Overit, a creative advertising and marketing agency in Albany, N.Y., is using new and innovative approaches to break the traditional mold of advertising within the pest control industry.

Through its work with Catseye, A-1 Pest Control, Thomas Pest Services, Dixon Pest Services and Citywide Exterminating, Overit has pushed the boundaries of innovation by creating campaigns typically associated with their high-level clients, such as Marvel and Netflix.

Dan Dinsmore, owner and founder of Overit, said, “We dug in really deep and found out that, creatively, we were able to do all of the things that we do for very high-level clients, in the pest control industry, and it had a great effect on sales and growth. So, we kept going.”

Dinsmore said that Overit has grown to become passionate about working with the pest control industry and this market has become a main focus for the company.

“We relate really well to folks in the industry,” Dinsmore said. “We know the industry really well and we’ve become really focused on (pest control) expertise.”

Some examples of out-of-the-box advertising that Overit has done for pest control companies include Pixar-like characters with storylines, comic strips, mobile phone applications, games and even stuffed animals.

The company is currently developing an audio and voice application for the pest industry that aids in pest identification.

“We’re looking into new, creative ways to use video and mobile phones to be able to identify pests,” Dinsmore said.

CATSEYE MAKEOVER. One of the company’s most visual campaigns for a pest control company is the work the firm did for Albany-based Catseye, primarily between 2010 and 2015. As part of this campaign, Overit worked on a cartoon pilot in which they created brand stories based on a central cat character. Overit also worked on online advertising, content marketing and video game development for Catseye. As a result of Overit’s work, Catseye’s total lead value increased by $99,010, their paid search leads increased by 64 percent and time users spent on the company’s website increased by 40 percent.

Catseye has since sold its upstate New York business so — except for some small updates along with some animation and 3D work — all their marketing and advertising moved in-house.

It was Overit’s work with Catseye that caught the attention and interest of other pest control companies, including Thomas Pest Services in upstate N.Y.

Sarah Thomas-Clark of Thomas Pest Services said that she was initially intimidated to reach out to Overit because they worked with larger companies. However, she was drawn to their progressive approach to marketing.

The company focuses carefully on PMPs’ needs, Thomas-Clark said. “They want to be able to look at things and make sure it’s going to provide you value.”

Thomas-Clark said that, despite COVID-19, Overit has helped Thomas Pest Services grow tremendously.

“We’re having a terrific year and I definitely attribute my growth to having them as a partner,” Thomas-Clark said.

Specifically, Thomas-Clark said Overit has helped boost her company’s web traffic. Since the beginning of 2020, Thomas Pest Solutions has had a 40 percent increase in new website users, a 125 percent increase in web page reviews and a 56 percent decrease in bounce rate, which is the number of users who leave a site after viewing one page. The company’s revenue is also up 33 percent year over year (YOY) through May, with January of 2020 posting a 50 percent YOY increase alone, according to Alex Tancredi, senior business development associate for Overit.

A GOOD FIT. Tancredi and Dinsmore said Overit has helped companies like Thomas Pest Services increase sales because of its innovative approach to marketing.

Dinsmore credits individuals within the pest control industry for their openness to innovation.

“We are working with clients that are very open to pushing the boundaries,” Dinsmore said. “And I think that was something that we found with our early pest control clients like Catseye. Having people that we get to work with that allow us to push boundaries and are open to new and innovative ideas has really paid off in a big way for our clients and our partners and us as well.”

Dinsmore also said that traditional advertising in the pest control industry needed to be taken to another level. Most companies were following what everyone else was doing, he said.

“There was just an immense opportunity, from a branding perspective and from a marketing perspective, to help leverage these companies and really create amazing brands,” Dinsmore added.

He said Overit strives to create memorable brands for companies and not just the services they provide. “Brand does matter, and uniqueness does matter,” Dinsmore said. “People want to be able to relate to who they’re doing business with and who’s coming into their home.”

Charles Dixon, owner of Dixon Pest Services in Thomasville, Ga., recognized this importance when hiring Overit in February 2020. Dixon decided to work with Overit after receiving a “glowing recommendation” from Bruce Roberts, owner of A-1 Pest Control, Lenoir, N.C. A-1 is a longtime member of the PCO networking organization PestOne along with Dixon Pest Services. “I just continue to be impressed,” Dixon said.

Unlike Dixon Pest Services, which has just begun working with Overit, A-1 Pest Control has been one of Overit’s clients since December 2018.

In 2019, A-1 finished 13 percent up YOY in total revenue, Tancredi said. So far in 2020, the company grew 13 percent at the end the first quarter, with March finishing 25 percent up compared to 2019, he added.

MORE DATA DRIVEN. Despite having creativity and branding at their roots, Tancredi said, as Overit has moved into the age of digital marketing, they have become more data driven.

One way that the company uses data to help its clients is through the use of a custom-built marketing analytics dashboard that they call “Overlytics.” The dashboards are customized from the ground up and can show clients everything that they are doing, even down to the weather data and how it might be affecting certain sales, Tancredi said.

By creating the Overlytics dashboard, Overit’s clients can view their data anytime and anywhere they want. This helps clients to achieve a comprehensive understanding of their company.

“For us, it’s about creating the most transparent funnel possible for our clients to have the most holistic understanding of everything they’re doing so that they can see all of their efforts at any time of day, anywhere they want,” Tancredi said.

Both Tancredi and Dinsmore say that Overit really aims to “dive into the weeds” of their clients’ businesses and act as an “extension of their team.” To do so, the company commits to visiting their client’s location and truly learning about the workings behind the business. Tancredi even mentioned going on ride-alongs with technicians.

“We’re really digging in to understand what makes your business tick,” Dinsmore said.

Outside of their work for the pest control industry, Overit has done advertising, production and web applications for Proctor & Gamble, Experion, Mercedes-Benz, The Daily Gazette, various shows for Netflix, Amazon and Apple Plus and more. The company even played a role in the production of Geico’s Pinocchio series that ran during this year’s Super Bowl.

The company has seven different departments that all play a role in the work it does for its clients. The departments include audio and studio, video production, application and web development, design and creative, digital strategy and analytics, public relations, and content.

“It’s a lot of moving parts and a lot of really talented people working together,” Tancredi said.

NEW DIGS. The creative agency strives to be innovative in all areas of their business, including their workspace. In 2012, after outgrowing their old space, Overit moved into an old church that they renovated as a workspace. The space allows for an open, collaborative environment for members of all teams to work together.

The company reutilized the church’s original materials, including transforming the wooden pews into desks. They also kept all the original stained-glass windows and other traditional elements to maintain the church’s architecture and dignity, Dinsmore said.

Tancredi said that he feels the building is a good representation of the company’s culture.

“The building itself gives off the essence of who we are,” he said. “It’s an incredibly designed space that really shows off what our creative abilities are.”

Dinsmore emphasized that nothing at Overit is cookie-cutter and the company aims to promote that mentality through the work it creates.

“We kind of think we helped break the mold of just copying everybody else,” Dinsmore said of Overit’s work with pest control companies. “It’s been a lot of fun and we continue to just keep pushing the boundaries there.”

The author is an Ohio-based writer.

Making decisions is always difficult. It is hard enough when the decision needs to be made by a group of like-minded peers, but the hardest types of decisions to make are those in which there are multiple generations involved in the process. So, what do you do? Bringing out the best in the generations impacting your decisions requires four critical approaches to ensure their decision-making involvement stays on track and is focused on moving to an outcome that matters.

1. NOT EVERYONE HAS INSIGHT

Decision making does not get a participation trophy. Just showing up is not enough in today’s fast-paced business environment. Careful consideration of the available decision options is important. Frequently, the assumption is made that everyone at the table has enough insight and information to participate effectively in the process. All too often they don’t.

Make sure your inter-generational team has enough information so they can be more mindful in evaluating your options. Established professionals can get grounded into a black or white point of view that makes them hold fast to historical assessments of potential options. Younger participants can have a limited viewpoint about possible options and consequences. This is not because they are incapable of complex thought, but they often don’t have enough experience to engage in a more nuanced deliberation.

Prepare them for participating in this process. Do they need advance reading material, such as an article about the critical issue you are going to address? Write up a summary of the critical elements of the issue and why a decision needs to be made. Set the stage at the outset by doing a comprehensive presentation at the first decision-making meeting. Provide them with clarity about how the decision relates to your organizational business strategies and why this is an area of concern. Don’t assume they understand this; consider this an educational opportunity.

2. CLARIFY DECISION PARAMETERS

Keeping an inter-generational group focused is a challenge. They will careen from issue to issue unless you frame things clearly for them. Establish a framework of what must be considered and the boundaries for how far they can go with the decision options. Set limits. If there are budget or staffing limitations, say so.

Make sure to clarify the boundaries of the group’s role in the decision-making process, too. Are they the decision maker, serving in an advisory function to others who will decide or an influencer with critical insight into key decision options? Put this in writing so no one can say later that they misunderstood or did not hear there were limits to work within.

It is easy to defer to a group of enthusiastic young professionals, but unless you stay on top of them, they can go way beyond the appropriate parameters. This can result in treacherous consequences, both in them going too far and in you dampening their enthusiasm for participating again. Have tons of interim check points and keep re-directing the discussion as needed. It is also easy for younger team members to defer to older professionals who are seasoned and have experience. But they also can fall into the trap of only thinking within a box of historical options that limit consideration of new approaches to solving problems. You need the insight of all generations at the table, but it must be effectively channeled.

3. MANAGE THE DISCUSSION

Don’t abandon your team to work without your involvement. You don’t have to be there for every workgroup conversation, but you still need to manage the discussion. Most importantly, encourage candid dialog. Clarify for everyone the stakes and the resources of information you need and begin discussing the decision parameters.

Have team members walk through the potential outcomes of the options under consideration. Require them to discuss the pros and cons of each option. Encourage them to ask questions of each other to explore the consequences of the ideas being suggested. Challenge them to ask if there is an element of this option that could be combined with something already reviewed to make a stronger option.

Approach this in a respectful manner. Carefully manage how the group communicates so those with strong voices do not drown out innovative ideas from more introverted participants who may lack confidence in speaking up in the group. If you get each of your participants deeply involved in the discussion, they will develop mutual respect and learn from each other. This enhances inter-generational communication and encourages a more collaborative decision dialog.

4. MANAGE EXPECTATIONS

With inter-generational teams, also manage their expectations about how much influence they ultimately will have on the decision-making process. It goes back to the role they play in the decision. Will they get a vote in the decision? Or will they be influencing how you decide? Carefully managing their expectations at the front-end will help manage angst at the back-end if you are the final decider and go a different way than they recommend.

Make sure you develop feedback loops and mechanisms for follow-up. You will lose your younger team members if they don’t get periodic follow-ups on the decision outcome. If possible, continue to involve the decision team in reviewing the progress of the decision implementation. Then they can help you adjust and adapt your decision strategy based on the evolving outcomes.

Inter-generational groups can provide you with significant ideas beyond options you initially considered. When you can do this effectively with inter-generational teams, they bond more effectively and can learn from each other. They also can find unexpected approaches linking possibilities in powerful, and sometimes unexpected, ways that may create amazing results.

FINAL THOUGHTS. If you effectively manage your inter- generational decision-making efforts, you will create a team dynamic that is powerfully focused on resolving issues. At the same time, they will be building critical thinking skills and learning how to work together for future decision-making.

Jill Johnson is the president and founder of Johnson Consulting Services, an accomplished speaker, an award-winning management consultant and author of the book Bold Questions. Her consulting work has impacted nearly $4 billion worth of decisions.

Editor’s note: This article originally appeared in the June 22, 2017, edition of The New York Times Sunday Magazine with the headline “How a Joke About Flying Squirrels Led to an Ailing Woman’s Cure.” It is reprinted here with permission.

The wintry late-day sun flooded through the windows at South County Hospital in Wakefield, R.I., as the middle-aged man and his wife entered the room. The man’s mother, a tiny 93-year-old woman, sat slumped amid a chaos of bedcovers. They had come from St. Louis after the youngest of the man’s siblings called to let him know that their mother was deathly ill. Seeing her now, a pale, silent version of her energetic self, he feared he would have to wear the suit he’d brought after all.

SICK AT HOME. She’d been in this hospital for almost a week, though the symptoms started a week before that, when, on a Saturday morning, she felt a little tired. By midday she felt cold and fluish. Her body ached all over — especially her back. And she had a fever. A neighbor took her to the E.R. For reasons she can’t remember, they ended up at a hospital a couple of towns over. There, blood was drawn and a CT scan was done to look for the cause of her symptoms. Nothing was found, so she was sent home with a medication for her painful back.

On Tuesday, she went to her primary-care doctor. He looked her over and reviewed the E.R. records. He wasn’t sure what more he could do. Another son, who lived nearby, and his wife started sleeping at his mother’s house. They were worried about her. That this fiercely independent woman who lived alone, who still cut her own wood for the stove and drove everywhere, indicated to them that despite what all the doctors might say, she was seriously ill.

When she didn’t get better after a few days, they carried her to the car and went to South County, the hospital they knew best.

A HIDDEN INFECTION? The doctors at South County weren’t sure what was going on, either. The patient felt sick: She was tired, her back was killing her and she felt weak all over. She looked sick too: pale and frail. On exam, her temperature was up and her blood pressure was down. She had a faint rash on much of her body, and she was confused. But her white-blood cell count — an indicator of infection — wasn’t elevated, and the doctors couldn’t see any obvious source of infection. Blood tests showed no signs of the most common tick-borne diseases. A chest X-ray was normal. An ultrasound of her abdomen was, too. Blood was also analyzed to see if any bacteria would grow, and she was admitted to the hospital team, under the care of Caroline Jenckes, an experienced nurse practitioner.

Jenckes spent the next few days looking for an infection she was certain was there. She ordered an M.R.I. of the spine in search of an abscess, but found nothing. The patient’s gallbladder was carefully evaluated; inflammation can trigger a fever and pain that travels to the back. A couple of days in, a CT scan of the patient’s chest suggested the possibility of pneumonia. Dr. Fred Silverblatt, the infectious- disease doctor Jenckes consulted, didn’t think the subtle findings could be the cause of her symptoms. And the patient’s fever was already coming down. Still, he agreed to start her on broad-spectrum antibiotics.

A JOKE TURNS SERIOUS. Finally the medical team saw what seemed like significant evidence that the patient was getting better. Her fever came down, and her blood pressure returned to normal. Her back pain was subsiding.

From the son’s perspective, his mother was not really recovering. He and his wife had been taking turns staying with her, day and night, and she was nothing like her old self; she still seemed quite sick. Despite the antibiotics, she remained tired, weak and practically speechless. The son called his sister in Maryland and older brother in Missouri to tell them that this might be the end, and the siblings hurried to their hometown.

The frail woman didn’t open her eyes when her older son entered the room. He leaned close to give her a kiss and straighten her up in the bed. Did she have flying-squirrel fever, he asked lightly, referring to their effort the autumn before to rid her attic of the pesky rodents. Back then she told him how cute the big-eared babies were, creatures taken out of the attic by the exterminator on their way to relocation. He thought she smiled a bit at his joke, just a whisper of her usual good humor. But as he made the joke, he suddenly had a thought: Could those squirrels have anything to do with this strange illness that no one could figure out?

FLYING SQUIRRELS & DISEASE. It was an odd thought but the kind of connection that inspired the son, so he found a computer in the hospital and searched online a bit. The first pages carried mostly ads for services to get rid of the pests. But then he found something: a short article from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention linking flying squirrels with something called epidemic typhus. Further reading revealed that the symptoms of typhus — fever, body aches, rash and confusion — resembled those his mother had. But typhus was a rare infection. There had been fewer than 100 cases in the United States reported to the C.D.C. over the past 40 years.

Still, the son printed out the article and went in search of Caroline Jenckes. He explained that his mother’s house had been infested with these animals. Jenckes was intrigued with the idea. Certainly all the studies they’d done to find the source of the woman’s symptoms had been unrevealing. She took the article to Silverblatt. It seemed to him a perfect fit: the symptoms, the exposure, the minimal response to the antibiotics. He read up a little more on the infection before starting the patient on the appropriate antibiotic — doxycycline — and sending her blood to the C.D.C. for confirmation.

FROM THE DARK AGES. Epidemic typhus is an old disease. Since the Middle Ages, periodic epidemics of this infection killed millions of people. Just after World War I, an outbreak in Russia killed three million. The infection is often transmitted through contact with a body louse. Modern sanitation has significantly reduced the incidence of both infection and carrier. In the United States, most cases of typhus have come from exposure to flying squirrels. It’s not clear how the bacteria get from the rodents who harbor the bug to the humans they infect, but the louse once again plays a role. Squirrel lice do not tend to bite humans, so it is thought that exposure occurs when bacteria in lice excrement are inhaled.

After 24 hours on the new antibiotic, the woman was transferred to a rehabilitation facility. Within days she began to act more like herself. She was irritated that she had been placed on the floor designated for the sick and dying. She was certain, she explained to anyone who would listen, that this was not where she belonged. She says she didn’t really start to get better until she moved to the floor for healthier patients.

After a few weeks she was well enough to go home. It took almost that long for the test results to come back confirming typhus. While she recovered, her children arranged for an exterminator to get rid of any squirrels that might have returned and to seal up any possible ports of re-entry.

Families are an essential source of information about patients and the world they live in. They don’t usually make the diagnosis, but they can provide answers to questions doctors hadn’t considered asking. In this case, the knowledge of this woman’s exposure and its associated infection may have saved her life. Untreated epidemic typhus can kill up to 30 percent of patients, and the very old are at the greatest risk.

All this happened three years ago. If you ask this woman now how she’s doing, she’ll immediately inform you that she’s just great — because the more she’s on her own, the better she feels.

Lisa Sanders, M.D., is a contributing writer for the magazine and the author of “Every Patient Tells a Story: Medical Mysteries and the Art of Diagnosis.”

From The New York Times. © 2017 The New York Times Company. All rights reserved. Used under license.

No industry was harder hit by COVID-19 than restaurants.

An estimated 100,000 restaurants — 1 in 6 — closed either permanently or long-term during the first six months of the pandemic, according to a recent survey from the National Restaurant Association (NRA). In addition, 40 percent of restaurant operators did not expect to remain in business by April 2021 without further financial assistance from the federal government.

The Independent Restaurant Coalition had a more dire prediction: The U.S. could permanently lose 85 percent of independent restaurants by year end without additional support.

A SIGNIFICANT HIT. This is not good news for pest control companies that provide service to restaurants. So far, the industry has potentially lost about $137 million in annual service revenue in the U.S.

Rich Kalik, a partner at Specialty Consultants, which analyzes the pest management industry, determined this figure by multiplying the industry’s average monthly commercial service charge of $113.85 by 12 months and then by the NRA’s estimated 100,000 restaurant closures.

Gil Bloom, president of Standard Pest Management, felt the pain firsthand. “We have at least eight restaurants that have closed down and will not be opening up, along with two catering halls,” he said. About 15 percent of the company’s revenue comes from servicing restaurants in New York City.

Abell Pest Control had about 17 percent of its more than 7,000 restaurant clients in Canada and four U.S. states cancel service since March 16. Most cancellations were due to permanent business closures.

“We’re seeing this trend continue with the second wave of COVID-19 upon us,” said Mike Heimbach, Abell’s director of business development and marketing.

Other pest control companies were less affected, said Dan Gordon, managing partner of PCO Bookkeepers. Commercial work performed by his clients typically accounts for 25 percent of revenue, with restaurants making up a very small portion of that.

“Most pest control companies don’t want to service restaurants. They’ll service the big chains that have sanitation standards in place but the local pizzeria and Chinese restaurant; that’s not a good market for pest control guys” because such small businesses often have limited staff and can’t maintain good sanitation practices. “If you talk to most PMPs, they’re really not interested in the restaurant market,” said Gordon.

CLIENTS SCRAMBLE TO SURVIVE. Restaurants struggled to adapt in the pandemic. They faced mandated closures; then limited dining capacities. Some shifted to outdoor dining or take-out to stay alive.

“Those that had good carry-out business before are doing OK,” said Jeff King, president of Abe’s Pest Control in Florence, Ky. Still many restaurants in his area were “barely making it,” even with apps to make online ordering and payment easier. King said two of his 20 restaurant clients permanently closed and three are on the ropes.

Restaurants with drive-through windows and established delivery services fared better. But while a few restaurants like Domino’s Pizza thrived — its revenue increased more than $108 million in the second quarter compared to 2Q 2019 — many eateries in urban centers won’t see sales improve until office workers, business travelers and tourists return. Protests and rioting in some cities added to reopening uncertainties.

“I don’t know any restaurants right now doing really well. It’s been really, really tough for these folks to make it,” said Tim Best, staff entomologist for Assured Environments in New York City. Small restaurants account for about 20 percent of service work at the company, which is owned by Terminix.

COVID-19 forced PMPs to change how they served restaurant clients. “It has significantly had an impact on how we do business, for sure,” said Best.

GAINING ACCESS. Scheduling restaurant work was always a challenge given the small window during which service could be performed. Pandemic-forced closures and reduced hours of operation made it even more difficult to gain access.

Bloom had one employee spend 20 hours a week calling clients to confirm appointments and verify how technicians would get in. “It was a task we never had before,” he said.

Eventually, some clients gave PMPs keys and access codes so service could be performed without a restaurant employee having to open up the store.

“Even people who were hesitant at the beginning to give us keys changed their tune during this process. A lot of people looked differently at the scenario and said, ‘You’re right. I don’t need to be there for you to do your service,’” said Ross Treleven, president at Sprague Pest Solutions, which does “a significant amount” of restaurant work in six Western states.

Companies like McCloud Services, which serves restaurants in five Midwest states plus Kentucky and Tennessee, would like to see this trend continue post-pandemic, as it allows for greater scheduling flexibility and the opportunity to perform more intense treatments when restaurant employees are absent.

“With today’s surveillance technology, everything we do is under watch anyway,” said Ben Channon, a district manager for the company. Restaurants account for more than 20 percent of McCloud’s customer base.

The Independent Restaurant Coalition said the United States could permanently lose 85 percent of independent restaurants by year end without additional support.

GETTING PAID. To help long-term restaurant clients get through the pandemic, pest management professionals expanded payment terms and waived administrative fees.

“I have customers who I’m not charging anything to right now because I know they’re in a bad situation,” said Marty Overline, owner of Aardvark Pest Management in Philadelphia.

Abell Pest Control extended credit. “We’re committed to our customers and our focus is to stay connected and do what we can to help. Hopefully they’ll remember that down the road,” said Heimbach.

Bloom put pre-pandemic money owed by some restaurants on “goodwill hold.” He picked up a few new clients “because other people cut them off” but has put them on strict payment terms, requiring a credit card on file or C.O.D.

PMPs kept a close eye on account receivables given the grim outlook for restaurants. The NRA expected the foodservice industry to lose $240 billion this year. And in August, 87 percent of New York City restaurants, bars and nightlife venues — nearly 9 in 10 — could not pay their full rent, according to a survey by the non-profit NYC Hospitality Alliance.

Still, suspending pest control service for non-payment wasn’t the solution for long-term clients, said PMPs.

“A crisis is a time to show your values and our values are to take care of our customers,” said Sprague’s Ross Treleven.

Even so, it was an opportunity to jettison problem clients that never paid on time, never did their part to clean up or fix problems, who constantly pushed for less service frequency and still expected PMPs to magically fix their pest issues. “There’s a couple; if they don’t call me back, I don’t really care,” said Overline.

ADJUSTING SERVICE FREQUENCY. “We recognize that these are some really tough times, so we’ve been working with our customers to reduce frequency, just so we don’t lose them as a customer,” said Chad Gore, market technical director at Rentokil, which serves independent eateries and national restaurant chains.

It was essential that restaurants have some kind of coverage from pests, however. “If something does pop up, you need to be able to respond to it without that problem getting out of hand,” Gore explained.

But fewer service visits were harder on technicians. “They’re having to do more while they’re on site because they know that is probably the only opportunity that they’re going to be able to get in there that month,” explained Best.

Assured Environments had a slight increase in no-charge services due to “technicians being stressed; pressed for time; not being able to do as much as they were previously,” said Best. “It’s still manageable at this point but I don’t know for how much longer,” he added.

TAKING ADVANTAGE. Some of Overline’s restaurant clients “were opportunistic and took that time to actually go in and clean their restaurants and fix the things they’ve been needing to fix for years.” This included water leaks, doing exclusion work and deep cleaning.

With customers not present, Overline performed more clean outs and set more traps, including in dining rooms and common areas that were normally off limits. “We were able to add to our trap placements almost 10-fold and we were able to clean up a lot of populations of various pests by doing it,” he said.

McCloud Services also had clients use the shutdown to squash ongoing pest issues. “We definitely have taken advantage of doing more intensive services when able,” said Channon.

Clients saw the effectiveness of proactive service and giving technicians full access to the facility during non-operational hours; Channon hoped they see the value post-pandemic, as well. “Clearly, it works,” he said.

This was the time to fix long-standing pest issues, agreed Gore. “We should all in the industry be making the best of a bad situation and taking that opportunity to really dig in deep into our customers’ pest problems and get those things resolved,” he said.

CHANGING PESTS. Pest issues depended a lot on how restaurants were left at the time of shutdown. Some were properly closed; others were left for months with grease in fryers, soda in soda guns and food in the fridge.

In New York City, it took restaurants a good month to get employees back to see what was happening inside, said Bloom. That’s when he started getting calls for small flies and mice.

“The rodent population that was happy to dine outside was now looking for new food sources, so if they weren’t rodent proofed and adhering to previous recommendations, they ended up having rodent problems inside,” he recalled.

Sprague Pest Solutions, which uses electronic sensing devices in restaurants, saw rodent behavior change almost immediately.

“Within two days they completely changed their behavior,” said AJ Treleven, director of operations at the company. Movement shifted from nocturnal to daytime because humans weren’t present and normal food and water sources no longer existed. As such, rodents were traveling further and “pushing inward, looking into buildings, trying to find those food sources,” he said.

Abatement efforts by Assured Environments were more successful since bait- and trap-shy rodents had fewer resources. “We’re actually getting increased consumption in our rodenticide baiting efforts and capture counts are going up,” said Best.

The shift to outdoor dining caused challenges. Doors were constantly open, allowing flies and mice inside. Seating in city streets reduced parking for service vehicles. And diners had more up-close encounters with pests.

“You may have more visibility of rodents by diners” in cities like Chicago that have cases of rat activity, said Pat Hottel, technical director, McCloud Services.

More problems occurred if neighboring properties cancelled service. Closed businesses provided harborage for pests like German cockroaches to develop; the critters then moved next door to forage. “You can see that in places like strip malls where there’s a connection between the different businesses,” said Hottel.

And dried-out drain traps gave American cockroaches, drain flies and rats easier access to buildings, said Overline, Aardvark Pest Management. He now opens faucets to flush out pipes while performing service at restaurants.

Still, restaurants had fewer new introductions of pests given fewer customers, employees and deliveries of goods, said Gore of Rentokil. “We’re not seeing the bed bug activity in restaurants like we might see in the past,” he said.

FORGING AHEAD. In the near term, PMPs expected more restaurants to shutter and cancel service.

Sprague Pest Solutions saw an uptick in cancellations in September. AJ Trevelen said some businesses tried to stick it out but with the weather changing and patio seating no longer viable “they’re just kind of giving up the ghost.”

Abell Pest Control, which earns 9 percent of its revenue from restaurant work, expected business in this category to decline.

“We maintain a real nice mix of residential and commercial clients in a lot of different industries to insulate ourselves from this type of shock,” said Heimbach.

“For those (pest control) companies that were very restaurant heavy, they’re having a rough time of it,” added Bloom, Standard Pest Management.

Companies were tracking COVID-19 infection rates and health department directives in their markets to help predict the impact on clients and their own operations, with the goal of staying nimble.

Seeing restaurant clients in distress has been particularly difficult, especially since many restaurants — like pest management companies — are family-owned and took generations to build.

“It’s very emotional when you see these family businesses that have had to struggle so much just to keep their heads above water,” said Alfie Treleven, CEO of Sprague Pest Solutions.

As such, Sprague has trained frontline employees on “what it means to have empathy for what everybody is going through and how fortunate we are to be able to support them to the best of our ability,” he said.

The author is a frequent contributor to PCT.