6 Creative Solutions to Keep Your Restaurant Open During the Pandemic

By Paul Bates, Contributor

The restaurant industry around the world has been facing a huge challenge due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The social nature of restaurants has rendered them as potential hotspots for the spread of the virus, leading to most shutting down on-premise service for the summer.

This closure has affected businesses widely with a growing number of restaurants closing due to financial hardships. However, there exist solutions that restaurants can apply to make sure they do not run out of business completely. The article will discuss some of the creative solutions that restaurants may apply during the pandemic.

Sell Restaurant Cocktail & Meal Kits

With a lot of restaurants still closed for on-premise guests and a huge uptick on guests ordering delivery, there presents a unique situation savvy operators can take advantage of – combining your restaurant’s kitchen with your customer’s kitchen. And we don’t mean your standard restaurant delivery program; we mean helping your guests turn their home into your restaurant by selling them meal kits and cocktail kits.

It's similar to restaurant delivery in that you’re bringing your food to guests’ homes, but you let your guests prepare the dishes and drinks at their own homes. It’s like national meal kit companies, like BlueApron, but with your own restaurant’s brand and flavors. This lets customers enjoy your food while still having the fun experience of prepping it themselves.

By adding cocktail and meal kits to your offerings, you cast a wider net of at-home guests who are looking for an enjoyable evening and expand your potential revenue stream. By using this strategy, restaurants can offer social bonding activities while still maintaining the safety of their clients, and revenue is generated.

Offering Online Cooking Classes

Restaurants can use various platforms available to offer lessons to clients on ways to prepare various delicacies and cocktails. This is can be paired with your cocktail and meal kits to create a really interactive experience for your guests.

Streaming services, such as Zoom and Google Meet, can play essential roles in linking your guests to your kitchen, so that they may learn how to prepare their best meals while safe at home.

You can charge a small fee for the lessons, creating another line of revenue, or offer it as a freebie to stay connected to your guests and on top of their minds.

Offering a Simple Menu

Most customers view complex menus as too expansive for their needs. Many customers prefer simple restaurant menus where they can take simple food and still feel satisfied.

By having a smaller or simpler menu, restaurants can remain flexible and spend less on ingredients and hold onto less inventory. Scaling down your menu to your customers’ favorites will maintain the business running and reduce the burden to the finances of the business.

Sell Your Restaurant’s Recipes

Many restaurant businesses in the world hold on to a particular recipe as part of its puzzle. The recipes may change for some businesses while others remain the same for a long generation. However, social distancing rules have changed and affected the social space of restaurants. With a lot of guests still not returning to bars & restaurants yet, it’s important to find ways of earning revenue from them.

Restaurants can share their recipes with their loyal customers to show that they are concerned about their safety and well-being. Customers will always look to prepare their favorite delicacies while at home to have the feel of what they usually experience when at the restaurants. This pairs well with offering cocktail & meal kits or running online cooking classes. Restaurants may even want to consider selling small cook books as a way of merchandising their brand.

Include Meal Donation Info to Your Menu

Though the restaurant industry has taken a huge hit on its finances during COVID-19, the human nature of the people running the industry is still alive and kicking. Restaurants may express this “purpose economy” by making donations of meals to the vulnerable families and those in the frontline fighting the virus such as medics.

Though this may not affect the financial situation of the restaurants directly, it may influence customers soon to visit your restaurants to have a meal and improve the financial situation of the restaurants in the future. You could also allow your guests to participate in your efforts by donating money to cover some of the cost of your meal donations or having them outright buy a meal for those in need.

Maintain Connections with Guests & the Community

Business can be compared to life in many ways. Just like the way humans depend on air to breathe and survive, restaurants depend on customers and the community to stay afloat. Restaurants can do so by coming up with strategies that maintain the safety of guests and still keep the restaurant running. For example, restaurants may offer home delivery services with the inclusion of gift cards to the customers to ensure they remain loyal to your business.

In conclusion, restaurants can get involved in many activities to ensure they remain afloat. Strategies such as sharing recipes, simplifying their menus, keeping contact with the community, and adding donated meals to their menus are some of the creative ways restaurants can adopt to ensure they stay in business.

However, they need to always be on the look to ensure they keep in touch with what customers would want and the emerging trends in the business.

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About the Author 
Paul Bates is a lifestyle and business writer at ConfidentWriters, BeeStudent, and Assignment writing services. Paul writes content for restaurants, bars and cafes not only in English but also in Spanish.

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