1
Location
10
Employees
2
Years in Business

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Yummy’s, a family-owned Korean barbeque restaurant, celebrated its two-year anniversary in an unconventional way—with hand sanitizer and face masks. 

Yummy’s is one of many local restaurants trying to navigate the uncharted waters of pandemic food service. 

It began two weeks ago when Sun Choi, one of the restaurant’s owners, started noticing a decline in customers. 

“We did everything other restaurants were doing, making sure everything is clean, sanitizing everything, sanitizing door handles – we even had all our employees wear face masks too, handling food,” Choi said. “But even then, I know people were becoming more aware of the coronavirus and getting worried.”

 

Text-to-takeout enables customers to communicate with restaurants through text messages, place orders, and pay securely from their phones. Learn more

In response, the Chois looked for ways to be part of the solution. They realized one way they could help was through their food, and ended up giving away 300 plates of fried rice to the community. 

Over the next few days, patronage continued to decline. After lower and lower customer counts, Choi began to panic and wrote a heartfelt post on his personal Facebook page. 

“I just did an honest post, just kind of our situation,” Choi said. “I took a picture of our restaurant- it was empty. I just said ‘hey, this is what’s going on right now. Last week was our worst week ever and nobody expected this, but it came.”  

In his post, Choi offered to sell “family-packs,” a family-sized meal for $30. Much to his surprise, the post received close to 500 replies, and he was overwhelmed by the response. 

“To be really honest, I was expecting maybe ten people to say ‘hey, I want that package,’” Choi said. “But since hundreds of people already responded, I was freaking out and I didn’t know how to handle it except manually.” 

He turned to Podium, a business-to-customer texting platform not traditionally used by restaurateurs, to handle the demand.

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How Yummy’s uses Podium’s text-to-takeout

  1. A customer sends a message to Yummy’s through a widget on the restaurant’s website.
  2. That message gets rerouted to a Podium inbox, the home for all inbound messages.
  3. When Yummy’s responds to the customer, the message arrives as a text message to the customer’s phone.
  4. Sun Choi records what city the customer is in, and coordinates his family pack drop-offs accordingly. (For ten or more orders from the same city, Sun Choi will organize a delivery).
  5. Customers pay for the order through Podium’s secure Payments feature.
  6. Yummy’s texts the customer through Podium to coordinate the time and location of the drop-off.

———-

“Our phone lines are always blowing up, so it helps a ton for us that customers can just text us, and I can take orders and respond to everything over text,” Choi said. 

Choi continued seeking creative ways to get customers, including “family drop-offs.”

 

“We’re just going city to city and I’m just saying, ‘Hey if I get at least 10 orders, I’m going to go out wherever you guys are at and I’m going to drop off these family packs. Tell your family, friends, neighbors, and I’ll be there; I’ll make it happen; I’ll drive two hours.” 

Despite Choi’s creative solutions, he says Yummy’s is barely breaking even. This may seem discouraging, but Choi says as long as he can afford to pay his employees, he’s happy. 

“My advice to restaurant owners is: don’t think about making a profit right now; you have to think about surviving,” Choi said. “Just think about making sure that you keep your employees. I have a couple of single mothers and they’re worried about paying rent and things like that. My goal is to make sure that they can survive and be able to provide for their kids.”

Whatever the conditions, Choi is determined to persevere, and encourages other local restaurateurs to do the same. 

“I know right now it’s hard for a lot of restaurants,” Choi said. “But I just want to tell them: just jump on and just think outside the box. Because right now, every business has to reinvent how they’re doing business.” 

 

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100+
Local Restaurants
500+
Locations
1,000+
Orders Processed

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In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, many states have imposed social distancing policies that force restaurants to close their dining rooms. Now, restaurants are banding together and quickly adapting to new technologies to overcome this new challenge and maintain their businesses open. 

Eateries across the country have taken creative approaches to leverage off-site ordering, which, a few weeks prior, would have been only a small portion of revenue. Takeout, Curbside pickup, and delivery services have all been emphasized as effective methods to serve customers while maintaining a safe environment for employees and patrons. Some restaurants are even offering “contactless” ordering methods, with online-ordering, pay-by-text services, drop-off delivery, and more. 

But for restaurants that don’t already have access to curbside pickup and other technologies that enable contactless service, shutting their doors became the immediate option not to lose their business. 

When our team learned about the restaurant closures, and how scarce tech solutions are in the restaurant space, we decided to offer local restaurants a suite of tools to help them curve the rate of loss of business, closures and employee furloughs. 

“For many restaurants, the only means for survival is curbside delivery. We have never offered this service, so we somewhat scrambled to put this in place,” says Larin Warner, owner of The Protein Foundry. “My sister called me and suggested the Podium platform and that it could help our sales right now. She offered to come to our house to get us onboarded and all setup! Podium was the perfect solution for a seamless transition to curbside delivery!”

Throughout all of this, open, convenient channels of communication have also become essential so that restaurants can reassure their customers in this challenging time. By leveraging texting tools for their websites, their teams are able to easily engage with their patrons, updating them about new business hours, improved sanitation policies, and how customers can order. 

“Webchat has helped with our production flow and communications to our customers. It has been so nice to not tie up the landline with multiple incoming and outgoing calls, plus our customers have loved texting when they arrive,” said Warner. “Our business has had to make so many changes in this new climate, and we are doing everything we can to stay relevant and adapt to the new mandates to stay open.”

The ability to seamlessly chat with a customer from their initial order, through payment and final pickup has helped restaurants stay open. Local eateries are also creating a sense of safety by enabling their patrons to pay via text and avoid the current discomfort of handing over their cards. Caterers have also benefited from the text to pay approach as patrons can continue supporting their favorite businesses by buying now and enjoying later. 

“So far, Webchat and Payments are great for our catering. It is a no brainer for our communication with customers. I am shocked at how many questions are coming in from our websites every day and how many orders are filled,” says Kyle Roney, owner of 53 Management. “I am confident that when the world goes back to normal, we will increase our bookings for catering, weddings, events, and more because of how quickly we have been able to communicate now.” 

Though COVID-19 is causing large-scale effects on restaurants, those that leverage text-based solutions to adapt to the current climate will more easily minimize the crisis’ impact on their business. And by leaning into non traditional approaches and tapping into the local community, together, we’ll be able to keep restaurants’ doors open, ensuring all of us can revisit them after the crisis subsides. 

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19
Locations
88
Employees
9
Years in Business

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Though telemedicine has been around for more than a decade, the most recent outbreak of coronavirus has led to millions of Americans seeking care by a doctor electronically, many for the first time. But while telemedicine can help to reduce the spread of COVID-19 by keeping patients at home and out of crowded waiting rooms, standing up and expanding remote care programs is only the first step.

To reduce in-person traffic to their clinics and to ensure everyone can receive care, Urgent Care for Kids is lowering the cost of their telemedicine clinics and enabling Webchat to more efficiently triage incoming requests.

As a bonus step to continue raising awareness about the virus, they’ve also enabled an interactive COVID-19 pre-screening tool on their website to help families understand when it’s appropriate to seek in-person testing at one of their clinics or be seen online.

We understand that this is a difficult time for so many people, and we’re working hard to help families gain access to testing and remote pre-screenings,” says Melissa Bauman, Senior Vice President of Telemedicine. “Virtual care is an incredibly valuable tool to help families receive needed care from home and avoid unnecessary exposure.”

Over the past month, they’ve engaged in more than 13,000 text interactions updating patients with the latest COVID details, their latest protocols, following up on patient visits, and sharing the best take home practices to improve kids’ health.

We’re grateful for healthcare providers like Urgent Care for Kids who have gone above and beyond to ensure that everyone in their communities has access to, not only the most updated information on COVID-19 but affordable online healthcare options that help them to stay healthy and safe.

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16
Employees
1
Location
75
Years in Business

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Even though many businesses are closed, pawn shops have seen a spike in business the past couple of weeks since they are technically essential financial institutions. Now more than ever, people are looking to pawn retailers to help them make ends meet during the COVID-19 pandemic via trades for crucial goods and loans custom-tailored to their needs.

As one of the top pawn shops in the country, King’s Jewelry & Loan is using Podium to remain operational at a time when face-to-face interactions are limited. To showcase their commitment to staying open for those in their communities, they’ve transitioned most of their interactions online. They have started to leverage Podium to enable text-based payments as they socially distance. “It’s so easy, we just send a text and get paid,” says Sam Shocket, owner. “Our customers love the convenience, and we love the fact that we’re able to stay open and keep serving our community.”

They’ve also started using Podium to keep their customers informed on their employee policies and inventory, maintain open communication with clients, and encourage curbside trades while keeping both their staff and customers safe. 

As customers visit pawn retailer’s websites in search of a grand bargain or short term loan during this time of great need, shops need to create convenient interactions that foster comfortability, safety, and drive future business into the store as the crisis rescinds.

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20
Locations
25
Years in Business
36
Employees

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With virtually all healthcare businesses currently needing a way to send real-time communication while minimizing the need for in-person and phone interactions as much as possible, many practices without an easy-to-use solution are forced to shut their doors. Thankfully, WGM Orthodontics is leveraging text messaging to keep patient appointments and continue to serve its community. 

 

With text messaging, they are able to ask patients to wait in their cars, rather than congregate in the waiting room. The clinic can then text them when they have a room ready. Their patients have expressed gratitude to the clinic for keeping their health a top priority.

WGM said, “The response time and communication from Podium has been exemplary. In a situation that is ever-evolving and things must be done quickly, it’s nice to have support that’s willing to hop right on it. That personal contact and relationship is invaluable when you can’t wait for digital, impersonal, and automated customer relations departments to get things done as quickly as needed in a crisis.”

 

Using the Messenger and Webchat tools to text patients during this crisis continues to ensure that every patient continues to receive the healthcare they need, giving them the opportunity to not only make things convenient for their patients, but also protect their staff and patients alike.

 

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