Tips on turning your dine-in restaurant to offering takeaway and delivery

· Operators should determine what items on their menus will travel effectively. Those who have been doing this for a while, hopefully will have some high-profit items that are good travellers, determine what items are real stars from a sales and profit standpoint and focus on them. No sense in delivering those that are not because you will erode your profits more.

· Focusing on which items travel well and strategically reducing the menu gives operators the opportunity to reduce the amount of money they have tied up in food and ingredients, which can take some of the strain off their finances.

· Is your kitchen equipment correct and working to your menu adaptions for delivery? Your service provider can help with this. We would also recommend that Gas systems and Electrical catering equipment circuits are safely isolated and decommissioned for any equipment that is used.

· Operators should look to freshen up their packaging too, to ensure they use the right items for transporting food to customers. Now their brand will rely solely on how their food shows up at that point of consumption, make sure your food looks good and you maintain food quality.

· Operators will also need to pay close attention to how they process orders and store them for delivery or pickup.

· Managing customer expectations without compromising food quality will be a greater challenge for some. A lot of restaurants don’t have the sophisticated tech systems that tell customers when to pick up their orders etc. So, it’s going to have to be a bit of a cut and paste solution.

· It never hurts to thank customers who support your restaurant during times like these and open the door to future business. I would put a thank you note in every takeout bag and put a coupon to entice them to visit the restaurant in the future, those are hard things to do but they are better than having to close your doors. What we don’t know are what the long-term behavioural affects will be. So, it’s not a bad idea to incentive long-term business.