Gaining ground during the uncharted times of COVID-19 has become the most important thing for every industry out there. For restaurateurs, the mandate on temporary lockdown of restaurant dine-ins has bogged down heavy, and restaurant brands continue to adapt their approach to foodservice.

How to emulate dine-in experience?

How to engage with customers?

How to survive these times and thrive?

These are important questions every restaurateur is trying to answer in a quest to enhance their customers’ off-premise ordering experience while staying afloat.

Here are our top 5 favorite unique Restaurant Offerings Emerging From COVID-19 that every restaurant brand can tap into.

DIY Meal Kits

Lack of time has always been one of the top reasons for dining out. With dine-ins coming to a halt now, most people are needed to prepare more meals at home. While it can be fun to prepare meals for the family once in a while, it becomes pain overtime.

Restaurants can solve this pain proposition for their customers by offering unique meal kits. Keeping convenience in mind, restaurants can make ingenuous 'take and bake at home' meal offerings that families can order in or take-away. Include simple easy-to-follow instructions on how to prepare, serve, store, and reheat the food for repeated use.

This is the best time to step outside the box and come up with creative solutions like Do-it-yourself Pizza kits, reheatable family meals, 20-minutes-to-cook meals, and so on. Marketing this proposition online on all your social channels can put you ahead in the game even when it's not business-as-usual.

Creative Coronavirus Specials

Who does not love a bit of levity right now? These are challenging times, and a little perky approach wouldn't hurt while making your customers smile. Offer innovative Coronavirus Specials like Quarantine Lunches, Lockdown kits, or Social distancing desserts - and distinguish your take-aways.

It is a great way of saying - we're in this together, and we'll weather the storm together, in a cheeky tone that lightens the stress of stifled times.

You can also include Coronavirus essentials like free face masks and sanitizer kits to promote a positive experience and to normalize the new stay home, stay safe policies.

Family-bundled meals

With more people living with their families right now, it is imperative that cooking meals for everybody in the family have taken the front seat. Let's face it: cooking for oneself and cooking for everyone at home, are two very different things. In such times, affordable family-bundled meals can be of immense help to many people.

Create unique dinner packages or lunch packages for different ethnicities, and cultures, and market them smartly on your social channels. Run hashtags like #LetUsHandleDinnerForYou, #TakeABreakFromCooking, and promote your Family-bundled meals.

Don't forget to ask for reviews from your customers, and don't shy away from talking about these positive customer experiences you've created. These are not the times to play humble - show off what you've achieved, and expand your customer base.

Create a Rewards Program

Got an application that keeps track of rewards or points? It's time to put that to use. Create an out-of-the-box rewards program, rewarding certain points for each order placed, reviews published, take-aways made, and family-meal booked. Send them free goodies like a free appetizer, a full-family beverage like a margarita pitcher, 20% offer on their next order, and so on. The goal is to make your customers place repeated orders with you, and count on you for their meals.

Deliver packages of 'Fresh Fruits &, Food Boxes'

With the rise in social distancing norms and the Stay Home, Stay Safe rule, shopping around for fresh fruits or vegetables is not on the top of the list for many people. A good packed meal with a selection of two or three fruits or vegetables is a great way of positioning meal boxes!

Instead of limiting selections to evening meals or afternoon lunch, take it a step beyond by adding fresh fruits and vegetables to the order - this way, your customers get to order in all the goodness of fruits, and veggies too. Position it as a “Nutritious Box', and provide options to your customers to choose fruits and veggies of their liking.

Get Unique, Get Ahead!

Challenging times require unique solutions. Let's put our best foot forward and do the best we can, in order to stay afloat during these times, and not only survive but thrive. Use these unique restaurant offerings and tap onto the silver lining of the COVID-19 cloud!