Creating Opportunities During a Pandemic

“Is this real life? What is happening?!?” The global pandemic COVID-19 seemed to come out of nowhere and sent us for unbelievable whirlwind of very unexpected turns. High hopes for the new year of 2020 has quickly turned upside down to gloom and doom. People are dying. Stock markets are plummeting. Shoppers are hoarding. Individuals are quarantining. Events are canceling. Schools are closing. Finally, businesses are shutting down. Employees are being sent home. Many are losing their jobs. The small business owners take a huge it – some aren’t going to make it. Everyone seems to be effected. Many of us that were not taking this so seriously in the beginning are finally being taken down with the storm. We are all scared. Seems like so many of us were doing so well just a week ago. It was so sudden. Our businesses are losing the battle. My clients are scared, they are weeping in anger and fear. This was not in our first quarter plan.

So now what? As a business owner of three very different types of businesses, I really saw first-hand how much damage an epidemic could do. I don’t want to get into too much detail, but we have been cutting major costs, problem solving and crunching numbers around the clock to see what we could do to stay alive. Everything took such a huge hit, I wasn’t sure if we would be able to recover. The absolute hardest was our restaurant and bar. The county mandated for doors to be shut down. Not being able to serve our customers meant absolutely no income for weeks, maybe even months. How could we possibly get through this? Within a couple days, I watched each restaurant in our small town having to shut down, closing their doors … one by one. I was determined that there was a way we could come together and make this work. I knew there had to be a creative solution. Then like a ton of bricks … it hit me. We can do DELIVERY. Now this was not new. I quickly researched the companies that already existed that did fast food delivery. However, none of them available in our small town, but with my website abilities I knew there was a way to create one. That’s when “Local Diners Deliver” was born. I was fired up and in three days had the plan, the brand and the website done. I wanted others to join but started with our own restaurant first … we launched and it was an immediate success! We are now open for business and ramping up our online sales for pick-up and delivery. We have had great feedback and we hope to continue to grow.

I truly believe you can take almost any situation and make it good. Sometimes it takes some creativity, but if you look hard enough, you’ll find that new opportunity.

Check out the website at: www.DinersDeliver.com