Restaurant Tips During COVID19

Restaurant tips during COVID19 include limiting delivery. Yes, you read that correctly. The COVID19 pandemic has affected everyone, especially restaurant owners. Here are things that can help keep you afloat until the storm passes.

The idea that the pandemic is over, is wishful thinking, or willful blindness. We’ve always maintained when it hit NYC in March that this would affect our industry for at least a year. An now with a second wave of the coronavirus hitting (and spiking) in many states, a good storm strategy is necessary.

So why did we say reduce delivery? Simple. Delivery is an add-on to restaurant operations, not a replacement for it. With its cost as high as 37%, you simply can’t use it as a majority of income to support a restaurant. If a restaurant doesn’t have at least enough in-dining (or take out) orders to cover overhead, then expanding delivery will drain working capital faster.

A2z Restaurant Consulting Restaurant Tips include:

There is a new product coming to the market that was conceived by A2z Restaurant Consulting CEO Eddie Fahmy. DineVite will help restaurants during COVID19 and beyond. Not only to survive the pandemic but streamline their consumer interaction for a fraction of the cost of today’s mainstay apps. Here are the 5 major problems we see on the horizon for a restaurant, and the solution(s).

Restaurant challenges during the pending post-COVID19 reopening exacerbate an already difficult landscape in New York City.

Before the Coronavirus hit the USA (and then essentially shutting down restaurants across the United States), we had identified several existing pain-points that restaurant owners faced. The first two included, but were not limited to:

• Filling empty seats on slow nights
• Time — to learn new technology, and effectively leverage digital media and promotions.

This left restaurateurs with a dilemma: resort to desperate “deal promotion” platforms, that required deep discounts and losing up to as much as 50% of the remaining sale. The platforms touted that they would bring the restaurant new customers. And while they do generate bookings, many of those customers are ‘deal-hoppers’ that won’t return. Moreover, these platforms effectively made themselves uninvested partners in your restaurant, leaving you running in the rat-wheel without getting anywhere — the bottom line never increased: you had to do twice the business to remain in place. Further, it increased additional work for the restaurant owner since they have to account for all the coupons. Lastly, by broadcasting deep discounts on these platforms restaurants cheapened their brands: once they become known as a discount location, it is difficult — if not impossible — to shed that label.

But the alternative wasn’t any better — accept the idea of relying on a few strong nights a week to carry your entire operating overhead. Neither is a good solution.

Restaurant Tips During COVID19

With the new pending restrictions being placed on restaurants that want to be open during the COVID19 pandemic, there are new challenges.

The shortlist is that, with restaurant capacity restricted due to COVID19,

• restaurants will have to rely on more delivery to sustain revenues. but with delivery apps taking to 37% per order, restaurants can’t survive long-term. The alarm of delivery apps killing restaurants has been conversation for years, as discussed in The New Yorker article entitled “How Delivery Apps May Put Your Favorite Restaurant Out of Business,
• increased table turnover will be more important than ever. With only 25-50% capacity allowed, every minute matters. And, lastly,
• reservation management will be more important too, as many diners will refrain from ‘just stopping in’ for fear that they may be shut out due to capacity.

There are many tools out there that can solve one, or more, of these problems. The question is whether they can do so in a way that is both time and cost-effective.

Eddie Fahmy, CEO of A2Z Restaurant Consulting has been in the restaurant industry his whole working life: beginning as a busboy in his teens, and emerging as a successful restaurateur turned consultant. Through his own experiences — and working with clients –, he gained insights into the pain points and challenges restaurants faced and developed DineVite as a solution.

MORE ABOUT DINEVITE

DineVIte was developed as an easy-to-use, cost-effective platform for customer acquisition to help restaurants fill empty seats, increase the bottom line, and streamline promotional opportunities. 

The platform empowers consumers who are in the moment of deciding where to enjoy their next meal to request an exclusive and private offer from the restaurant to acquire them in real-time. It does so without broadcasting it, which cheapens the brand.

Moreover, it gives the restaurateur the tools to provide the consumer with a digital and on-premise VIP experience.

To help restaurant owners in New York City weather the COVID19 storm, Eddie and his partners are going to provide DineVite for FREE (for 3-6 months). Your restaurant might already be in the Dinevite.me database. So go to the site and begin — type in the search box to see if you’re listed. Then contact us to claim your page and get a video-screen share demo of how to use the dashboard.

DineVite is Free for consumers and provides features that other apps don’t have. As a restaurant owner, claim your page, use it, test it, and review the dashboard stats to get consumer and conversion information. If at the end of the trial period it is making you money, keep it. If not, there is no contract, no commitment, nor any cancellation fees, and you’ll remain in the directory for free regardless.

We hope these restaurant tips during COVID19 help, If you have — or are planning to open — a restaurant, contact A2Z Restaurant Consulting to assist with everything from location evaluation, leases, vendor negotiations, staffing, technology, marketing, and more.