5 Factors Food Businesses Need in this Uncertain Time to Thrive
When the pandemic just started, all businesses, including food-, were scrambling to stay survive, adjusting to the new way. Since then, many have permanently closed their businesses, but there are some left opened too, keeping their businesses afloat. People have been cancelling events/parties; the government ordered people to stay home; more and more people are getting more conscious about their expense; these all are some of the factors that have influenced businesses in this pandemic.
This year’s coronavirus pandemic has forced businesses all over to adapt and shift gears, to alter their business strategies to meet the demands of the time. From online ordering to touch-free delivery, restaurants and caterers have had to change the way they work to keep their business stay alive and to keep staff and customers safe while supporting their businesses. The challenges of 2020 have also forced many food businesses to reevaluate and trim their menus. Sourcing ingredients that are relatively cheaper and are versatile across menu parts has become critical to success.
While it looks like there is a light at the end of the tunnel, there’s still a long road of recovery for food businesses, and they will need to continue innovating to stay ahead of the curve. So, what is required to survive this uncertain time? There are many more factors can be taken into account, but we believe that these five factors will help food business to rethink about their strategy.
- Being flexible is more important than ever
Being flexible means willing to adapt to change. This is a crucial attribute, especially during this time. A flexible organisation will respond to changes by evolving. It needs to accept change as an inevitable part of the business environment, so it can maximise their opportunities whenever change comes along. For example, because of this pandemic, more people prefer to stay home. It means that restaurants can accommodate this trend by not just offering food delivery, but to have a more extensive selection for to -go/delivery selection. Some restaurants are being very creative, trying to bring the dine-in situation into peoples home, for example, giving music selection to enhance customers’ experience. On the other hand, caterers can accommodate this trend by offering unique meal selection, more catered to smaller group/family, instead of big groups. Another example is offering curbside pickup, where consumers can order their favorite foods and pick them up without ever coming into contact with any workers. Being flexible also means being more efficient, so we can reduce costs to achieve the right solution.
2. Adding new products and services when needed
On the previous point, we discussed how being flexible can help our business. This is closely related to the second point, which is adding new products and services to your business. Although this sounds simple, but executing it well can be very challenging. Businesses need to listen what customers need/want, and looking what is available and what can be done to accommodate customers. By adding more new products or services, not only we can reach more customers, but we can also reach wider customer segment. For instance, restaurants are starting to offer catering business, even if it looked a bit different than what restaurants usually do. Some of them were promoting their catering menus as family meals, smartly leaning into existing packaging and food offerings. Additionally, some of the other had expanded their catering menus to include grocery items.
3. Embracing technology
We have seen nowadays where technology has been an essential part of our life. Doing grocery, ordering food delivery, etc., can all be done by using a phone. In the meantime, restaurants and catering have been using technology for their business, like contactless services, including contactless ordering (online or via an app, for instance) as well as contactless delivery and pickup. There are many benefits of using this technology. By eliminating touch points between customers and workers, restaurants can limit the spread of germs. Contactless delivery and pickup can also speed up processes; by eliminating wait times for customers or the time it takes to fetch an order from the kitchen for pickup, restaurants streamline services and get food out faster.
4. Connect with your community
This pandemic has taught us how valuable it is to keep in touch with your community. This is the time where we need to help each other, by helping and get supported by our community (community in the sense of restaurant community, fellow caterers, etc.). By sharing our problems, experience, we can get more insights/solution for our business situation, exchange knowledge, which can lead to growing your business. Not only that, but we can also build a new partnership, where both partners can benefit from each other. For example, share kitchen, share warehouses, have a collaboration between restaurants etc.
5. Get the words out
It is essential that restaurants/catering always come up with new menus, innovations or even new promotions. However, it happens often that the targeted customers don’t receive the messages, which unfortunately this will impact the successfulness of a new product/menu. Thus it is essential to get the words out, mostly through since social media. People are even more active on social media right now since the pandemic. And not to mention, many small businesses rely on social media since they have a limited advertising budget.
We have pointed out some factors that can help our business to survive. When you can’t predict the future, the safest way is to embrace the situation and look out for any gaps in the market you can fill in. Try to understand what the trends are during this challenging time. We need to respond quickly to the changing environment to be able to stay ahead of the curve. And don’t forget, humans are social animals; we will eventually return to sharing good times while dining out more frequently — together with family, friends, and the good company of like-minded strangers. By the time everything gets back to normal, we are ready to welcome our guests again, with new vision, new offers, new way of doing business, and of course more prepared.
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