Despite the explosion of delivery and takeout, most restaurants are experiencing a dramatic drop in sales as consumers spend more time cooking at home. This is why it’s essential that every dish or item you sell is optimized to generate the highest margins possible.
Customer demand is changing every week, and maintaining your full menu for delivery and takeout will likely lead to increased food waste. A simplified menu gives you a more manageable, flexible set of ingredients to pivot with as our economy continues to change. It also enables you to further optimize labor so you need fewer employees to fulfill orders.
Junzi Kitchen is a great example of how this can generate sustained success. See what they did down in ‘Success Stories’.
Whether you’re a restaurant, meal kit, or meal prep company, there’s one thing that’s working across the board to keep businesses open right now: focus on what works best, trim the rest.
Profit margins naturally fluctuate across your menu, but now’s not the time to spend time and labor on low-margin dishes. Consider replacing high-cost ingredients with lower-cost ones to create modified dishes for the next few months, or cut out low-margin dishes altogether to help create that simplified menu.
Once you’ve cut your lowest-margin dishes, the remaining high-performers are great candidates for family bundles. Creating multi-serving packages helps you batch production, which generates more product and greater sales volume using less labor.
Uncertainty creates a barrier to purchasing. Clear, authentic, and actionable communication with your customers can remove those barriers so that it’s easier for them to continue to buy food from you. And in a time like this, buying food needs to be as easy as possible.
Despite a low risk of COVID-19 transmission via food consumption, many consumers are wary of ordering takeout and delivery. We highly suggest communicating on all marketing channels the steps you’re taking to protect both customers and your staff.
The more clearly and authentically you can demonstrate that you’re taking the crisis seriously, the less concern your customers will have, the more likely they are to purchase from you.
If you’ve made significant changes to the ways customers buy food from you—like a new website, a delivery app, or a curbside process—you want to help customers visualize how to order so they don’t decide it’s easier to eat at home.
Don’t make customers' problems solve how to buy from you. Make it easy.
Your customers want to support your business, but even more so, they want to support your people. Everyone knows that people are struggling right now, and the communal spirit to spread prosperity is high.
Share the names and stories of your staff. Show your team working together in the kitchen (at a safe distance). Now’s the time to be personal.
The CDC currently says transmission of coronavirus via consumed food is low-risk, but one study indicates that COVID-19 can live on some surfaces for up to nine days. Kitchens need to take extreme precautions to ensure both customers and staff can engage confidently and safely with your food and business.
It should go without saying that anyone displaying symptoms needs to be removed from the site immediately and that all sick requests should be approved without skepticism.
We strongly suggest referring to the Logan Square Kitchen food safety page, which has detailed Facility Access SOPs. Here are some of the highlights:
The FDA publishes updated guidelines daily for food production and handling facilities during COVID-19, including how workers in facilities where social distancing cannot be maintained should wear cloth face masks to mitigate transmission risk. You can see today’s guidelines here.
Despite all the craziness, many food businesses are finding themselves pivoting successfully. Sales haven’t dropped off completely, many employees are still being paid full wages, and there’s a path forward through the crisis.
Originally created as an office catering company, San Diego-based LuckyBolt realized they needed to pivot to DTC sales when every single catering order was canceled in March.
Over just three days LuckyBolt simplified their menu and completely pivoted to a consumer food delivery company, offering a way to stock their fridge and pantry with fresh, healthy foods like roasted vegetables, casseroles, and salads that could be cooked at any time.
Junzi Kitchen, a NYC-based fast-casual Chinese restaurant, slashed several items to lower labor and food costs, like dishes including beef or eggs, when the city banned dine-in orders.
The restaurant then created family-sized bundles to create more purchasing options with the same set of ingredients to appeal to a wider market. The company also began selling its proteins and sauces by the pint to help make cooking at home a little easier.
Austin-based Confituras pivoted their traditional bakery menu to become a curbside market where customers could pick up pantry staples like cheese, biscuits, jams, and chocolate.
After experiencing a bump in sales—and seeing how bread baking at home was spiking—Confituras took another step in home-use products with expert-made breads and ready-to-use sourdough starters.
For restaurants looking to get online, access delivery or pick-up, or sell gift cards:
Take advantage of existing delivery services in your area:
Platforms to help with transitioning your operation model or accessing new customer bases:
News from trusted industry outlets focused on the issues that effect food businesses:
