Zoom Meeting – How To Keep Restaurant/QSR Business (SMBs) Going During Lockdown?

This zoom meeting is to discuss and address small business challenges of managing through current global economy crisis.

[Trupti] : Today’s question is from one of my friend who is a small restaurant owner. He has just started at the beginning of this year with the current situation all restaurants or dining areas are closed, not even at some deliveries are allowed or not allowed. So he had a question that, moving ahead in this current situation, how do go ahead about the business?

[Trupti] : In the first I’ve advised him to go

1. Online if he has not created his digital presence on social media. Reconnect with customers on social media or WhatsApp.

2. Create content, about the current situation about the food hygiene, what are the food habits in terms of diet? What are his restaurant specialties? Start rolling out on social media platforms.

3. Then create polls, surveys to start interaction with the customer.

[Amod] : That’s interesting Trupti. But since you have said he’s just started. I think his penetration in the market will be pretty low at the moment. So the kind of reconnect that probably what you’re suggesting may not be very effective at the moment. Because he’s looking for new markets. He’s looking for new customers to walk-in. And if he’s a small-time restaurant and probably he may not have adequate measures to capture customer information who had walk-in the first couple of months.

[Trupti] : He said that he had this suggestion book being kept and asking, whoever walk-ins.

[Amod] : So in that regard, he can definitely reconnect. But I guess if it’s a new business, I think it’s a very capital intensive business. He will definitely be wanting to look at returns coming out of it. Right? Hence, I think business also becomes the critical aspect now for him.

1. The first thing that probably can look at is local deliveries. Start promoting his business to the local nearby areas.

2. The second way would be to tie up with the Zomato, Swiggy those kind of things. Promotion through them, they already have their channels, so orders coming in from them will be a good one.

3. The third option get into agreements with industry canteens running now under the essentials act to run their canteens. Those will be the areas where immediate revenue and business generation can happen.

[Trupti] : Need to address one fear that post lock-down , the no.of customers walk-ins happening may not be same, because people are now more concern about hygiene.

[Amod] : It will not happen. It’s 100% sure that it’s not going to happen in atleast in the near future. So that model is as good as I won’t say dead, but it’s on its last legs this is what I can say, because there is going to be lot of fear. And even after the overall crisis ends, there are going to be new regulations. And the fear that has an now creeping into the minds of the common public to go to public places is going to be very high. Therefore, expecting walk-ins and business out of that kind of a model is definitely going to be a risk proposition. Therefore, he’ll have to create models where he’s reaching the customers. And these are some of the examples or suggestions that we have given him in this video for him to try. – Need to look at local deliveries, contracting with cafeteria of industries which are active. – Tie up with a Swiggy, Zomato organizations who have the authority and scale, to run businesses even in this crisis situations, is where he will have to work on for business, not just during lock-downs, but even beyond the lock-downs. Very paradigm shift happening there across a lot of businesses for sure. This is exactly where we are saying digital is the way to go ahead, and that’s where businesses need to now connect with their customers digitally for promotion and reach out and then enable it with local deliveries, create those local ecosystems where they can deliver their products or services into their neighborhoods.

[Amod] : Can he get into food supply? I mean, this is where you need to be radical in thought. Because I heard of a case one of our clients that he had a very thriving restaurant in downtown Pune and since the lock down and lot of capital investment he decided to convert it into a grocery store, grocery store been essential service in the current situation. So this is how businesses will have to realign. Just don’t try to realign the models little bit, models have to be realigned drastically. Please go digital, keep that connect with customers, build your customer base online and then enable your local deliveries to reach out and deliver your services or products to them.