How Having A Long-Term Plan Can Help Restaurants Handle the Short-Term Crisis

4 Min Read By Devon Wright

Here’s a wild guess: your plan for 2020 didn’t involve a restaurant-crushing pandemic. Neither did mine. As the general manager of Yelp for Restaurants, my job is to help restaurants succeed. In the first half of the year, that job suddenly got a whole lot harder.  In a typical month, we used to help restaurants seat over four million diners. In April, I watched that number plummet to nearly zero. Overnight. 

As I sat and looked at the numbers, my heart sank. I knew restaurants were in trouble. And if restaurants were in trouble, so was our Yelp for Restaurants business. 

Enter Erik Oberholtzer of Tender Greens.

How to Turn an Obstacle into an Opportunity 

Erik is uniquely qualified to advise and inspire our industry during the pandemic. He’s the force behind Tender Greens, with chef-lead locations in California and Boston. When I heard Erik talking with Josh Kopel on the Full Comp podcast about how his ten-year plan helped him navigate the 2009 financial crisis, I…