Hi there,
I'm Tobias Sherson, head of operations for Local Restaurant PTY LTD which  has a new online platform for ordering meals for pickup only.

As a former Publican, the restaurant business is a topic that is very close to my heart and it is extremely painful to watch the businesses struggle throughout the Corona Lockdown.

Something had to been done to support the owners in their time of need.

Enter localrestaurant.com.au which is the creation of my wife Lauren Sherson and her Tech co founder Rafael Cohen.

The company was founded 12 days ago in response to all the local restaurant owners discussing how their margins on delivery orders via the various delivery apps were killing there business. Couple that with the fact local residents were crying out to know which restaurants were actually open and who offered normal take away as picking up food was a legitamate reason to leave the house and get your excercise at the same time.

At localrestaurant.com.au ( our online offering) we provide the customers to order their favourite meals to pick up with 100% of the profit going back to the restaurants as we charge 0% commision on all orders. We have also partnered with a local charity and are encouraging customers to order a second meal which will be donated to a local resident in need, as well as doubling up on the money making its way to the restaurants bottomline.

The restaurant owners are so grateful to find that people are out there activly looking for ways to help them stay afloat.

I encourage everyone to do what ever it takes to keep all industries ticking over.

Local Restaurant is just our little contribution to protect an industry we care about.

If you own a restaurant, please get in touch and we can get you up on our site ASAP to get your profits rolling in again.

Hi Yee,

My husband (Ed) and I are the owners and operators of an organic sourdough bakery in a ski resort (Whistler, BC, Canada).

We are located at the Creekside gondola base and serve locals and tourists going skiing, snowboarding or biking. We opened in March 2019 and have had a great first year!

You can read about our company here:

https://edsbred.com/

We also have over 20K of genuine followers on Instagram: eds_bred

We had a team of 8, open 7.30-5pm five days a week before COVID-19 hit Canada.

We were selling out of baked goods every day, but once the Whistler Blackcomb ski resort shut down, we knew we could not operate any more.

Now we have had to close our bakery, we have set up an e-commerce store through our website. It is easy to create and sell products through this Square Space platform, but we had to upgrade the site and invest some money to do this.

It would make sense for us to continue to operate a pre-order system and sales online once we have reopened. This will hopefully boost sales more while improving our customer service.

We are now selling bread through our website in the shop section with pick-up in-store by appointment only. Once someone has ordered, we will contact them with a Saturday afternoon pick-up time by email. This is keeping our regular customers supplied with good healthy bread for now and increasing their loyalty to us. Our customers respect the five-minute window, to ensure they do not come into contact with other people. They take their bread from a collection point located by the door.

We are spending a lot of time collecting google reviews from our loyal customer base to boost our ranking and ensure a rapid return to profitability when we open our doors again.

It's time-consuming dealing with emails with every customer and we are looking into a CRM system to alleviate some of this admin.It's been a complete overhaul in software and a huge learning curve in the past few weeks.

Please feel free to contact us if you think our story would be relevant to your publication.

Kind regards,

Natasha and Ed Tatton
Bakery Manager / Master Baker
Directors

Response from owner & director of Goldeluck's Doughnuts
Phillip Kuoch
https://www.goldelucks.com.au

Like all businesses right now, Goldeluck’s has had to quickly pivot and re-position ourselves, in what has been a fast changing environment. As majority of Australians are now at home and missing out on social occasions like birthdays, anniversaries etc, we’ve been offering doughnut gift boxes to help people stay connected, whilst social distancing. 

Whilst we’ve had to reduce our trading hours at our three retail stores across Melbourne, there has been increased hours for our staff, as we have re-purposed their positions to help pack, handle and deliver our gift boxes for online orders and delivery. With everything that’s happening now with the COVID19 outbreak, it has forced us to really focus and grow on our online channels and so far, we’ve been having great success, as our staff have been driving up to 1000km around Melbourne, delivering our doughnut gift boxes to our happily satisfied consumers.