When the mandates requiring restaurants to close their dining areas started pouring in, foodservice equipment and supply dealers had to decide quickly how they were going to prepare their companies for this abrupt change. Foodservice Equipment & Supplies reached out to Rapids, along with several other dealers, to learn more about how the dealer community responded.
Rapids’ president Joe Schmitt was able to shed light on how Rapids is planning to move forward and how certain aspects of the business have been affected.
To adjust to this new reality, the web and sales teams pivoted to focus on providing products and information that would be most helpful for restaurants, including sanitizing solution and PPE. And in terms of sales, “Almost overnight, activity stopped, and it stayed that way for four or five weeks…We’ve seen those numbers come back – not to February or levels in normal times, though. But the last two weeks we are up 30% over the prior 4 weeks.”
The Rapids Contract & Design team saw a different kind of response. “The institutional type of projects are still rolling. None of the senior living groups we work with have hit pause. Some of the bigger restaurant projects from companies with multiple locations got put on hold, but we believe they will get back online relatively soon. The one-off restaurant projects have really stopped, and I think that’s because nobody knows what foodservice will look like in three months. And quite frankly, those smaller operators need every square foot for seating otherwise the cash flow does not work for them.”
Of course, with the current landscape in a state of flux, one of Rapids’ main goals is to keep their finger on the pulse of what’s happening in the industry – staying flexible and informed about what our customers need is the best way we can help them make it through to the other side of the pandemic.
Learn more about how dealers are handling this change by reading the full article: Foodservice Equipment and Supplies Dealers Prepare for New Normal.
