Partnering Helped Restaurants Meet Demands During Pandemic

Takeout restaurant sign

Business survival amid the global pandemic has been a challenge but some brands were able to leverage the situation by tapping technology and turning lemons into lemonade. Digital guest experience platform Paytronix has partnered with restaurants, using its technology to help them quickly transition from sit-down dining to take-out delivery and curbside pickup.

“Paytronix Order & Delivery continues to add functionality, such as our Rapid Launch, that empowers restaurants and c-stores in this time of industry transition,” Tim Ridgely, head of Order & Delivery for Paytronix, said in a statement on Wednesday (May 20). 

The company highlighted five brands — Little Greek Fresh Grill, Local Cantina, Zukku Sushi, Elote Mexican Kitchen and Oliva Italian Eatery — that leveraged its technology help people “in these unprecedented times,” Ridgely said.

Some of the companies using the Paytronix Order & Delivery platform got creative with experimentation and used the solution to ramp up sales in previously untapped areas such as groceries, meal kits and to-go cups for alcohol. 

Little Greek Fresh Grill, based in Florida, delivered for customers by bringing them more than just prepared meals. Seeing how people were clamoring for grocery items, Little Greek Fresh Grill used the Paytronix platform to provide them via a “community store” setup in almost all of its 44 restaurants.

Jennifer Bujalski, director of administrative services for Little Greek Fresh Grill, said Paytronix trialed curbside grocery delivery via a beta test and it was “a huge help,” allowing for contactless service end-to-end, from ordering to payment to pickup. 

Bujalski said the restaurant chain was able to buy hard-to-get items from their distributors “especially at the beginning of this when people couldn’t find chicken or ground beef or eggs, cheese, potatoes, gloves, toilet paper, paper towels — that’s all stuff we were able to get. We were able to sell that to our guests online.”

Local Cantina in Ohio used Paytronix to sell margaritas to go. Zukku Sushi, headquartered in Florida, used the platform for its temporary ghost kitchen. Elote Mexican Kitchen and Oliva Italian Eatery, both in Texas, used the platform for online ordering and email marketing.

By using cloud technology, Paytronix was able to help restaurants and convenience stores deploy rapid processing of digital orders. With more than a dozen integrations, the platform also delivers a good user experience with an easy-to-use ordering interface. Paytronix also teamed up with third-party aggregators to further enhance the digital ordering experience.

The latest PYMNTS Order To Eat Tracker® done in collaboration with Paytronix showed that quick-service restaurants (QSRs) were at the forefront of drive-thru dining, third-party delivery and other off-premise approaches.