— By Matt Calo, P.E. and Huston Dawson, P.E. — Safety should be top priority as businesses turn to outdoor space due to ongoing indoor restrictions. As spring arrives and states across the country continue to revise their restrictions on indoor gatherings, most urban centers have raised the occupancy allowance to 50% capacity for indoor dining and retail operations. The improving weather means that many establishments will expand the use of available outdoor space to enhance income potential and save their businesses. The COVID-19 pandemic has forced commercial establishments …
security/loss prevention
— By Crystal Jacobs — Restaurant cybersecurity and cyber insurance are more relevant than ever as online orders boom amid COVID-19. As the Covid-19 viral pandemic continues to cause major disruptions throughout the global economy, countless restaurants across the United States have shifted to a delivery- or pickup-only business model in order to survive, often with a heavy reliance on online orders and digital payment. Criminal actors are taking advantage of this spike in online commerce: March 2020 saw a 600% increase in email phishing scams, whereby criminals send …
— By Del Williams — Taking convenience stores to the next level with IP network surveillance systems. Convenience stores and mini marts have traditionally installed surveillance cameras to deter crime and encourage safety, but too often these have provided images that lacked detail, particularly in low light conditions. Retrieving video has usually been tedious, requiring endless searching and scanning to find the desired footage. Sharing and archiving of the video has also been cumbersome, wasting precious technical and management resources. Now advanced digital IP video cameras and recorders are …
— By Jay Hart — How businesses can plan for the growing concern of active shooters and workplace violence. Active shooter incidents used to be rare. But now, people realize they are more likely to be involved in an active shooter incident as the frequency of such events increases. According to a 2018 FBI report, 21 states around the country, from California to Maryland, saw active shooter incidents in the 2-year period from 2016 to 2017 — 10 more than in the previous 2-year period. The report found most …
Rowley, Mass. — Shooter Detection Systems (SDS), the security industry’s leading gunshot detection solutions provider, has partnered with a Texas movie theater company, which has installed the Guardian Indoor Active Shooter Detection System in its chain of multi-cinema movie theaters to alert building occupants and law enforcement to shooting incidents in their facilities. The customer was concerned about false alerts in their cinemas due to gunshot and explosions that regularly appear in movies. Once the installation was complete, SDS engineers worked with the customer’s certified integrator to monitor the system’s …
Saint Louis Park, Minn. — To demonstrate the effectiveness of its loss prevention and labor efficiency solution in Taco Bell franchises, Delaget analyzed key operational metrics of high-adoption users of the software as compared to Taco Bell franchisees not using the software. The results indicate a significant improvement in key metrics tied to loss, as well as substantial soft-cost savings.
Saint Louis Park, Minn. — Delaget, LLC, the only data analytics and business process outsourcing experts focused on the QSR industry, has formed a new client relationship with Bell American Group, LLC, the third largest Taco Bell franchise group in the U.S. with over $300 million in sales.