Move Over Skip The Dishes – HaliHub Is Local And It’s Cheaper
HALIFAX – Throughout the restaurant industry, many operators are feeling buyer’s remorse for signing up with delivery companies like Skip The Dishes and Uber Eats. While these companies provide an important service for restaurants large and small, there is nothing small about the cut they take for delivering food.
Bill Pratt is one such owner who is tired of handing over so much money to the major companies. The Halifax entrepreneur owns 15 restaurants and three franchises, including Cheese Curds, Studio East, and Habaneros Modern Taco Bar.
Like all restaurants, the ones owned by Pratt became heavily reliant on delivery companies when the Covid-19 Pandemic kept people away from eateries. The new problem restaurants faced was how to make a profit when the delivery service was taking a 30 percent cut.
“When the lockdown happened, everyone went to take-away, and that exploded,” said Pratt. “The downside of that is: the profit margin in the restaurants is 4.3 percent, and these big guys… take between 23 and 30 percent of that…it’s hurting the restaurants.”
“There’s no one who is going to like it, they’re forced into doing it,” he said. “That’s the problem, myself included.”
At one point early in the pandemic, Pratt got together with longtime friend Brian MacDonald and they talked about ways to help the hurting restaurant industry. Out of that conversation the idea of HaliHub was born; a locally owned delivery service that takes a cut of less than 10 percent.
“We sat down and had a conversation,” recalls MacDonald, who spent 20 years as a food service executive. “We always wanted to do something together. We’ve had a long-lasting friendship and we were just talking about the industry. Bill had just reopened after being closed. And it all boiled down to: how can we help the industry?”
Pratt says, in the new economic world we live in, restaurants need a delivery service. But the vast majority don’t do enough deliveries to hire a driver and buy a vehicle. So, an affordable compromise is needed.
“You might do 10 orders a night. Well, that doesn’t justify hiring somebody, paying them 13 bucks an hour and a vehicle, and insurance,” said Pratt.
“We can’t afford to have our own delivery, so how else are you going to get the food to people?”
Halihub.ca recently launched with 30 drivers. MacDonald and Pratt are now focusing on getting as many restaurants in Halifax to sign up as possible. On top of the restaurants Pratt owns, HaliHub landed five new clients in the first week, giving them more than 20 that have signed up.
“We want the restaurants to push this to their customers and say, ‘order from HaliHub, because it helps us,’ ” explained Pratt.
HaliHub officially launched on Monday. Right now, users must order through the website. But MacDonald anticipates the ordering app to be available within two weeks. So far, the launch week has been a success.
“It’s the start of Burger Week, so the last two days have been very good,” remarked MacDonald.
Halifax isn’t the only jurisdiction where people are pointing fingers at the major delivery companies. Back in May, restaurant leaders in Alberta called on the government to put a cap on the fees Skip the Dishes and others could charge.
Pratt is reminding people that restaurants everywhere operate on small profit margins, even at the best of times. It’s crucial that restaurants have a cheaper delivery option right now.
“When you’re counting pennies, every penny counts,” he says.