How to cope up with the changing landscape of Restaurant Industry
By: Deepak Arora
Tags: Restaurant, Restaurant Business, Restaurante

People may not be ready but have come to acceptance with the reality of the coronavirus. The pause button on the economy which has saved mankind has given people enough time to realize that today social distancing is the new normal and the government has provided relaxations to get the nation going on.

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash

Now the time has come to continue to fight this battle with our weapons of social distancing and cleanliness outside our homes. Restaurants need to be innovative to keep themselves afloat in this crisis and we are positive that the restaurant industry will shake this and move past ahead of this. While cleanliness and regular check-ups of staff members will be a mandatory thing, being innovative will give your edge back.

Bring your A-game in the delivery segment:

You need to pinpoint and segregate your high value of loyal customers. Pinpoint them to societies and start delivering food to them. Ask them to put in a good word for you among their neighbors and keep doing this and start covering the market society by society.

This is necessary as the biggest issue right now is the consumer confidence that if you are able to win that back you will be back in the game.

Use the old school strategy:

Start taking delivery on your restaurant phone number and also keep a WhatsApp number to do the same. This way you will be able to connect with both types of mentalities people who like to order directly and people who would like to go behind a phone screen to place their orders.

This increases your credibility as you are removing the middleman and with one less person involved in the process the trust level increases that is what is required.

Have your own delivery mechanism:

You can turn some of your waiters into the delivery persons for the nearby places, marketing your profitable territories and making sure you are providing a seamless experience there without the aggregators will be a big step toward success.

Having your own delivery mechanism will save you from the huge commission cost and much more. Customers may trust your brand but they may not trust the aggregators these kinds of things can cause friction in landing the orders.

The focus should be the brand strength:

Engaging your users is one thing and encouraging them to buy from you is totally another. You have content on social media which is able to engage customers greatly now it is important that you are able to use that brand image to start your sales again.

It will be a slow start but amazing food with seamless delivery experience and most importantly gaining the trust of your customer will do wonders for you under the current circumstances.

Getting into the minds of your customers:

How they like to be served and customer feedback is more important now than ever. Understanding and communicating with your customer will bring loyalty now. No loyalty points but your message that you are careful and clean and you care about your customers will bring sales to you.

Customer management programs will go a long way in helping restaurants to stay in the game.