Andy Willis owner of Andy’s Barbers in Bicester is planning to open his doors at 12.01 AM on July 4th (or on the first day barbershops are permitted to open). Andy and one member of his team will be on-hand to get ahead of the queues and serve customers that are desperate to put their lockdown look behind them. Andy says “On a normal Saturday we open at 7am but can see a queue forming from between 6 and 6:30am, so with the current situation I thought the first day that we open after the lockdown hopefully on the 4th July, Boris permitting, the queue is going to be huge. This decisions will give our clients an extra seven hours to come down and may also be handy for people who have already returned back to work on a shift pattern. We’ve nothing to lose!” Andy has taken the decision not to offer appointments and keep his traditional walk-in service. After all he says “The general public have been used to waiting to enter supermarket’s and this will be the same for our barber shop.”
The spacious shop is well placed to serve lots of customers safely and the Andy’s team are itching to get back behind their chairs. Andy will work carefully with the team in the run up to opening to brief them on new and even more rigorous hygiene rules and regulations. Andy says “Fortunately we have always been strict on hygiene, so the slight differences we will need to adhere to won’t be a problem. We are very lucky in the fact that we have a large floor area to work with as well as an upstairs and taping the floor with indicating markers is a must just so clients know where they need to go. We will enforce a plan on how we can keep a good flow going without cross contaminating clean and dirty areas, safe handling of clean and dirty PPE as well as the two metre distancing rules. Emma, who normally does the office work will be on the shop floor to make sure that the rules are being kept to by the team and by the client’s, we can’t expect our Barbers to concentrate on cutting hair and manage the flow of clients at the same time!”
The super early start will help Andy and his team tackle the rush head on! Fingers crossed for July 4th.