Cactus News & Blog

Learn How We are Keeping You Safe and How to Get a Table

We opened our humble Madison Park location 30 years ago this summer and thus it seems fitting, somehow, during these crazy times, for us to be “relaunching” and reimagining Cactus in 2020.

Before we outline the significant measures we’ve taken to make dining at Cactus safe as possible for you and our team, we’d like to thank our amazing managers and team members for helping us survive and transform during those dark and difficult days of March, April and May. Also, equally important, we want to thank you, our loyal and valued guests, for keeping Cactus and our employees afloat with a robust take-out and delivery business during the closure. Thank you, we are truly grateful!

Safety is Paramount

We are certain you’ll notice and appreciate many changes at Cactus when you return for your first visit.

Getting a Table Waiting in our lobby to put your name on our waitlist isn’t fun and now, it’s potentially dangerous. We have moved our hosts outside to avoid inside congestion and improve their safety too. Most of you know we have been offering you the ability to get on our waitlist from your phone anywhere you happen to be. This continues and we have made this the primary way to get a table. We still have hosts and we will put your name on the list if you wish, but it will be much faster to scan a QR code and add your name. We’ll ask you to wait in your car or go for a stroll and we’ll text you when your table is ready. Our policies have changed slightly in that we can’t accept groups of more than 5 and, as always, we DO NOT take reservations.

Join the waitlist on our Yelp page or just check how long the wait is right now:
Kirkland
Alki Beach
Madison Park
South Lake Union
Bellevue
Tacoma

Digital Menus You’ll scan a QR code and use your phone to view our menu. If you prefer to hold some paper, we’ll have a single use menu for you.

Touchless Payment The payment process is fraught with contaminants and, also, it’s inherently a point of friction when you want to leave. We’ve addressed both issues—simply scan a QR code and pay with your phone and leave when you want. It is amazingly fast and efficient—you will love it.

PPE It seems compulsory, but all our employees will be wearing masks and have access to gloves and sanitizer. We’ve changed how our teams operate. For example, when we bring your drink, we’ll hand it to you with a clean, unused glove. That glove will be thrown away and we’ll do it all over again for the next guest. When we remove items from your table, we’ll be using another glove that will get thrown away.

Sanitation and Cleanliness If there’s one thing the restaurant industry is good at, it’s cleaning. We have always taken great pride in the cleanliness of our locations, but we’ve truly ramped up efforts as though your life may depend upon it. Scheduled cleanings by designated team members will regularly hit the critical touchpoints inside the restaurant. We researched our cleaning products and found the one supplied by our cleaning chemical supplier (DC-33, used by many restaurants) needs to be stay on surfaces for 10 minutes to kill the novel Corona virus so we brought in another product that does it in 45 seconds. We have examined every aspect of our interaction with you and made changes. For example, your silverware will be assembled in a clean room by an employee using PPE—they will be presented in such a way that you will know it’s not contaminated.

Social Distancing We’ve thought of every aspect of your travel through, and experience inside our stores. We’ve limited tables and put up barriers per Washington State requirements. We’ve created new process to eliminate needless congestion inside the restaurant (see “getting a table” above).

Employee Health Stations We created health stations and a check in protocol to make sure each team member is healthy and safe. Temperatures are taken and recorded before each person starts their shift, and we ask a number of questions to ensure everyone is feeling healthy. Of course, anyone not 100% will be given the shift off using any earned Paid Leave to ensure they are paid and motivated to provide truthful answers to these questions.

Training Before we opened, we provided both in person and e-learning training in English and Spanish to bring great awareness about Covid-19 and our changes to protect everyone.

Etc., Etc., Etc. There is much more we’ve done, changed and improved to make sure you are as safe as possible eating in our restaurants or getting take out e.g. one employee only in the break room at a time, tamper evident stickers when you order delivery

We truly are committed to opening right and keeping everyone safe. Let’s wear masks and wash our hands and we can continue to move forward and live a better version of life than we’ve been subjected to over the past 90 days. It’s up to each one of us!

Please let us know how we are doing or ask us any questions using our online survey.

We truly appreciate the opportunity to serve you.