While the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has upended much of day-to-day life for millions of Americans, it also had an unexpected positive side effect: It made every business re-evaluate their health and safety plans for their employees and customers alike.

As Cornell University's Institute Of Food Safety writes:

"Even with the limited knowledge on some of the aspects of transmission we still have relatively complete information on what are the most effective strategies in preventing transmission. We know from countries and cities (i.e. New York City), which were strongly effected by COVID-19, that basic prevention measures like practicing social distancing, wearing face coverings, using hand sanitizer, and regularly washing hands with soap and water are very effective in reducing the spread of COVID-19." (Source: instituteforfoodsafety.cornell.edu)

Regal Equipment has taken this challenge seriously throughout the past year, implementing numerous procedures to protect our workforce as well as our trusted clients as we continue to grow our business in this new landscape.

Protecting Customers And Employees During Equipment Installation

Regal Equipment understands customers may be concerned about refurbished industrial food processing equipment potentially carrying the COVID-19 virus, which is why we guarantee to deep-clean and disinfect all equipment as needed during the installation process.

As FoodProcessing.com explains:

"Personal sanitation by itself can't make a plant safe, of course. Sanitation of equipment, floors and other surfaces in a plant are just as important. And, like personal sanitation, when done with standard techniques and chemicals, sanitation of equipment and other surfaces is likely to eradicate SARS-CoV-2 along with other microbes."(Source: foodprocessing.com)

Not only do we have our crews keep your equipment clean and free of potentially harmful bacteria during installation, we also have taken the unprecedented step of keeping our crews together while off the job, having them share hotel rooms to limit potential exposure while on the road and having each crew member quarantine before and after an installation job for both the customer's protection as well as the health and safety of the entire Regal Equipment workforce and their families.

Protecting Customers And Employees At Our Facility

As businesses all across America struggled to adjust to new restrictions put in place due to the spread of COVID-19, Regal Equipment made swift, decisive changes to best protect our staff and clients.

The Institute For Food Safety explains:

"What we do know is that the virus is transmitted through respiratory droplets generated by infected people. Large droplets are thought to be the primary risk, as they carry a large number of viral particles. These large droplets are heavy, they tend to drop to the ground relatively quickly and generally travel less than 6 feet; which is why social distancing of 6 feet is recommended for reducing transmission, and also why cloth face coverings are recommend, to capture these larger droplets at the source." (Source: instituteforfoodsafety.cornell.edu)

Taking this knowledge to heart, Regal immediately began requiring face masks and social distancing protocols for employees and customers alike. In addition, we installed multiple hand sanitization stations throughout our building to encourage cleanliness. We also have limited the amount of people in our facility at any given time, requiring appointments for customers and having much of our workforce working from home when possible.

How Regal Equipment Has Gone Virtual

Normally, Regal Equipment sends out a technician to inspect potential equipment in person to make sure it is up to our high standards. Currently, though, all of our product inspections and Factory Acceptance Tests have gone virtual, to help limit potential spread of COVID-19. We complete these inspections and test runs using services like Zoom, FaceTime and YouTube, working with the client to make sure we can learn everything about the machines while also keeping everyone safe.

All our of equipment auctions are completely online as well via our Bidspotter profile, and equipment removal from our facility has pivoted to a staggered, appointment-only pickup system with contractors only, to further limit interactions and protect everyone involved.

We Are Family

We are fully compliant with any CDC guidance regarding screening employees and committed to protecting our workforce. We realize all of these new policies may slow down our response time occasionally, but that's a sacrifice we are willing to make. To date, Regal Equipment has had zero COVID-19 outbreaks among employees, and we hope to keep it that way. We take all of these extra steps because Regal truly is a family itself — without our employees, we are nothing.