In order to reduce exposure and infections in the COVID-19 crisis, Restaurants in Ghana and globally are seeing fewer to no customers each passing day because customers are staying clear of public places. Restaurants in Ghana who rely on Dine-In and Take Away have been hit the hardest due to the COVID-19 crisis. This means their revenue stream has derailed and it does not seem like things are getting better.
With this in mind, here are a few tools or guidelines that will help Restaurants in Ghana make sales during this crisis and be able to salvage the business after the crisis has passed.
GO DIGITAL!
We are in difficult times and the only way to reach your customers is online. Customers who are self / mandatory quarantined are constantly spending their time online and you need to be able to target these customers in order to make sales.
OFFER DELIVERY SERVICES
If you do not already offer delivery services, what are you waiting for? Delivery service will make your menu more accessible and available to your customers. And the best way to let your customers know this will be through your online channels. As an incentive, you can offer free delivery within a specific location or reduced delivery charges.
PROVIDE 'CONTACTLESS' DELIVERY AND DRIVE AWARENESS
Provide “contactless” delivery using the guidance provided by the Ghana Disease Surveillance Department to restaurants in Ghana to ensure all delivery orders are properly sealed in tamper-evident packaging and your restaurant is working to provide delivery people with sanitization materials. You can have a user campaign to drive awareness of the measures you are taking to protect your customers that way customers can feel confident about trusting you with their health.
BE TRANSPARENT ABOUT THE COVID-19 PREVENTIVE MEASURES YOU ARE TAKING IN YOUR RESTAURANT
You need your customers to feel safe with you. This means you need them to know why they should trust you to not expose them to COVID-19. One way to be transparent is to shoot a video detailing how you are practicing social distancing and the other preventive measure of COVID-19 in your restaurant. You can also show step by step video showing how their meal is handled from the stage of cooking to packaging. This will definitely get them interested.
JOIN ONLINE ORDER-TAKING SERVICES
Apart from using your social media channels to take orders online, restaurants in Ghana can join order-taking services such as Jumia Food and Homechow. This way you have different avenues for marketing your menu and you can reach a vast variety of customers. Another advantage is that if you do not have the resources to offer delivery, these order-taking services can take care of that.
USE A CLOUD-BASED RESTAURANT MANAGEMENT APPLICATION
Using a system that can be accessed from anywhere such that you do not need to go onsite to manage your restaurant will help you immensely. From a managerial point, you can get access to your key reports in the safety of your home. Using a cloud-based system means you can reduce the number of employees who need to go onsite such that your employees onsite can properly practice social distancing in order to reduce the spread of the virus. When orders come through online, employees who take orders can do so from the safety of their homes with only a few managerial staff and kitchen employees being onsite to take care of the orders.
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DISCOUNTS OR PROMOTIONS
If there has ever been a time for discounts and promotions, this is it! Customers are probably not buying from you because your menu items are expensive and they want the most cost-effective choice in this time of crisis. You can offer discounts or run promotions such as 'Buy one, get one free', a family-size meal at a reduced cost (this will go a long way to support families that are quarantined), etc. You can also run a promotion where when a customer recommends you to another customer and they make a purchase, the customer who made the recommendation gets a percentage off their next purchase.
IMPLEMENT A REWARD-BASED SYSTEM
The main aim of reward-based systems is to increase loyalty in customers. You can set up a system where for each meal purchased, the customer gets 10 points and 10 points equal GHC10 so after they have accumulated enough points, they can use them to purchase their next meal.
There are so many other ways to increase your sales in this period but if you start with a few of the tips mentioned in this article, you will be a step closer to making it during this crisis.
Until the COVID-19 crisis passes, do not forget to:
