Mark Cuban Says He Hired Secret Shoppers To See How Dallas Businesses Were Reopening: 'It's Not Good'
DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) - Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban, who's made national headlines for his charitable work and his opinions during the coronavirus pandemic, says he wanted to see just how Dallas was reopening its economy after retail stores and restaurants were given the go-ahead from Gov. Greg Abbott last week.
Those types of businesses, which also included malls and movie theaters, were allowed to reopen last Friday after Abbott issued an executive order. The businesses had to follow certain restrictions, such as opening at a 25% capacity, and social distancing guidelines.
However, questions like which businesses would choose to reopen and if they would actually practice social distancing remained for Texas residents.
On his Blog Maverick website, Cuban said he looked to answer some of those questions by working with ShiftSmart in order to investigate business reopenings in Dallas using "secret shoppers."
To put it simply, Cuban said: "It's not good."
For this project, Cuban said they called about 1,000 retail and restaurant locations based on their popularity on Yelp to see how many businesses were actually reopening that weekend.
Of those 1,000 locations, Cuban said ShiftSmart workers performed "physical audits" at about 300 of them to see if they followed the reopening guidelines.
From the 300 businesses that were visited, the data Cuban reported shows that about 96% of them were "non-compliant" when it came to mandatory protocols. He said about one-third of those businesses were less than 50% compliant with the protocols.
Some of the biggest protocols that were not followed, according to the data, include: contactless payments, single-use condiments, sanitizing entrances and exits, and marked waiting spots.
This study happened between May 1 and May 3.
Cuban said he plans to continue this project "a couple of more times" so they can learn about the trends as Texas reopens its economy.
On Friday, May 8, salons and barber shops were allowed to reopen in the state. Retail stores and restaurants are also still ordered to follow the same restrictions and guidelines as last week.