Friday, May 1, 2020
Austin Mac Nab, CEO at VizyPay, noted that quick-thinking restaurateurs who changed their business model during the shutdown are providing essential services during the coronavirus pandemic. Their resilience and ability to change how they process customer transactions, by taking call-in orders and creating an online presence, have begun to pay off, he stated.
A few weeks ago, processing volume for credit card transactions across VizyPay's restaurant merchants was down by 38 percent, Mac Nab stated. Those volumes changed significantly during the fourth week of April 2020, when VizyPay recorded a 15 percent sales increase among the same group of merchants, whose processing volumes were up by 35 percent, with a 38 percent increase in the number of credit card transactions.
R.J. Horsley, president at SpotOn, called the uptick in restaurant sales a remarkable transition that demonstrates the restaurant industry's adaptability. These changes will enable restaurateurs to get through the COVID-19 restrictions, while positioning them for unparalleled revenue growth when the pandemic finally passes.
"SpotOn has worked tirelessly to help restaurateurs quickly adapt operations to off-premise dining models," Horsley said. "This has primarily consisted of setting restaurants up with commission-free online ordering as well as equipping them with contactless mobile card readers for deliveries and handheld point-of-sale devices for curbside pickup."
Horsley also noted that SpotOn has been helping restaurants update websites and add online ordering capabilities, a process that he said only takes about 48 hours to implement. "After an initial drop in revenue through the first half of March 2020, the food & beverage businesses working with SpotOn have seen 27 percent growth in payment processing volume since March 30, 2020," he added.
An April 13, 2020, blog post published by Womply, titled "Report: the types of restaurants most impacted by COVID-19," noted that takeout restaurants with large fan followings have fared well during the pandemic. This category includes "fast food style restaurants like burger and taco joints, to-go standards like Chinese and Thai, and other 'eat at home' joints like BBQ restaurants, pizza places, and wing shops.
Womply researchers found that all types of restaurants in the takeout category have fared better than restaurants as a whole, except for Chinese food restaurants. "Well over half of Chinese food restaurants, who might otherwise be perfectly suited to thrive in a 'takeout only' environment, have stopped transacting entirely," researchers wrote. "No other type of restaurant in this group even comes close.
Indian restaurants, burger joints, delis/sandwich shops, and taco shops were the next most impacted. Chicken and wings restaurants, meanwhile, saw the lowest number of closed locations, with pizza places also doing quite well."
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