Under the impact of the epidemic, restaurants have also been affected. What parts of the catering industry are less affected?

Under the epidemic, the first industry to be greatly affected is the catering industry.

Restaurants across the country lost customers overnight.

The income is gone, but the costs have not been reduced.

Rent has to be paid and wages have to be paid.

Under the huge economic pressure, even the star brand in the catering industry, Xibei Noodle Village, could not survive for three months.

Other small and medium-sized enterprises are in even more difficult situations.

Under the epidemic, what should the catering industry do?

In order to answer this question, Feng Shao Micro Class specially consulted an expert in the catering industry, Teacher Yan Han.

Teacher Yan Han is a partner of the well-known takeout brand "Zhiweiyouliang", the chief growth consultant of the catering training institution "Spoon Classroom", and the author of the industry best-selling book "Takeaway Strategy". He has a very thorough understanding of the catering industry.

01 Policy Recovery Period

As of today, the development of the epidemic is still unclear, and the catering industry will face a very long recovery period.

Things may be difficult throughout this year.

Specifically, the recovery of the catering industry will have three stages:

The first stage is the policy recovery period.

The second stage is the demand recovery period.

The third stage is the psychological recovery period.

Each stage has different coping methods.

Let’s look at them one by one.

First, it is the policy recovery period.

During the epidemic, many restaurants were subject to policy restrictions and could not do dine-in. In some places, they could not even do takeout and had to close their doors.

But the catering industry is a people's livelihood industry after all, and policies will not always suppress it.

It won’t take long for the policy to be restored.

As the epidemic situation improves, everyone resumes work one after another, and restaurants will also begin to open one after another.

So, what can restaurants do during this period of closure?

You can do two things.

First, reduce rent costs.

You can discuss with your landlord whether you can reduce or reduce the rent during difficult times, even if the payment is deferred.

Some places have now introduced policies to reduce or reduce rents for small and medium-sized enterprises.

For example, Suzhou’s policy is that for small and medium-sized enterprises that rent state-owned assets for business purposes, one month’s rent is waived and two months’ rent is halved. For those renting other business premises, owners (landlords) are encouraged to reduce or reduce rents for tenants, and the details will be resolved through negotiation between the two parties.

Many real estate companies, such as Wanda Plaza, Suning Plaza, Red Star Macalline, Longfor Group, etc., have announced rent reductions and exemptions for shops.

So, you can discuss with the landlord whether you can reduce or reduce some rent, or defer payment, so that we can tide over the difficulties.

Of course, you must also understand that it is not the landlord's obligation to reduce or reduce rent. The landlord may also have loans to repay.

Even if the landlord does not grant relief, it is understandable, and you cannot blame the landlord for this.

However, no matter what, don’t give up.

Discuss with the landlord rationally and emotionally.

If there is really no other way, at least you need to know one thing:

Article 117 of the Contract Law and Article 107 of the General Principles of the Civil Law both stipulate that if the contract cannot be performed due to force majeure, according to The liability shall be partially or completely exempted for the impact of force majeure, unless otherwise provided by law.

While discussing with the landlord, you can use the law as your bottom line.

Second, reduce personnel costs.

During the policy recovery period, most restaurants are closed and some can only do takeout.

When policies are restored, restaurants can open for business, but the epidemic has not yet completely passed, and people still dare not go out to eat.

At this time, takeaways will explode in large numbers.

The catering industry may have to rely on takeout for a long time to survive.

So

So, during the policy recovery period, you need to make personnel adjustments and reduce personnel costs.

For example, your restaurant originally had 20 people. But if you do takeout, you don’t need so many people.

Then you can divide these 20 people into two groups and work in shifts.

At the same time, you can change personnel salaries to daily wages or hourly wages to reduce personnel costs.

Discuss with the employees and work with the company to tide over the difficulties. Everyone will not have to do so much work, but at the same time, they will not be able to get so much money.

Alternatively, you can export your employees to other industries. For example, express delivery and takeout industries.

Cooperating with these industries on a temporary basis to export labor can not only reduce wage costs, but also prevent employees from being idle at home.

From a national policy perspective, the February policy is still very harsh on companies. Employees must be paid full wages regardless of whether they can go to work or not.

But starting from March, the policy allows us to negotiate with employees to get a salary that is no less than the local minimum wage.

For employees affected by the epidemic and unable to work in March, they can be paid according to living expenses.

02 Demand Recovery Period

After the policy recovery period, there is the demand recovery period.

Everyone has started to go to work and needs to eat, but they dare not go out to eat.

Whether you are a high-end restaurant or a roadside shop, you have to rely mainly on takeout.

At this time, you should pay attention to the following:

Takeaway can only be used for daily needs.

No matter how high-end your dishes are, as long as you do takeout, you have to change them to popular, everyday dishes suitable for takeout.

Whether you originally cooked boiled fish or a large plate of chicken, you have to change the dishes for a table of people into dishes for one person.

From the price to the amount of food, it must be suitable for one person to eat.

This is the most important point when doing takeout.

As a dine-in owner, you need to supplement your education with takeout courses.

Of course, there are also dine-in business owners who think that I have a lot of money and can survive even if I am closed for a few months. I will open my business again after the epidemic is over.

This idea is actually wrong.

Doing takeout during the demand recovery period has two purposes. One is to earn income to survive.

The more important purpose is to maintain the connection between our brand and customers.

If the customer cannot enter our store, we will contact him on the takeout platform and provide him with services.

In this way, in the next period, which is the psychological recovery period, customers will think of you first when they go out to eat.

03 Psychological recovery period

After the demand recovery period, there is the psychological recovery period.

When the epidemic passes and the alert is lifted, everyone can go out to eat.

However, the psychological recovery period does not just come.

Even if the epidemic has passed, for example, the government said that the epidemic is over on March 15, it is impossible for everyone to go out to eat in droves on March 16.

The psychological recovery period requires a slow process.

At the time of SARS, the SARS epidemic was actually over in June.

However, after June, the catering industry was still bleak for a long time.

The real consumption peak did not occur until the National Day holiday.

So, during the long psychological recovery period, we should not be particularly optimistic.

What do we need to do during this period?

The most important thing is that you cannot wait passively.

You cannot wait for customers to recover mentally and build confidence before coming to you for consumption.

But we should take the initiative to do a good job in epidemic prevention and hygiene, so that customers can come to your place with confidence.

In this way, you can get the flow during the psychological recovery period as early as possible.

How to do it specifically?

First of all, in-store hygiene and disinfection guarantees must be in place.

But this is not enough. What is more important is that your security work and results must be written on your face.

For example, the store is disinfected once an hour, each table is disinfected, hand sanitizer is provided, etc. These epidemic prevention measures must be posted at the door.

At the same time, these tasks must be written on the food delivery platform.

In this way, customers can be the first to build confidence in you, and you can get the earliest traffic.

04 Long-term impact

Policy recovery period, demand recovery period, and psychological recovery period.

After experiencing these three periods, everyone will be able to resume normal operations.

However, this epidemic will also bring some long-term changes to the catering industry.

The first change, everyone can see, is that the game restaurant will definitely not survive anymore.

If you continue to open a game restaurant, you will be an enemy of all mankind.

The second change is that customers will be more demanding on food hygiene.

Tasty is on the one hand, and the ingredients are healthy on the other. Hygiene will also become a very important aspect for customers to consider.

For example, if your ingredients can be traced to their origins and your health and epidemic prevention protection can be done well, this will always be your plus point no matter how long the epidemic has passed.

For example, if you can move the ingredients from the storage room in the back kitchen to the entrance of the front hall to show everyone how fresh your ingredients are, this will also be a bonus for you.

For example, if you can provide hand sanitizer and disinfectant at the handwashing station on a permanent basis, this will be a plus for you.

For example, if you can change the toothpicks from barrels that are prone to cross-infection to individual small packages, this will also be a bonus for you.

For another example, if you can change the pre-dinner buffet snacks from large plates to individually packaged ones, this will be a bonus for you.

……

The third change is that after the epidemic passes, there will be a new outbreak of takeout.

Because people who did not have the habit of eating takeout before will be forced to eat takeout for three meals a day during this epidemic for a period of time.

Taking out food is actually in line with human nature. In line with the laziness in human nature.

Once everyone passively experiences this kind of humane service, they will never go back.

It is difficult to move from luxury to frugality, but it is easy to move from frugality to luxury.

So, in the long run, there will be a new outbreak of food delivery.

You have to seize this opportunity and think about what you can do.

Final words

Policy recovery period, demand recovery period, psychological recovery period, and long-term impact.

Today we summarize the response strategies of the catering industry from these four aspects.

Hope it can be helpful to you.

In general, this epidemic will have a greater impact than SARS.

But don’t be anxious.

Although there are difficulties, we also have ways to deal with them.

Finally, Feng Shao’s micro class would like to express special thanks to Teacher Yan Han for the advice he gave us.

I think these suggestions will also inspire other industries.

I wish you to get out of the crisis as soon as possible.

I also wish you can turn this crisis into a turning point.