After 3 months of closure in the spring, a curfew in several cities and now another month of confinement, restaurateurs are under severe pressure. So as not to lose sales altogether during the reconfinement, they are implementing new strategies and offers to cope and survive.
Delivery and takeaway during confinement
During the months of March, April and May, the vast majority of restaurants initially ceased all activity. The situation was unprecedented, and restaurateurs needed time to get organized and develop new strategies, particularly for the sale and delivery of takeaway meals.
This autumn, during reconfinement, things are different, and many restaurants have immediately chosen to stay open, not to welcome customers, but to allow takeaway sales and delivery. Some chains have been able to limit the damage by developing formulas two or three times a week.
In Paris, the new curfew decreed to prevent consolidation, in force since the evening of Friday November 6, will further complicate their task: from now on, all sales will have to cease between 10 pm and 6 am. But customers seem ready to play the game, and are ordering earlier than normal, which could save some business.
The question of profitability and customer relations
These adjustments enable restaurateurs to continue to generate sales, even if they are of course much more uncertain and less significant than in periods of full activity.
Furthermore, sales generated during the administrative closure period by takeaway sales and deliveries are not included in the calculation used to allocate the solidarity fund. As a result, restaurant owners cannot be penalized, and the government has taken into account the uncertain profitability of "click & collect".
Many restaurants have also chosen to offer take-away sales as a way of maintaining a link with their customers, or even to make themselves known beyond their usual perimeter. To do so, they have chosen to develop their own digital solutions, or to join the big delivery platforms such as Just Eat, Uber Eats or Deliveroo, which are multiplying their offers for restaurateurs.
The restaurants' objective is as simple in its definition as it is complex in its realization: above all, to survive this new administrative closure, and to ensure that customers will return as soon as the health situation and government instructions allow.