The slide was called Phase Two Readiness and it had a Gantt chart on it. Green bars for the Southeast locations, amber for the coasts, a footnote about county guidance. The operations lead walked it in eleven minutes and asked if there were questions, and the room had none, because it looked like a scheduling problem.
It is not a scheduling problem.
Georgia started letting businesses open in late April. Texas followed. A dozen other states are mid-phase in ways nobody can define. For the first time in this mess, national brands have a choice, and choices are visible. Two chains with identical footprints are about to make opposite calls, and every customer in those markets is going to read the difference.
Your reopening date is a positioning statement, and it will be received as one whether or not you intended it that way.
Three things your audience actually reads. One, speed. Opening the day the order allows says you were waiting on permission. Waiting three weeks past it says you were waiting on something else. Neither is wrong, but only one of them matches what you said in your March email about putting people first, and people remember March.
Two, who bears the risk. Patagonia closed everything early and kept paying, and nobody had to be told what that meant. Shake Shack gave the loan back in April and made sure the reasoning was public. When Starbucks brought stores back it led with the modified format, not the reopening itself, which is a tell about what they think the anxiety is. Each is a values claim delivered through an operations decision, the only kind anyone believes now.
Three, the tone of the announcement. There is a version of this email that says we are thrilled to welcome you back and there is a version that says here is what is different, here is what we require of our staff, here is how to get your order without coming inside. The first one is a party invitation. The second one is a brand that has been paying attention. Confetti reads as tone deaf in a week when your customer just lost a shift.
The reopening is the first thing most brands will say out loud after two months of saying nothing but we are here for you. It carries more weight than the campaign you have queued behind it.
Your reopening date is a positioning statement, and it will be received as one whether or not you intended it that way.
My karaoke bar in Southeast is dark, has been since March, and the host who calls everyone baby is selling gift certificates through a link on the door. Whenever that place comes back, I will not need a press release to know how they handled it. Neither will anybody else.