Dear Editor,
I am writing in response to an email sent this afternoon, questioning the risk of Covid-19 exposure that a member our staff might be posing to our community. I am the General Manager of The Karr Group, and have spent much of my summer weighing the heavy questions of risk and safety, in regards to our staff, our community, and our customers.
As a company, the Karr Group has always held ourselves to standards that exceed average guest experience. Exceptional experience is the at the very core of our values. In service of our guests during this time, we have not wavered on our commitment to going above and beyond.
Navigating this pandemic at the helm of a multifaceted hospitality company has been one of the most challenging experiences of my career. Protecting our staff has always been my number one priority. We developed and committed to safety practices before they were mandated. We required masks before being held to, we provide thousands of disposable gloves a week to our staff, so they might better protect themselves and others. We assign staff to sanitation.
Since reopening in June we have taken the temperature of every single guest to dine at our establishments. As a company, we have held ourselves to the strictest safeguards and sanitation standards, a lot of which we developed on our own accord.
To address the specific concern: We do not have anyone on our staff at The Foundry that worked at The Summit event. We do not have anyone on our staff at The Foundry that attended the Summit event. We have encouraged any staff that might have had risk of exposure within our community, to stay home from work. We have encouraged and supported our staff to get tested.
We are transparent, in our practices and our communication within our network and with our community.
It disappoints me greatly in times like these that some members of our community choose to passively make unfounded accusations or question the behavior of others, when there is so much room for proactive behavior and communication.
We can’t possibly come out of this pandemic as a strong community if people don’t support each other. It has been a goal of mine since the start of this pandemic to be proud of the efforts we are making as a staff, and I am.
I am also happy to discuss, in detail, any of the efforts we are making to keep our community safe.
Best wishes in this difficult time.
Sincerely,
Sasha Parise, general manager of the The Karr Group, Killington
