New Services and Systems—Revamping Go! Go! Curry! During the Pandemic
Hello friends,
It’s been tough couple of months after the outbreak of COVID-19, and the whole world is still suffering from growing new cases, economic setbacks, and worries about the uncertain future. Our business has largely been affected, but all of the staff members in Go! Go! Curry! strive to both endure and contribute to everyone’s lives at the same time. Today, I’d like to share some of the measures we have taken in order to establish a new Go! Go! Curry! during the pandemic.
Safety First
Safety first—That was and continues to be our primary concern under this virus-stricken situation. We set up a cashless system to avoid human-to-human contact, introduced the “no mask, no service” rule, and equipped counters with transparent shields. Of course, we still ensured 6-feet social distancing, and implemented curbside pickup to protect our customers and employees.
New Menu Items for New Lifestyles
We also adapted our services to people’s new lifestyles. After the shelter-in-place order, people started eating at home more often, so we created two new menu items we call Family Platter Meals, larger combo meals that a couple of people can enjoy. There are two types of platters: one for meat lovers and the other for veggie lovers. Also, we made our Home Run combo more flexible – tofu katsu is now available as a main katsu topping.
Outer Borough Outreach
Another new plan we began was to expand our business service area without opening up new brick-and-mortar stores. All of our New York stores are located in Manhattan, which is an area that lost many of its commuters and visitors. So we needed to look out into residential areas, and one solution was to team up with a other companies that deliver to Brooklyn, Queens, and The Bronx, in addition to Manhattan. We expanded our delivery zones to their maximum, and recently expanded into a ghost kitchen setup in Brooklyn to offer our curry dishes themselves even further into the outer boroughs of New York City by way of delivery. We also started working with New York local grocery store chain, Midoriya NYC, and they have started to carry our frozen curry sauce pack and bottled tonkatsu sauce. Speaking of the frozen curry sauce pack, you can not only use it as Japanese curry sauce but also mix into dipping sauce, and top on pizza and pasta. It’s very versatile.
Franchising Operations
As for our franchise business, we overhauled our operations system into a fully digital form. This was not a simple transformation. All the employees needed to get familiarized with the new system, so we spent months on installation and staff training.
It wasn’t easy to do all of these changes in a few months during this uncertain period, but I am very proud of our employees who made things happen. We are trying hard to turn the impact of COVID-19 into something positive. Next time, I will talk about Go! Go! Curry!’s servingware and containers, which are very important to consider when you are running a food service and business. Until then, don’t back down and stay genki!
If you’re looking for a partner for starting a Japanese restaurant franchise or a curry restaurant business, we have a lot of experience and resources. Please feel free to contact us.
About The Author:
Tomoko Omori was born and raised in Japan. She came to the USA alone to become an actress, where she received an AA degree from college majoring in Drama. She received a scholarship to study music at the American Musical and Dramatic Academy in NYC.
After working for TV broadcasting and a publishing company, today, Tomoko is the CEO of Go! Go! Curry! America, a grab-and-go Japanese comfort food restaurant franchise. There are over 75 locations in Japan, and 11 in the USA. She says, “Our mission is to serve our tasty curry nationwide in the USA and Canada to enrich the lives of our customers, employees, franchise owners and the communities we serve. Our vision is to create millions of satisfied customers, contented tummies and miles and miles of smiles for everyone!” Tomoko received the Nikkei BP Woman of the year award in 2015.