WINSTON-SALEM, N.C., April 15, 2020 /PRNewswire/ -- Last month, the restaurant industry went from thriving to shutting its doors and laying off millions of workers when COVID-19 prevention measures disallowed in-restaurant dining. Prior to the pandemic, many restaurants had been slow to adopt newer ordering technologies. As a result, when carry-out orders became restaurants' primary means of survival, taking orders over the phone became an unmanageable situation.
With restaurant phone lines in constant busy mode, SWIPEBY, Winston-Salem, NC, is a new app that allows customers to browse menus, order food, pay for it, and have items delivered curbside. Customers don't touch restaurant door handles, open car doors, exchange money or have credit cards touched by cashiers. The security risk of providing credit card information over the phone is eliminated.
Customers can order from a wide range of single location eateries, as well as popular national chains like Village Tavern, Firehouse Subs, Jersey Mike's, Famous Toastery and more. In the future, services, where you need to drop off or pick up items, will come online, including dry cleaners, grocery stores, beauty spas and more.
The app has a low cost of entry, and lower ongoing fees than those charged by delivery services like Grubhub and DoorDash. "There's nothing like our model in the market," said Founder, Carl Turner. "Delivery services charge between $5 to $8 to the customer and 25 percent or more to the business. SWIPEBY costs nothing to the customer; business fees are typically under 3 percent."
Prior to coronavirus, SWIPEBY grew at a rate of 30 percent month-over-month. Now the company is growing 100 percent or more daily. In the last two weeks, 200 restaurants in 19 states have come online, with 2,000 more to be added in the next few weeks and more than 5,000 restaurants in the pipeline. The app's users total more than 10,000, with new users growing by the hundreds daily. In the first two weeks of COVID-19, weekly restaurant orders grew 1,000 percent and weekly user signups grew 3,000 percent. SWIPEBY will launch in Germany this coming week.
"COVID-19 changed everyone's world," added Turner. "Our technology was ready to help restaurants of any size, anywhere. We responded quickly to how the pandemic affected small businesses by slashing fees and charging nothing to on-board."
SOURCE SWIPEBY
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