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.

Many restaurants are getting creative while handling coronavirus-related curveballs, and adapting by selling groceries, ready meals, and pantry kits. As diners look for ways to support their favorite local establishments and restaurateurs do everything they can to stay afloat, the restaurant-turned-market model is shaping up to be a potential solution. 

Here are a few tips and best practices from restaurants that have implemented a market model:

Sell grocery bundles and staples

Berkeley’s Donato & Co. has set up a grocery-specific menu outlining all of its offerings, from housemade tagliatelle to potato chips, preserved tuna, arborio rice, and half-off wine. The restaurant is also bundling its pastas, sauces, and cheese into meal kits for guests to cook at home. San Francisco Italian restaurant Prairie is operating as a full-blown general store stocked with pantry essentials, toilet paper, and fresh meat. 

“I sort of just ran with it, wanting to keep the lights on and keep some people working,” Prairie chef/owner Anthony Strong told SFGate. “I didn’t put together a P&L for it. I didn’t do a sales projection for it. I’m just starting to wrap my head around it. I figure if we can ride this thing out rather than completely boarding up, it will allow us to already be open when it’s time to drop it back into restaurant mode,” he said.

Offer take-and-bake items

Tartine Manufactory is offering some ready-to-cook items in addition to takeout and delivery menus. “We’re doing frozen cookie dough, scones that people can bake at home, and seasoned, uncooked short ribs, among other things,” said Suzanne Roberts, general manager of Tartine Manufactory. “We were toying with the idea of doing paper towels and toilet paper, but we’re sticking to food and beverage. Coffee beans are something we always sell, and we have bone broth, soups, juices, and cooked beans by the quart.” 

Establish a plan for social distancing

As restaurants and grocery stores limit the number of people inside at a given time and encourage six feet between people in line, they’re finding new ways to implement these guidelines. While there are over 65,000 grocery stores in the U.S. and the top 25 of U.S. grocery chains generate 80% of sales, according to market research firm Chain Store Guide, people are increasingly turning to small groceries and restaurants with pantry items during these times.

To help shoppers save a spot and stop the spread, restaurants and grocery stores are offering to reserve a shopping time to pick up groceries or join a real-time waitlist on OpenTable. Restaurants can also choose to set reserved hours for seniors, medical staff, or other groups. Businesses on the platform can customize their profile by letting shoppers know what steps they’re taking to foster a safe shopping environment and adding up-to-date inventory information. 

Support local vendors and farmers

In Austin, Emmer & Rye is selling groceries such as dried pastas, fresh-baked breads, preserved local citrus, housemade butter, and items from its larder with online ordering and curbside pickup available. San Francisco’s Nopa is offering $32 grocery bundles with fresh produce, dried housemade pasta, half a dozen farm eggs, Rancho Gordo dried beans, fresh mozzarella, and half a pound of smoked bacon. LA’s Republique is continuing to support local farmers while offering $40 produce boxes full of kale, celery, fennel, herbs, and more, available for pickup. The list goes on. 

Stay organized and over-communicate with customers 

While takeout, delivery, and grocery operations present their own set of challenges to many restaurants navigating uncharted territory, staying as organized as possible helps. Tartine’s Roberts advises, “We put together a standard operating procedure: There’s signage up for where the delivery drivers can come in. We separated that from the normal guest entrance, and as a smaller space, we’re only allowing five guests in at one time.” The Bay Area has officially implemented such rules for grocery stores and restaurants, and other locations will likely follow suit.

To learn more about how to set up reserved shopping times with OpenTable, visit this page. For additional COVID-19 information, visit our preparedness resource center.

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.)

Sell takeout meals directly on OpenTable

If you’re offering a limited menu for takeout (including prix fixe menus, meal kits, and family-style items), you can set up a takeout meal Special as an easy way for diners to book and pay for takeout directly on OpenTable.

“We’re looking for any and all ways to get the word out about our new takeout offerings – the boxed meals have been a real hit!” says Thomas Nguyen, Chief Marketing Officer for Peli Peli Hospitality Group in Houston. “We appreciate the opportunity to get setup quickly with OpenTable Specials as another ordering platform.”

Not only does offering takeout on OpenTable allow you to drive more orders, but it can also help you respect social distancing guidelines and keep your community safe–just set up your availability in OpenTable based on how many orders you allow for pickup at a given time.

“OpenTable Specials has assisted in communicating our updated to go menu with guests, manage pre-orders, limit crowds of guests, and encourage spacing upon pick up,” says Alexa Dallas, Event Manager for Sea Creatures in Seattle.

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.