COVID-19 pandemic underlines the need to build resilience in commercial restaurants’ food safety

In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, the commercial restaurant sector is struggling to organize itself. Resilience is crucial for a system to be able to respond adequately to events of this magnitude, and is aimed at the recovery and adaptation of the concerned sector in view of the adversities. In the commercial restaurant sector, resilience efforts are primarily intended to protect the health of both those who consume food and those who produce it. Amid the creative initiatives of individuals within their workplaces, restaurants, even unconsciously, seek to build resilience in the pandemic by applying the food safety practices recommended by the sanitary legislation and remaining economically active. Targeting public health preparedness, in this letter, we present an overview of the stages of resilience and their interaction with the COVID-19 pandemic in the context of commercial restaurants.