Dublin-based Japanese restaurant chain Yamamori is considering opening a new premises to run its delivery and takeaway services when its three Dublin restaurants are allowed to reopen for normal business.
Yamamori owner Graham Ryan told The Sunday Independent that the chain's delivery and takeaway services, which it set up in conjunction with Irish digital food ordering solution Flipdish, have grown into much more than a stop gap during the COVID-19 pandemic and related lockdowns, and the chain intends to keep the services running when its restaurants reopen for dine-in operations.
"Considering Actually Opening A Standalone Shop"
Ryan told The Sunday Independent, "Once things reopen we're not sure that we'll have enough capacity to do takeaway and run a restaurant in the same venue. So at the moment, we're considering actually opening up a standalone shop that would serve the online business.
"We had our best five day period since the pandemic begin last week with over 400 orders, although that compares to the 5,000 we would have served each week at our three restaurants and club before the pandemic."
Ryan continued, "We got the takeaway going pretty quickly after the first lockdown. From when we closed our doors to when we started shipping food out the door it was about two and a half weeks.
"We had only done collection before but it was a very minimal part of our business and we’d never given it any focus."
Challenging At The Start
Ryan added that the move to online ordering was challenging at the start, but that Yamamori managed to do it in a very fast turnaround, and said, "We already put a lot of love into our website but we had to price everything, work on our packaging, find drivers and make a safe environment for our staff to work in. It was challenging but we got there."
Yamamori employed 160 people before the pandemic. Its takeaway service is run by 12.
Flipdish Irish Customer Number
Meanwhile, Flipdish told The Sunday Independent that it has more than doubled its Irish customer number since the start of the pandemic. In February of 2020, Flipdish had 560 hotel and restaurant customers in Ireland. In February of 2021, it had 1,152 hotel and restaurant customers in Ireland.
© 2021 Hospitality Ireland – your source for the latest industry news. Article by Dave Simpson. Click subscribe to sign up for the Hospitality Ireland print edition.
