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Tips for moving to delivery and pickup only in response to coronavirus

Our best wishes go out to all who are dealing with this challenging situation. As COVID-19 continues to upend the hospitality industry, our community matters more than ever. In the coming weeks, we’ll highlight restaurants that are continuing to feed their communities, how diners are supporting their local restaurants, and what we’re doing to support the industry. Head here for OpenTable’s preparedness resource center.

As some states and counties ban in-person dining for “social distancing” to combat the spread of coronavirus, restaurants have been forced to change how they operate. Operators across the country are adapting their menus for takeout and delivery so they can continue to keep the lights on and serve their communities.

Get tips and examples from restaurants that have modified their standard menu and process to meet new needs, plus best practices from the delivery experts at Postmates and Caviar.

Set up delivery now

After restrictions in San Francisco and New York went into effect, Atlanta’s Castellucci Hospitality Group proactively added Uber Eats delivery for all seven of its dine-in restaurants. The timing was smart – since then, the city’s mayor has limited restaurants to takeout only.

Luckily, companies are working to shorten the startup process for delivery. Postmates is onboarding and waiving all commissions for the first month for merchants that sign up for delivery and pickup across several markets, including San Francisco, Sacramento, Los Angeles, and Detroit (and more cities soon).Caviar is offering zero commission for 30 days to new independent restaurants that onboard before April 30.

ChowNow is offering all restaurants 100% commission-free orders through their ordering marketplace, curbside pickup functionality, flat-rate delivery, and expedited onboarding. They’re also offering OpenTable restaurants one free month for orders through Google, along with a branded email and social media post promoting their restaurant’s branded online ordering.

To reach the most diners, restaurants will likely want to look for a delivery provider with plenty of drivers and high demand.

Edit your menu to travel

Look at your current menu and see which items will be most conducive to being packed and transported. If necessary, add new ones that fit the bill.

“We limited our menus to only things that travel well – both entirely new dishes using ingredients we had in-house, and packaging certain items in different ways,” says Castellucci. The delivery menu for Castellucci’s tapas restaurant The Iberian Pig offers blistered shishitos and grilled octopus from the dine-in menu, while his modern Italian spot Double Zero offers new pastas like cacio e pepe and mushroom rigatoni in addition to the classics.

“We see restaurants offering both standard and modified menus with success,” says Laura Englander, who leads strategy and business development for Caviar. “If you’re looking to modify, we recommend offering a more ‘casual’ version of the dishes you’re known for. Keep your menus smaller and focused versus trying to get everything online right away. We recommend having a good variety of healthy options, filling options, and above else, sticking to what you’re good at!”

Create a special menu

Fine dining and tasting menu-only concepts may find that none of their dishes are suited for delivery. If you want to stay open, try something completely new. That’s what Chef Ed Lee at 610 Magnolia did, creating a special to-go menu with simple salads, proteins (think fried chicken and pot roast), and brownie desserts.

Seattle’s Canlis team took it a step further. After the acclaimed fine dining restaurant was forced to shut down its dining room, they opened three new concepts: a bagel shop, drive-thru burger spot, and family meal delivery (bottle of wine included.)

Control quality

Toby Franklin, COO of Ford Fry’s Rocket Farm Restaurants, made only minimal changes to the menus at the group’s Tex Mex concepts, but other restaurants required more adaptation for safe transport. “Our quality of product is tantamount, and we want to make absolutely sure that once we trigger to-go and delivery that the product ordered is nothing short of delicious upon arrival or pickup.”

Writing about delivery for OpenTable, reporter Priya Krishna learned that salads and sandwiches tend to sell and travel well, and they are easily recognizable to a wide range of diners. Skip items sensitive to temperature changes, or any that need to be plated to truly shine. If you’re serving ramen or pho, for example, deliver noodles and broth in separate containers with instructions for reheating.

Create family meals

On your delivery menu, make it clear how many people each dish will serve. Castellucci’s restaurant teams created new dishes specifically to feed families of two to four. In response to COVID-19 restrictions, Boston’s fine-dining spot Talulla launched “Casseroles for a Cause,” allowing diners to order frozen soups or baked pastas. (Bonus: for each purchase, the restaurant donates bagged lunches to families in need.)

Make it affordable

Englander advises keeping dishes as affordable as possible – $50 entrees are a tough sell for delivery, she notes. An upscale city menu’s $24 pasta may not translate to delivery, where customers expect more options around $14 or even $8. Many restaurants are offering 10% discounts on delivery items, compared to the same dine-in dishes, to find a friendlier price point.

Remarkably, Boulder’s Arcana is doing a pay-what-you-can model. They suggest a price for pickup and delivery meals, but invite customers to contribute what they can manage.

Offer pantry staples and meal kits

Seeing a need for pantry staples in Los Angeles, Tesse converted its cafe and bakery into Tesse Market and Cafe, a full-service grocery, selling toilet paper and napkins, dairy products, produce, meat, pastas, house-baked bread, bottled water, and wine.

“The farms and purveyors we buy from are not the same people supplying the chain grocery stores,” the team posted on Instagram. “With the shutdown of all dine-in restaurants for the next couple of weeks, it is important that we as a community find a way to keep the economic cycle flowing and ensure that these businesses will still be up and running when we come out on the other side.”

In San Francisco, the live-fire restaurant Prairie assembled pantry boxes and ready-to-reheat meal kits for pickup, with a roll of toilet paper and bleach wipes inside each one. This week’s menu included spring chicories in a buttermilk dressing, a confit duck leg with mushroom gravy, pappardelle, burrata, and a slice of salted maple cake to share. Plus, all items are refrigerator-stable for up to five days.

They have also turned their restaurant into a general store during the citywide lockdown, offering canned seafood, dried pastas, soups, meats, and more. Customers can order groceries and supplies online, reducing the need for in-person contact.

Involve your staff

“Our number one goal is keeping our staff employed for as long as possible,” says Castellucci. He’s putting managers to work in line-level positions so he can keep paying them a wage.

Similarly, Canlis’ new casual solutions are keeping their staff of career servers and wine experts working, even if the work has changed. Whether it’s helping manage delivery orders, facilitating takeout, or otherwise shifting responsibilities, do what you can to take care of your staff.

Reduce person-to-person interaction

Consider collecting payment before pickup or delivery to eliminate physical interaction between staff and diners. Many POS integrations allow you to set up an online menu where diners can order and pay ahead of time. Pre-payments guarantee the payment and eliminate the need for staff and diners to touch a credit card.

Another great option to reduce physical interaction is curbside pickup.

Get the word out

Post a link to your delivery profile page on your social media channels, and email your guest database to let them know they can order from you (see email templates here). Castellucci’s team plans to target people who may be working from home in the neighborhoods around his restaurants, both digitally and in person. OpenTable restaurants can use our guest frequency report to find a list of everyone who visited during this time period last year. Email the group directly and invite them to order delivery or takeout.

If you operate in an area affected by government-mandated closures, Englander recommends the following messaging: “Based on guidance from local officials, we are closing our dining room for the safety of our workers, our customers and our community, but are offering pickup and delivery through @caviar. Full details on how to request a contactless delivery option can be found in the link in our bio.”

To promote restaurants offering delivery and takeout options, OpenTable works with partners to highlight those restaurants for diners. OpenTable also surfaces takeout and delivery options on restaurant profiles so restaurants can keep revenue streams open even when reservations aren’t available. Showcase your delivery and takeout offerings by updating your profile. If you work with one of our partners and your delivery links are not appearing, email addonproducts@opentable.com.

Finally, leverage promotional opportunities that delivery companies provide. Postmates launched a $50 million relief fund to cut fees and offer free marketing services to grow merchant business over the next few months, and it’s always free to market promotions on the platform.

What your restaurant can do in the face of COVID-19

As COVID-19 continues to upend the hospitality industry, our community matters more than ever. In the coming weeks, we’ll highlight restaurants that are continuing to feed their communities, how diners are supporting their local restaurants, and what we’re doing to support the industry. Head here for OpenTable’s preparedness resource center.

The coronavirus COVID-19 is causing large-scale gatherings of all kinds to be postponed or cancelled, employees to take sick days, and many healthy customers to stay home. Needless to say, the effects of this crisis on restaurants have been swift and challenging. We reached out to a variety of experts to glean strategies for dealing with the ever-changing situation, from business and marketing to safety and crisis management.

First things first: communicate your plans

1. Reach out to guests

“Restaurants in areas where either actual cases or substantial fear of cases may want to let at least regular customers know what they are doing. Generally, reaching out to people with whom you already have a relationship with a brief, sincere, and honest message may be a good idea.

Your message should be brief and include:

1) Whose direction you are following (e.g., ‘We are following the direction from the county health department.’)
2) What steps you have taken/are taking (e.g., ‘We have placed additional hand sanitizer stations at all entrances and other locations. Please use them. We also are suspending our buffet services until further notice.’ Or ‘We have increased our use of disinfectants and are thoroughly cleaning all surfaces multiple times each day.’)
3) Consider informing customers about your employee sick leave policy. One of the biggest concerns has to do with kitchen or other staff coming to work when they may be sick.
4) Tell customers, ‘Please don’t come here if you feel sick or may have been exposed to the virus.’
5) Where to go for more information (e.g., link to the county health department or CDC, as appropriate—a local authority is better for this purpose) or who to contact with questions.”
— Douglas Levy, Doug Levy Communications and author of The Communications Handbook for Coronavirus and Other Public Health Emergencies

2. Prepare staff

“Communications about what might be coming are key. Being transparent is always a good idea.”
— John Shunk and Michelle Harden, Partners, Messner Reeves LLP

3. Inform and stay positive

“We’re doing marketing with the most positive and upbeat aspects that we can put out there. Not ‘We’re open!’ but messaging around the warmer weather, patios being open and dog-friendly, new spring menus, and Easter is approaching.”
— Pete Sittnick, Managing Partner, Epic Steak and Waterbar

Next up: minimize impact

4. Increase sanitation

“A lot of our clients have hand sanitizer at the door and maybe in the restroom. We recommend increasing mandatory hand washing to twice an hour rather than once per hour. Toilets, handles, and counters should all be cleaned more thoroughly. Any surfaces employees and customers will be touching need frequent cleaning.”
— John Shunk and Michelle Harden

5. Make space

“We will be eliminating half of our dining tables to allow for a minimum of six feet per table. We have a full-time sanitation position that is cleaning the restaurant and all touched surfaces constantly throughout the evening.”
— Josh Weeks, General Manager and Co-owner, The Plumed Horse

6. Do a wellness check

“We have always encouraged clients to have the manager on duty do a wellness check to ask employees: ‘How are you feeling? Do you or anyone you live with have the symptoms?’ We are trying to have employers encourage employees to call rather than come in if they aren’t feeling well.”
— John Shunk and Michelle Harden

7. Have sick employees stay home

“Tell everyone the importance of staying home if they are home and feel sick, and what to do if they are at work and feel sick. It’s really important that someone who feels sick knows to stay away from other people—you don’t want them walking up to the chef to tell them. Think through how you will handle a guest who walks in sweating and febrile.”
— Douglas Levy

8. Remind sick guests to stay home, too

“Think about a direct sign in the restaurant—on the website, phone recording—that says, ‘If you traveled to high-risk regions or are experiencing symptoms please consider joining us another time.’”
— John Shunk and Michelle Harden

9. Confirm reservations

OpenTable can automatically confirm reservations with diners to help reduce cancellations and no shows.

Keep track of your cancellations through the Reservations report in OpenTable by setting the status to “Cancellations.”

You can customize and resend booking confirmation emails to stay in touch, reassure, and set expectations with your guests. Diners may be worried, so remind them of all the precautions you are taking to keep your staff and guests healthy in keeping your restaurant clean.
– OpenTable team

Finally: prepare to your best ability

10. Limit spending

“From a purchasing standpoint, it’s buying strictly what we need to operate the restaurant and not being superfluous. Capital expenses are being put on hold.”
— Pete Sittnick

11. Consider delivery

“Create delivery set up ASAP, or do it yourself. You will have staff available (and at a much lower rate than one of the services) so offer free delivery and set up a system on your website.”
— Andrew Freeman and Amy Cleary, Public Relations, AF & Co.

12. Offer more items for delivery

“We expanded our delivery menu to include more dishes that travel well. We tested a few additional recipes and added new dishes to the delivery menu that are also available in the restaurant.”
— Doug Collister, Director of Marketing and IT, China Live

13. Encourage rescheduling

“One of the hardest-hit areas is private dining. Where we have taken deposits, we’ve encouraged groups to reschedule later in the year.”
— Pete Sittnick

14. Think local

“Restaurants should be leaning into local guests, whether it be for in-house meals, takeout, or delivery. Social media is a great place to promote these options, especially for spots that traditionally do little or no business in this area. As the crisis abates, have short-term and long-term strategies in place: locals’ nights, restaurant weeks, staycation rates, concept-appropriate promotions (use your agency or marketing team to get on this right now).”
— Andrew Freeman and Amy Cleary

Additional Resources:

ServSafe Guidelines
ServSafe Coronavirus Food Safety Employee Notice (in English and Spanish)
National Restaurant Association Information & Resources
COVID-19 Restaurant Guidelines from Messner Reeves LLC
Centers for Disease Control Coronavirus 2019 Status Updates

Stay up to date by following us at @OpenTableRestaurants.

Master your marketing: four bite-size guides and checklists to grow your business

A restaurateur’s to-do list is never-ending, and marketing might not be the top priority above everything else. But it’s an important part of running any business, and making even a small effort can make a big difference.

Beyond word of mouth, organic social media, paid campaigns, SEO, and your personal website can increase brand awareness and ultimately lead to more covers. For a bite-size digest on how to master your marketing, we’ve created four guides (and accompanying checklists) for each of these four topics so that you can learn tips, tricks, and new things to get more from your marketing efforts.

1. Maximize your restaurant’s paid marketing

Paid marketing is an effective way to promote your restaurant and spread awareness, but where should you begin? This guide breaks down what to consider when choosing a channel and how to measure a paid ad’s success. Google, Facebook, Instagram, Yelp, and OpenTable offer different opportunities to run paid campaigns, and it can be intimidating to choose a starting point. In this guide, you’ll learn the importance of booking intent, success metrics that matter, and the differences among the aforementioned platforms, plus a checklist with best practices.
Read more >

2. Generate compelling restaurant social media

Food and dining are some of the most shared and top-performing content categories on social channels, where mobile devices reign supreme and competition for eyeballs is fierce. Social media is ever-changing as it adapts to consumers’ evolving behaviors, and it’s important to stay ahead of the curve. In this guide, you’ll find tips on what to post to market your restaurant, what UGC is and how to use it, and how to take a great food picture, plus a checklist with best practices.
Read more >

3. Create an SEO-friendly restaurant website

Have you ever wondered why your restaurant doesn’t appear on the first page of Google search results? In this guide, we share why search engine optimization and Google search rankings matter. Get more familiar with what SEO is, why search rankings matter to restaurants, and how to improve your search ranking, pus a checklist of best practices.
Read more >

4. Build the ultimate restaurant website

A restaurant’s online presence is arguably just as important as its in-person environment. An attractive, easy-to-navigate website can bring your restaurant to life and give diners a preview of what to expect. In this guide, you’ll learn why your website matters, must-have website characteristics, and how to maximize your story, plus a checklist of best practices.
Read more >

Stay up to date by following us at @OpenTableRestaurants.

New diners, new opportunities: how restaurants turn first-timers into VIPs

In 2019 a whopping 70% of OpenTable reservations came from diners booking a restaurant for the first time. Given that you never get a second chance to make a good first impression, we reached out to restaurant owners and managers to learn more about their approach to serving new guests. While it starts with the reservation, that’s really just the beginning. The way the restaurant uses information, trains staff, shares data with servers, records preferences and experiences, and ultimately serves diners are all crucial to turning first-timers into regulars and VIPs.

New or Not?

While you may be able to tell if a diner is new to a restaurant from a reservation, it’s also possible that you won’t know. One person may be reserving for a group, so even if the person reserving isn’t new to a restaurant, someone else in the party could be.

Of course, the easiest way to find out if they are new to the restaurant is to ask. But should you ask?

At Saffron Nola, a James Beard-nominated Indian restaurant with Cajun influences in New Orleans, general manager Taylor Adams says yes.

“We like to ask guests whether it is their first time with us,” he explains. “If we don’t recognize the patron as a regular, we look at a guest’s booking history with the restaurant. Of course, they may have visited before under a different account or with friends, but there is a distinct chance that an account booked via OpenTable with no previous record is a new guest, and many also choose to note that it is their first time under booking notes.”

Likewise, at Ocean Prime restaurants, Director of Training Tricia Finke shares that servers are given a preview of what is printed from OpenTable when guests are seated. Managers also encourage service staff to ask if guests have dined with at the restaurant before.

“When making reservations, we train our guest services team to make sure we are getting our guest’s name, accurate phone number, and email address so we are able to identify if they have dined with us before,” she says.

Jerry Tabije, the general manager at Trailblazer Tavern in San Francisco, says he spends much of his day identifying first-time diners and VIPs. Being able to see who’s been and how often they’ve been in is a big advantage.

Nearby at Perbacco, owner Umberto Gibin says that while it isn’t a general practice for servers to ask if diners are new, some servers do. It also depends somewhat on when they are dining. “At lunch we have a lot of repeat guests; at dinner we have travelers and locals. With everyone, we listen to what they say.”

Service & Training

It comes as no surprise that it’s important to treat all guests well, regardless of whether it’s their first visit to the restaurant or not. But should they be treated differently if they are new?

According to Finke, no. “We treat new guests and returning guests very similarly because we believe every guest is a VIP. We train our associates to get to know our guests by genuinely interacting and understanding their wants and needs. It starts with their water preference, to the way they enjoy their steak and continues until we learn their favorite after dinner drink or dessert.”

At Saffron, Adams says they train staff to read guests’ energy and gauge whether or not a guest would like pointers to navigating the unique menu and experience. “In our pre-shift meetings, we discuss specific guests for the night, emphasizing any notes regarding dietary restrictions, preferences, or special occasions,” he says.

A high-touch experience is something Gibin strives for, too. He adds, “If the server sees the guest is hesitant or doesn’t understand the menu, if they are less sophisticated, a little extra care goes a long way.”

“I talk with my team before shifts to highlight what we can do,” says Tabije. “It doesn’t mean you have give away the house, but people are looking for the experience. Putting them at a table where you know they’ll have a good time, we curate the experience—if they order a couple of appetizers and they are vegetarian, we might send out an amuse to try out that’s also vegetarian.” [Read more…]

In demand: Dana Cowin and branding in the digital age

Every era has its hero. Dana Cowin was editor-in-chief of Food & Wine, one of the last bastions of swoon-worthy food magazine heavies, for 21 years. Over those two decades, Cowin and her team were gastronomy mile markers. They thoughtfully crafted the words and images that defined those legendary pages, inspiring a generation of curious eaters.

It’s no surprise that the woman who revolutionized how people read and learn about food and wine is busier than ever.

A Day in the Life

Cowin gets more done in a day than most people cross off in a week, and that’s just how she likes it. She is the chief brand advisor for Dig Food Group, host of the podcast Speaking Broadly, and a coach for others in the industry.

“I will sometimes begin the morning with a coaching client,” says Cowin, who consults with industry professionals eager to figure out how to make meaningful changes, just as she has in her own life. “For me, it was so hard to have the perfect job for so long and such a pain point, because I couldn’t leave until I could visualize what was next and take that leap.”

Cowin relishes devoting time to Dig Food Group, which just opened 232 Bleecker with Chef Suzanne Cupps, the chef of the celebrated Untitled. New Dig projects include openings in Philadelphia and more to come.

“Then, potentially there is lunch and putting in some time working at The Wing, where I pop in, open my laptop, and get a few emails done,” says Cowin, who supports nonprofits like the Food and Finance High School, New York City’s only culinary public high school.

In Cowin’s world, a big chunk of every perfect day would be reaching out to someone for her Speaking Broadly podcast, which airs each Wednesday for listeners on Heritage Radio Network, iTunes, and Stitcher. This spring, Cowin will also launch her own zine of the same name.

“This is one of the most exciting creative projects I’ve ever worked on, filled with people and meetings, and weekends with a week’s worth of email to catch up,” says Cowin. “I’ve been busy going out to new restaurants to see what people are eating and thinking about, so food adventures are always high on my list.”

When Cowin took over running Food & Wine in 1994, she and her team changed the magazine in a way that no one else had done before. It gave readers a different way to look at the world through the lens of food, rather than houses or fashion. Her zine aims to be of this particular moment, when food writing has become very personal.

“I like to help other people shout out broadly, pay it forward to pay it forward, and it goes to the heart of what people consider in their daily lives,” says Cowin.

Branding in the Digital Age: Staying a Step Ahead

The recent H.O.S.T. Summit + Social was founded by industry powerhouse producer Shari Bayer, the brains behind Bayer Public Relations. (The H.O.S.T. acronym stands for hospitality, operations, services, and technology.) Bayer brought her popular All in the Industry podcast to life in the inaugural event last month, when Cowin moderated a panel called “Branding in the Digital Age.”

Since leaving Food & Wine, Cowin has worked with several companies on branding projects, so she understands how the myriad digital tools available today can feel complicated and noisy to chefs and restaurateurs.

“So many chefs I know have become disenchanted with PR, believing they can do that part on their own and develop relationships one-on-one with journalists to pitch their story,” she says. “Plus, they often don’t have the budget for PR. Some of that is pragmatic and some is confidence, owning your own channels.”

To win the digital marketing race, Cowin favors the long game. But that requires vision and dedication.

“Authenticity is the starting point to any brand, because these days everyone can sniff out the inauthentic,” says Cowin. “There is so much in the world that is the same. To me, the difference between authentic and inauthentic is the difference between original personalities, not cobbled together through an algorithm.” [Read more…]