b'How are you dealing with inflation?HANSEN: We have found that the majority of our customers accept inflation and have accepted price increases because they know what things cost when they go to the supermarket. The challenge we have is we were late in raising our prices, and we did not have an inflation clause in our contracts. We book events sometimes a year to two years in advance. We were having to live with the old prices, because Im not one to go back on my word. So weve operated at a lower margin for certain events than I would like to. But we have added an inflation clause into our contract and hopefully the coming year we will be protected. Inflation obviously has hurt us, but I think weve corrected it.GRYGO: Constant monitoring and constant communication with all stakeholdersemployees, customers, strategic partners and vendors. When constantly communicating, there are no surprises for anyone, and most people are very understanding because they are experiencing those issues themselves. We have adjusted some of our processes and contract verbiage to protect ourselves from both inflation and supply chain issues. We have added a substitution clause and a menu pricing clause to protect our margins. Additionally, we have removed pricing from the majority of our menus, as that allows us to be able to adjust the fluctuations of the pricing.ALLEN: Were projecting a 6.5 percent to 7 percent increase in the cost of food items at my company, which is huge. Were looking at menu changes and the size of the protein that we put on the plate.Are you seeing other lingering effects from the pandemic?ALLEN: From what I can see, the social market is 100 percent rebounded. However, high-quality corporate and incentive travel is still recovering, and caterers and event professionals are aggressively competing for the best business.At my own hotel, we are very strong in Q1 but as we go into the back half of the year, corporate bookings are very light right now. Corporate bookings are definitely short-term right now; you used to see bookings two to three years out, and that is a rarity nowadays.NOYES: The main effects of our daily routines are our continued focus on cleanliness and the safety of our guests and employees. This was, of course, a focus even prior to the pandemic, but the new best practices, increased focus, lessons learned and best practices implemented are here to stay.CARNEY: The biggest one is finding staff that are still interested in in-person jobs vs. remote work jobs. READ MORE GRYGO: Some of our pre-pandemic regular clients are not fullyONLINEreturning back to their offices, so that revenue stream is downcfe-news.comdollar-wise. However, we are picking up more business from other revenue streams. CATERING, FOODSERVICE & EVENTS cfe-news.com41'