Crisis Management #37: Columbus Food Adventures on why it'll emerge stronger from the pandemic - Women Of Influence

Columbus Food Adventures thought its business was done when Ohio shut down dine-in restaurants in March.

After all its business was based on going into restaurants. In groups. That’s two things that couldn’t be done then and are still limited today months later.

“In a sense, we were starting from scratch,” said co-owner Andy Dehus. “We just had to completely re-configure everything.”

A business built around tours taking people to food turned into a delivery service bringing food to people.

Months later it’s now delivered more than 2,500 dinners for two to customers from more than 50 Central Ohio restaurants spanning 35 different country’s cuisines.

Co-owner Bethia Woolf said it wasn’t exactly how they expected to spend their 10th year in business but it’s turned into a positive. The Trust Fall delivery service and its new gift box program are expansions that have brought new customers to the business and will give it more diverse sales for when tours can resume.

“One of the real differences is in frequency,” Woolf said. “A food tour is something that you maybe do once or twice a year. ... We do get a good number of repeat customers, but it’s usually spread over a longer time period. But with Trust Fall, we have people who are now regulars who order it once a week. We’ve had some customers who will order it multiple times a week.”

Sales are actually up, though profits are down because the margin is smaller on delivery versus tours.

Dehus said it’s not a replacement for tours, but it’s proven to be a strong business of its own.

In this episode of Crisis Management, Woolf and Dehus discuss building that business in the past several months as well as what they need to see to feel comfortable restarting the tour portion of the business, beyond the taco truck tour it does still offer.