Response Strategies Used during COVID-19: Restaurants in Dhaka City

Abstract

COVID-19 jeopardized the survival of the worldwide restaurant business. The purpose of this article is to evaluate the effectiveness of restaurant response strategies to the COVID-19 crisis during more than two months of lockdown in 2020 in Bangladesh. A two-stage approach was used to collect the data. The restaurants were chosen from eight Dhaka City clusters that were selected judgmentally. A standardized questionnaire was utilized to collect data from 221 restaurant owners selected through simple random sampling. The findings show that during COVID-19, all three strategies online reliance, cost reduction, and resilience- influenced restaurant profitability. Restaurants may replicate some of these successful response strategies developed during COVID-19 in the future. To increase profitability, restaurants should develop good relationships with online food delivery companies.