Eased lockdown levels have not necessarily softened the blow of the Covid-19 pandemic’s impact for delivery-only restaurants, says Manny Nichas, chief executive of The Mozambik Group.
“In many ways, it has simply served to lift morale while leaving cash registers wanting.
“As has been reported, deliveries have shown to settle at around 20% of normal turnover.”
Nichas adds that “while it is better than nothing, it remains impossible to sustain a full restaurant infrastructure.
“Level 2 introduces takeaways and customer collections, but I doubt that it would have more than a 5% additional bottom line impact.”
Nichas believes that actual sit-down restaurants will only see the light of day again early in 2021, “and that under social distancing conditions, restriction of capacity and ergo revenues.”
The commercially untenable status quo means that restaurants will have to innovate, and quickly.
“In a delivery or takeaway environment, restaurants now have a greater competitor set as burgers, pizzas and more traditional hot food delivery items had the delivery market sewn up pre-lockdown. This means that not only is it new territory to be totally reliant on this mechanism, but restaurants have had to re-engineer entire business models.”
“Being able to do deliveries is no panacea, but rather a stepping stone to a new way of doing business.”