Re-Inventing Takeout As We Know It

There's an opportunity here that a lot of restaurant owners aren't taking advantage of.

An extremely large percentage of the population can't cook and an even larger segment of the population can't find food at their local grocery store. Some of them are in fear of going to the grocery store at all due to the virus. 

You should be completely revamping your websites right now to focus takeout and delivery. But don't just put up a PDF menu and hope that people call you. You need to make it as easy as possible for them to browse through your food and add it to their shopping carts the same way e commerce sites do.

And don't send people to services like Grub Hub or Door Dash where they can end up ordering from someone else. You should be setting up your menu like a shopping cart. Give people the ability to browse through your food like a shopping cart. Make it extremely easy to create a basket and checkout the same way someone does at Amazon.

Sell this as an experience you can have delivered right to your doorstep.

Be sure to take high-res well lit photos of your entrees under bright lights with no flash. You've got a lot more time on your hands right now. Use it to get some fantastic photos.

But take it one step further. This is a time to re-invent take-out as we know it. It's not longer just a for the people that are craving restaurant food and don't mind sacrificing atmosphere and great service. It's now an alternative to risking your life to go to the grocery story just to attempt to make good food with whatever supplies you can get your hands on.

People are bored out of their minds. Sell this as an experience you can have delivered right to your doorstep.

But, don't just sell them one entree at a time.

• Create packages that include meals for the whole family for as many days as you want. 
• Create easy to store containers of meals with nice instructions on how to re-heat them.
• You can even go so far as to not cook things like pizza all the way and have the customers finish them off in their ovens.
• This is not the time to panic and cower down in the corner. This is the time to think outside the box and be a leader in your industry.
• Take advantage of the fact that you've temporarily eliminated all of your overhead.

The big chains have already started doing some of this already. But I haven't seen anyone take a Blue-Apron type approach and sell packages (IE: Family of Three… Family of Five, Romantic dinner for 2)

All of this can be set up on your website.

And there has never been a better time to advertise on Facebook and Instagram. That's all people are doing is surfing the internet right now. Post high res photos of food with jokes about the apocalypse and you could easily go viral.

This could change how people eat at home forever.