Operations
Top online COVID-19 coverage for QSRs: From borrowing options to menu must-haves
Need guidance on how to get a loan without the help of a traditional bank? Wondering about your QSR's coffee sales in a pandemic-wary world? This review of COVID-19-era coverage across a dozen websites provides a wide-angle view of the essentials QSR leaders need to know.
May 5, 2020 by S.A. Whitehead — Food Editor, Net World Media Group
As some readers already know, QSRweb is part of a family of business-to-business news websites owned by parent company, Networld Media Group, a Louisville, Kentucky-based publisher, event producer and creative services company. Collectively, Networld's B2B websites cover a dozen business areas as diverse as banking and digital signage, to food sites like this one, kiosks and commercial vending.
In recent weeks amid the massive business fallout of the COVID-19 pandemic, the editors of these websites have been cranking out an enormous volume of quality coverage around every facet of the crisis. And a lot of that coverage also applies to the quick-service restaurant industry, its leadership, daily operations, strategic priorities and COVID-19 coping mechanisms.
That's why we thought it was high time to share some of the wealth of knowledge across banking, fintech, customer experience, technology and, of course, food service. The overarching goal then of this roundup of coverage is to help QSR operators do their jobs better in this challenging environment that has forever changed the business of quick-service restaurants.
"The lesson here is that entering a recession, there is opportunity for premium brands to succeed despite economic conditions."
-Quote from Cheryl Hung in Vending Times article on potential pandemic-era coffee sales
Below then, please check out this smattering of some of the recent pandemic-related coverage across Networld's 12 websites, including one Biblical Leadership site blog which – although outside the traditional business realm – still provides some spiritual food for thought for restaurant leaders during these trying times.
- But we begin the roundup with a recently published article by ATM Marketplace and World of Money newsletter Editor Pat Shea, who specializes in coverage around the banking industry. In this feature, Shea details the data on how business will change as a result of the pandemic, including best practices for next steps to take for all businesses, including QSRs.
- Although the Biblical Leadership website leans more toward feeding the spiritual needs of leaders, QSR leaders might find much of its information helpful as they press forward in this difficult business environment. After all, everybody needs food for the soul — regardless of religious beliefs — and this contributed article on how to work through tough times makes something that happened 50 years ago particularly applicable to the needs of today's business leaders.
- The pandemic and its drive-thru and carryout QSR imperative has made topnotch digital signage more important than ever before. So, for every QSR with any kind of digital signage, Digital Signage Today Editor Bradley Cooper provides this review of the kind of litmus test brands can use to determine whether their digital sign tech needs a refresh or complete re-do.
- From fellow food site editor, Cherryh Cansler, at FastCasual, comes another kind of business litmus test for QSRs seeking to determine the truly best moment to reopen their doors to dine-in, even if their state's executive orders have deemed it okay to do so legally.
"Many traditional banks don't have the resources to review and distribute new PPP loans to small businesses."
-Blue Vine's Brad Brodigan in Mobile Payments Today article
- Blogger and Qu CMO Jen Kern, for Networld food site, Food Truck Operator, providedthis article covering how restaurants, like QSRs, can build better COVID-19-era menus that support the changed state of the food service industry and its pressing needs to keep brands in the black.
- At the Interactive Customer Experience Association, Managing Director David Drain provides this piece to detail how restaurant and other business leaders can get involved in a newly forming restaurant industry working group that will meet virtually to share best practices around the customer experience, in this story.
- In this piece, Kiosk Marketplace Editor Elliot Maras explores what will be required around interactive screen sanitation and demanded by pandemic-wary customers for all industries that use kiosks to serve customers in coming days, with QSRs top of the list of those businesses that must have an action plan in place.
- Mobile Payments Today Editor David Jones reviews how some financial technology companies are helping businesses, like QSRs, both complete applications for government loans and succeed in obtaining such monies, particularly for brands that want or need to look beyond traditional banks for sources of support in this process.
- On sister food service website, Pizza Marketplace, this reporter — who is also editor of that site — covers the latest university-level research from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, regarding which types of brands should even begin considering the possibility of using AI tools across their systems.
- In this Retail Customer Experience website article, two customer experience experts take a detailed look at the absolute criticality of personalization in every retail brand's customer experience strategy in these pandemic-era days and after.
- And finally, on Networld's most recently added B2B website, Vending Times, Editor Elliot Maras looks back at 2010 data to look forward at how sales of that eternal pick-me-up and QSR brand staple, coffee, will be affected by the pandemic and what it means for brands.
About S.A. Whitehead
Pizza Marketplace and QSRweb editor Shelly Whitehead is a former newspaper and TV reporter with an affinity for telling stories about the people and innovative thinking behind great brands.
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