PAR’s Response
to COVID-19
PAR Tech’s Response to the Challenge of COVID-19
PAR Tech is monitoring the rapidly evolving coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic. The safety of our customers and employees is and will always be our top priority. With the virus now established in the United States, we are intensifying our institutional response to protect our stakeholders and the general public. Therefore, we are closely monitoring and following all public health guidelines and protocols issued by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), World Health Organization, the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services, and healthcare professionals in federal, state and local health departments.
At PAR, our Brand Purpose is “To Deliver the Solutions that Connect People to the Restaurants, Meals and Moments they Love.” We believe there has been no better time to put this to the test. PAR is committed to supporting our restaurant community who is on the front lines of the COVID-19 battle. Food is sacred and our customers are working incredibly hard to continue to provide meals safely to our communities. We will continue to aggressively invest in our products and people to support the industry. We thank you and ask you to let us know how we can best support you by emailing us here: [email protected]
A Letter From Our CEO
Our brand promise is to deliver the solutions that connect people to the restaurants, meals and moments they love. Today our customers, the global restaurant community, are on the front lines trying to feed a community who is scared, uncertain and looking for comfort. You’re delivering the food and moments our society desperately needs to keep moving forward. We at PAR want to hold true to our promise and be your partner in delivering those meals. There is no better time to hold us to our promise.
As restaurants brace for slowing traffic, we expect off-premise dining, online ordering and delivery to become higher priorities. Restaurants will need to find ways to serve customers in this new environment, while managing labor cost and their own supply chains. We are proactively working with our integration ecosystem partners to enable quick deployment of digital and off-premise ordering solutions and aggressive programs to offset the financial constraints our customers are feeling. As consumers avoid physical restaurants, the drive-thru will likely receive increased attention and we will rise to the occasion.
There is nothing I can say that will make any of this craziness better, but I do know one thing: This too shall pass. Humanity always prospers forward, and it will again today. In the last 100 years our world has lived through terrible wars, nuclear weapons, terrorism, disease and so much more. Every single time, the fearful have faded and the optimists have won. That will certainly be the case this time as well.
With gratitude,
Savneet Singh
Employee Health and Safety
- We have instituted a travel freeze for all non-essential travel (this does not apply to site visits for our field technicians).
- We are asking employees who have recently traveled to work from home until further notice.
- All personnel at our headquarters facility who have the ability to work remotely have been asked to work from home until further notice to reduce the risk of possible contamination of our field and order fulfillment personnel.
- We have altered the work schedules of our Order Fulfillment personnel, to minimize the potential for disruption should an employee get diagnosed with the novel coronavirus and need medical care.
Field Technicians Support & Monitoring
- As part of our standard operating procedures, if a technician is displaying any symptoms of illness, they will be required to stay at home. The scheduling team will be alerted to re-dispatch.
- Field Technicians will have to complete wellness verification requirements from multiple Service Management touchpoints daily.
- We are training and mentoring our Field Technicians on Service protocols within our customer sites. This includes following recommendations from healthcare providers on cleansing, social distancing, and keeping hands off of all in-restaurant equipment, food, and electronics.
Business Continuity Plan
ParTech recognizes that interruptions to business processes can have a major impact on its employees, clients, and critical business partners as many of them stay home to avoid close contact with others. The company has implemented a number of programs, including a comprehensive Business Continuity Management Program, to reduce the chance of a disruptive event occurring.
Brink POS®:
- Verification of Brink POS® policies are part of our annual SOC2 audits.
- As a cloud-native solution provider, we do not foresee any impact to any of our platforms or your ability to leverage them.
- Our architecture and development of quality assurance (QA) practices are designed to allow our staff to safely and securely design, develop, support, and maintain the entire Brink Platform remotely.
- Our solutions are hosted on Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure with multiple redundancies to minimize business risk, including geographic separation.
Restaurant Magic BOH:
- Verification of Restaurant Magic’s policies are part of our annual SOC audit.
- As a cloud-native solution provider, we do not foresee any impact to any of our platforms or your ability to leverage them.
- Our architecture and development of quality assurance (QA) practices are designed to allow our staff to safely and securely design, develop, support, and maintain the entire Data Central Platform remotely.
- Our solution is hosted on Microsoft Azure, where we utilize geo-redundant resources to minimize business risk.
Employee Health and Safety
- We have instituted a travel freeze for all non-essential travel (this does not apply to site visits for our field technicians).
- We are asking employees who have recently traveled to work from home until further notice.
- All personnel at our headquarters facility who have the ability to work remotely have been asked to work from home until further notice to reduce the risk of possible contamination of our field and order fulfillment personnel.
- We have altered the work schedules of our Order Fulfillment personnel, to minimize the potential for disruption should an employee get diagnosed with the novel coronavirus and need medical care.
Field Technicians Support & Monitoring
- As part of our standard operating procedures, if a technician is displaying any symptoms of illness, they will be required to stay at home. The scheduling team will be alerted to re-dispatch.
- Field Technicians will have to complete wellness verification requirements from multiple Service Management touchpoints daily.
- We are training and mentoring our Field Technicians on Service protocols within our customer sites. This includes following recommendations from healthcare providers on cleansing, social distancing, and keeping hands off of all in-restaurant equipment, food, and electronics.
Installations
PAR has been in frequent contact with all installation vendors to ensure alignment of policies and procedures as it relates to the safety and well-being of our customers. PAR will continue to monitor and put employee and customer health above all else.
- At this time, there is no concern with the availability of resources to fulfill installation requirements.
- All installation employees are mandated to report any relevant symptoms and cease work activities immediately.
- We are actively reviewing and revising installation activities to identify technicians nearest to the store installation to aggressively limit air travel to absolute necessity. PAR will notify our customers of any instances where air travel is required to meet a store installation to work through the options.
- PAR will not allow an installer into a restaurant that has reported a confirmed case until it has been proven safe.
- If a restaurant needs to cancel or reschedule an installation due to coronavirus, PAR will waive any reschedule or abort fee.
- Please contact, [email protected] for any questions or to re-schedule an install.
Help Desk Operations
The PAR Help Desk will be working from home starting Monday, March 16, with very limited exceptions.
- The team has the tools and additional resources in place to accommodate this change successfully as proven by previous events that have forced us to enact our business continuity plans.
- PAR will be closely monitoring our performance to ensure there is no disruption to the level of service our team delivers.
Supply Chain
Early in the virus’ trajectory, PAR took a proactive step and accelerated inventory purchases and pulled forward previously ordered equipment in the event there was a supply disruption. We continue to push vendors to accelerate their timeline and hope to build a strong safety stock. We believe building inventory is a smart use of capital in the event of potential, longer-term disruption.
- We are continuously monitoring our suppliers for indications of disruptions and are evaluating potential alternative sources where possible.
- We have increased our forecast to ensure that we have adequate safety stock in inventory in the event of an interruption in our supply chain.
