With the country reeling under the wave of new Covid-19 infections, the economic tragedy is as devastating as the humanitarian one. While national and state authorities continue to muddle through the crisis, the common people have learned to rely on themselves, and each other. Among the multitude of businesses in crisis, one of the hardest hit is the restaurant industry.
In order to help these businesses stay afloat, DotPe has rolled out a compelling campaign #OrderDirect urging people to avoid using third-party aggregator apps for ordering food from local restaurants and use DotPe’s platform to do it directly from them. The campaign also features a video that shows a restaurant owner describing the woes of being associated with food delivery apps.
Paying for offers and discounts along with extraordinary commissions to these apps leaves them with almost nothing to sustain their businesses. Established in 2020, Gurugram- based DotPe offers a number of digital solutions to restaurant businesses, helping them with their payment and order-related needs. The platform’s sophisticated enterprise- grade technology has already empowered F&B players like McDonald’s, Starbucks, Haldiram’s, Social, among others.
Say s Anurag Gupta, Co-founder and COO, DotPe, “With the second wave of the pandemic, the restaurant owners are once again struggling to keep their businesses alive. Many food aggregators are worsening the situation by introducing heavy commissions and guidelines that squeeze these businesses. This is why we want to encourage people to support the local restaurants and start ordering from them directly.” For the campaign, DotPe connected with over 15,000 restaurant partners across the country.
“The campaign revolves around motivating people to change the way they order food. With over 15,000 restaurants now on DotPe, a customer can easily order directly using WhatsApp and support their local restaurants. In fact, if the deliveries for direct orders increase, the restaurant owners can employ more people and take control of their business,” says Gupta, adding, “We received an overwhelming support from restaurants and influencers outside this group.
Restaurants across the country now feel the need for customers to order directly and are connecting with us.” Given the uncertainty of the pandemic, many are worried over its long-term economic ramifications, and for this reason DotPe plans to continue with its campaign in future as well. “Through our social media platforms we will continue to urge people to order directly from restaurants even after the lockdown. We have seen what restaurants had to go through during and after the first wave of the COVID-19. We don’t want them to take a hit yet again,”says Gupta.