San Mateo's Rakuten helping small businesses during COVID-19

E-commerce company Rakuten Americas has launched Rakuten Ready, a new program designed to provide personalized websites for restaurants, enabling businesses to fulfill online pickup orders. The goal of the program is to better market smaller restaurants struggling during the current crisis and lacking the revenue needed to cover popular delivery application fees. 

“We wanted to create this environment to help. The way we’re going about this is to create something specific for each restaurant,” said Rakuten Americas CEO Amit Patel. “We wanted this to not be another cost when that’s the last thing they need.”  

The pilot program is being launched in San Mateo with a small group of around 20 restaurants. Patel says there is currently no cap on the amount of venues being added to the program, but the team’s focus is on assessing the functionality of the platform using a smaller pilot. 

“We’ve picked San Mateo for a reason. It’s in our backyard. A lot of our employees live in the area, and these restaurants are close and dear to us,” said Patel. “We’re starting with a smaller pilot to make sure it’s working for the customer and restaurants. We want to make sure the product is working well as fast as we can.” 

Ted Nakagawa, the owner of Kobeya on 25th Avenue, said business at his small Japanese restaurant has substantially declined. “It’s been very slow and we’re down 50% to 75%. When it’s busy we probably have 20 orders but when it’s slow one or two a day,” he said.

Kobeya is a small Japanese restaurant being run by Nakagawa alone. He said he had to let go of his two employees as business dwindled. 

“No one is coming here, and I’m worried about after the shelter in place order, that people will still be scared to dine here,” said Nakagawa. “I think I’m more focused on to-go orders now. It’s more opportunity for my business, and it’s an opportunity to let everyone know we’re here.”

Nakagawa says the partnership process has been easy for him so far and he’s hopeful it will help. 

Cathy Song Novelli, vice president of marketing and communications at Rakuten Ready says efforts have been made to make the process as user friendly as possible. 

“We’re giving businesses a step-by-step playbook on how to manage orders. Anything that they need they’ll have support. The whole idea is to make it simple and to make sure the orders work for the consumer,” said Novelli. 

She went on to say the company will remain a free tool for the restaurants until November 2020, stressing that the date may be pushed back but not moved forward at any point. 

Patel also stressed the possible safety aspect of consumers choosing to use a pickup option over delivery services. 

“There’s less touch points between the restaurant to the drivers and then to consumers. It’s important for us that our consumers are safe during this and abiding by guidelines,” said Patel. 

Visit rakutenready.com to learn more about the program.