I’m a Restaurateur and Coronavirus Forced Me to Rethink My Business Plan

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Since March 16, Martha Hoover has closed the dining rooms of 11 of her restaurants, pivoted one — Napolese Pizzeria — to carryout only, and at one point, entertained the idea of opening a completely new takeout pop-up

,” which is not quite an order to shelter in place. “It was a very confused message from the governor’s office that needed remarkable clarification,” Hoover says. And in the week since receiving that message on March 16, Hoover has closed the dining rooms of 11 of her restaurants, pivoted one — Napolese Pizzeria — to carryout only, and at one point, even entertained the idea of opening a completely new takeout pop-up called Apocalypse Burger.

“Then the admin part of our company went into their triage mode: We were delivering messages in person to people about layoffs, and giving them resources that included help filling out unemployment applications. But there’s a lot more to telling people they’re laid off than [that]. We divided food and made meal packages for anyone in our company who could come to our commissary kitchen and pick up. We served over 125 people and families with those items.

“We also know that delivery will be the new norm. We’re in Indianapolis, which has completely different demographics than more densely populated cities. Anything we can do to increase the bottom line by increasing our non-brick-and-mortar opportunities is where our business model is going. I don’t think we’re revolutionary; we’re on an island thinking about what we are going to do post-COVID and how we’re going to operate differently.

“We decided to pivot rapidly. We all love the idea of Apocalypse Burger. We are going to execute on it, but this gives us two or three weeks — we hope — to get the details locked in place so that when we do open post-COVID, we open a really sound, well-thought-out business. We’re doing it the way we would be doing it if we were opening a real restaurant, the only difference will be that Apocalypse Burger will open, at least initially, as a carryout and delivery operation only.

 

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Truth is there are too many restaurants. Too many damn restaurants too many cooks too many people working 2 jobs. Pay is terrible. Dependant on a culture of laziness from people who can't cook.

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