The coronavirus has caused the closure of many restaurants and one of those Mexican restaurants, known as Guerrilla Tacos, has come up with a new emergency taco kit idea to try and save some of their business (see image above).

They came up with the idea for a $150 emergency taco kit that included five pounds of carne asada, chicken, along with tortillas, salsa, cilantro, rice, and beans. They've already sold all of the first 74 emergency taco kits that they have made.

They wanted to try and monetize their leftover food and they also had a huge toilet paper supply to share as well, because they won't have any employees or customers coming in for awhile. For that reason, they used it as a marketing tool and decided to toss in several rolls of toilet paper with each taco kit, and some eggs as well.

Thanks to this move they will be able to continue providing dental and health insurance to their employees and they say that the business move is essentially helping to keep them alive right now.

Innovation In Times Of Uncertainty

Smaller companies can often be much more effective at innovating in the market quickly and because of this we have seen several different companies rapidly transition in the last few weeks to start making hand sanitizer to help the shortage.

But restaurants facing closure during this time are also having to get creative with how they will make money going forward.

This might mean looking to apps that help them get their products to customers who want them. And thankfully those platforms are there for those individuals, who are seeking help with making those exchanges with others in the market who want and need their products.

Another restaurant owner, C. Colby of Antico, has started looking for ways to sell through delivery apps, researching which ones offer the lowest fees. They too are also looking into making at home dinner kits that they can sell to families, as well as other creative ideas that might help keep them going.

“We’re going to try every possible way that we can to — at this point, not make money, at this point just to keep this business going,.. Any income that we try to do right now isn’t even necessarily to break even, it’s to sustain the losses that are going to be coming.” - Colby

Those who want to support local businesses, and the individuals and families running them in their communities, but who also don't want to risk getting sick at this time, have been supporting by ordering take-out, delivery, or buying gift cards to use for later.

For some restaurants that will not be doing any delivery or take-out, they are now facing a surplus of inventory that they need to deal with and hopefully monetize. This has prompted many of them to consider new and creative ways to do that, using fire sales or emergency food kits, at home cooking kits etc, to put the goods to use. Takeout might not work for many restaurants that are mostly sit down establishments and a growing number are stopping all operations indefinitely until things calm down.

People might have an issue getting what they need now but that will not always be the case.

Demands rise and fall and the market adjusts according to that demand, shortages come and go and hopefully the market responds through voluntary means.

Centralized restriction, planning, and stimulus, has only worked to create the problem and will only help to often make it worse. Also, suggesting that people shouldn't make voluntary exchanges at all isn't any coherent solution. People will always need and want to exchange with others to pursue a better standard of living for themselves.

Pics:
pic1
pic2
pic3