Co-op students create COVID-19 guide for local restaurants

Jasmine Hanratty, a fourth-year student in Georgian’s Honours Bachelor of Business Administration program, picked up an essential pandemic workplace skill during her last co-op work term: pivoting.

She was part of a team of Georgian students who helped Collingwood restaurants through a difficult COVID-19 summer season.

Supported by college faculty and co-op staff, Jasmine and two other fourth-year students, Amanda Parkes and Raeneisha Rosalina, led the initiative. In addition to meeting project goals, the degree students coached and managed two students from the Tourism program and two students from the Hospitality – Hotel and Resort Operations Management program. Together they overcame their share of pandemic challenges.

“I think the biggest issue we faced as a team was the everchanging project — due to how quickly restrictions were changing,” says Jasmine.

Georgian first approached Martin Rydlo, Economic Development Officer from the Town of Collingwood. After setting a goal to boost local tourism and support economic development, the student team came up with the initial idea of Patiolicious — an event encouraging patrons to safely enjoy restaurant patios over the summer season. Jasmine herself coined the name.

“We started out with the original idea of Patiolicious, followed by beginning to put together a guide book on how to operate a patio safely and effectively during this time,” she recalls. “But once we had made some headway, the government changed the guidelines to allow indoor dining again, which meant we had to rework our project. So, we rebranded and came up with Safe Plates, which encompassed indoor and outdoor dining.”

Safe Plates is an informational and resource guidebook for local restaurants, compiling everything from COVID-19 sanitary guidelines to possible funding support sources.

It was designed to help address some of the industry’s challenges with reopening after lockdown, including navigating regulations, contingency planning, and increased operational costs.

The concept for Safe Plates was shared with the Town of Collingwood in late June. It was beta tested with local operators in early July. By mid-July, the town was sharing the guidebook with regional tourism organisations and other municipalities.