Katie Nguyen is the manager of the AZ Pho & Grill Restaurant in Gilbert, AZ. Her cousin, who is the owner of the restaurant, opened his first restaurant in 2014. He used to be an engineer for 10 years, until he decided he wanted to do something different and more challenging. So, he chose to open a restaurant. Because he was new to the occupation, him and his wife had to learn, attend classes, and cook. He even went to California for advice to learn from the master, learning everything from the beginning.

 

          The first couple years of her cousin's restaurant went okay, as he had local support from the community as well. After that his business started to do better and better, so he decided to open up two more locations about 4 years ago. The second location is on Higley and Baseline, and the third location is on 54th St. All three reside in the city of Chandler, and they all have the same concept and same menu under the same owner.

 

          In late February 2020, covid-19 hit. As soon as it happened, Katie explained that the staff enforced social distancing in the restaurants by allowing every alternate table to be occupied for space between customers. Thus, they only used half of the tables. However, when they heard about the government order to close all businesses due to the pandemic, the restaurants closed for 2-3 weeks. When they opened back up, the restaurants only provided food to-go for 6 months, no dine-in. This did bring hardships, but they still had business throughout the time. They finally opened back up for dine-in around December 2020. Katie took over the Gilbert location in January 2021 as the manager. Because people still loved the food there, the business had to adapt for them using other methods of selling. So, in order to keep business flowing, the restaurant partnered with third party businesses like Door Dash and other delivery services for the increasing amount of customers ordering from home. The staff also had to update its website for easier online ordering as well as update its printer for more disposable menus. They additionally increased the restaurant’s cleaning and distancing policies as well as its hand sanitizer supply.

 

          We cannot predict events like these to come our way, Katie said, no one can. That’s why businesses must be up to date about the news and pay attention to policy. They must adapt to change in order to survive. In this situation, AZ Pho & Grill’s strategies included to-go deliveries, partnering with third parties for this, website updates, and cutting costs. Its costs ended up going down by 25% due to cutting labor and food costs. Katie never had to let go of any employees, since she instead just cut work hours. Katie advised that as a business, you must maintain a balance between your consumers and workers. You must also keep calm and try to find a solution, always having extra savings aside for these type of situations.

 

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See their locations, learn about them, and order from: https://azphoandgrill.com/