout remain the same. In my head, I have dubbed this weird time as the great pause. When we held our all-team meeting in mid-March, never did we ever imagine we would still be in this position in mid-June.

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My name is Lisa Ware and I am the Director of Business Development & Special Projects at Catering by Michaels. I have been writing each week about our journey through COVID-19. If you have not yet read the previous episodes – be sure to start from the beginning!

The Abrupt Shutdown

We all arrived to work the Monday after our all-team meeting and the day started out like usual – for about an hour until we realized that we actually have to figure out how to abruptly shut down our business. The scramble began. We close our business for a few days every January to give our team a much-deserved break after the insane hustle of the month of December, but we do not actually fully shut down, more like a deep clean. This was a true shut down – of everything. Let’s talk about the first layer – events needed to be rescheduled, deliveries needed to be canceled, 200+ employees needed help filing for unemployment, all the questions from our team needed to be answered, our initial policy for how we were going to handle what would be hundreds of rescheduled events needed to be made, the templates for our sales team needed to be written so we were sending out universal messaging to all clients, our offices and kitchen needed to be deep cleaned, signs needed to be made for all the doors saying we were closed, vendors needed to be notified, deliveries needed to be canceled and the kitchen needed to be shut down. More on the kitchen soon. That could be an entire blog.

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My name is Lisa Ware and I am the Director of Business Development & Special Projects at Catering by Michaels.  I have been writing each week about our journey through COVID-19. This is about my personal experience as we have been living through COVID-19 in our business. If you have not yet read the previous episodes – be sure to start from the beginning!

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