Andrew and Peggy Cherng, co-founders and co-CEOs of the Panda Restaurant Group, have been serving up American Chinese comfort food since they opened their first Panda Express in Glendale, California, in 1983. Today, they operate some 2,200 restaurants in the United States and employ more than 40,000 people. In the past month, they have had to find new ways to operate their restaurants and protect their employees—all amid an atmosphere of rising racism. Here’s what they’ve been doing.

There is fear that we hear in the voices of our people—a fear that comes with the simple question: “Why me?” Each Panda associate is worrying about their families, friends, and coworkers. Each is wondering why their jobs have been declared an essential service, and why they are now counted on as members of the frontline. In a way, their paychecks are the source of their fears. Do they risk their health to get one? Knowing that this crisis is not a matter of 14 days but of the many months to come, all we can do as their leaders is reassure them that we will do everything we can to understand how they feel—and that as a company, we will create the safest and steadiest way for them to do their work.

At the beginning of this crisis, so many questions flooded our minds, but they all boiled down to: How can we help our guests and associates feel and be safe? Over the course of a few short weeks, our Panda COVID-19 Task Force has been implementing solutions. We shifted our business model, closing our dining rooms early nationwide as a precautionary measure and launching a simpler menu to keep orders streamlined for our operations teams on the ground. We rolled out contactless pick-up for locations that can seamlessly make that happen, and worked to drive a steady (but not overwhelming) amount of traffic to online orders, drive-through, and pick-up, so our associates can get the hours they need for themselves and their families.

We got our associates the gloves, masks, and hand sanitizers they need, and we established new benefits for them, including health and safety pay, change of operations pay, store closure pay, and appreciation pay. We also expanded our health insurance and paid sick leave and established dedicated hotlines for associates to address mental and emotional stress and COVID-19 medical questions with specialized crisis care nurses. Finally, we advocated for the federal relief bill that will provide aid to the restaurant industry and its workers.

The shifts and pivots will no doubt continue. Every morning, there is a new ordinance, new report, or new issue that seemingly puts us back to new starting blocks. Two weeks ago, for example, our New York operations leaders had to make a hard choice to temporarily close all 11 locations as the situation was getting worse in Manhattan. Before these restaurants closed, our frontline associates cooked up hundreds of hot meals and donated them to healthcare workers at local hospitals. With our new policies, these associates will have health insurance and be paid for up to six weeks. We must anticipate store closures and modified operations throughout the nation as the wave of city lockdowns continue.

We won’t deny that business has been impacted in a way that we have never before experienced at Panda. But it is not just the financial struggle that brings fear; it is something darker: a heightened form of xenophobia. Being an American Chinese company at this time, albeit one beloved by so many, has highlighted the misunderstanding of culture and ethnic identity in the most unfortunate of ways.