In a bid to contribute its quota to the fight against coronavirus in Nigeria, Eat’N’Go, Nigeria’s master franchisee for the Domino’s Pizza, Cold Stone Creamery and Pinkberry Gourmet Frozen Yoghurt brands said it has donated N35 million worth of pizza to frontline workers.
The Chief Executive Officer of the restaurant group, Patrick Mc Michael made this known during a recent Instagram Live session with BusinessDay on the topic- Nigeria’s Quick Service Restaurants: Leveraging Technology To Sustain Business & Satisfy Customers’ Needs Amid Pandemic.
“It is easy to give money to the different arms of the government but you always wonder if that gets to the end source and so we decide to help those in the frontline; the emergency workers in the hospitals, the policemen/women, the firefighters and other security agencies,” Michael said adding that the company will continue to the fight against COVID-19.
According to the CEO, the company has been to among other locations, the Yaba isolation centre to render its support to the frontline workers.
“We found out that their day gets so busy that they sometimes do not have lunch and so we have given out N35 million worth of products translating to about 15,000 pizzas,” Michael said.
Despite been hit by the coronavirus pandemic as it reported a 60 percent revenue decline during the five-week lockdown in Lagos, Ogun and FCT, Eat’N’Go said it will not be relenting on its Corporate social responsibility (CSR) like the slum2school programme which is concerning the impacts of COVID-19 on underserved kids and education.
“There is no doubt we have suffered along with many other businesses in Nigeria during the period and we are still suffering as we are trading below what we should be trading at this time and I expect that to continue a bit longer but we are getting better every week as customers are feeling more comfortable,” the CEO said adding that while other companies were laying off staff, Eat’N’Go retained all of its staff but slashed salary.
The CEO encouraged other companies to adopt the ‘slash salary and keep all staff’ strategy as adopting such an initiative will help them navigate the pandemic.
“The pandemic forced us to think about how we do our business as we have gone from 80 percent of our business coming from dinning to zero and that has pushed our delivering up to almost 100 percent and have changed our revenue stream,” Michael said adding that the company has since then hired more riders to enable easy delivery to its customers.
