The “Restaurants Rising” program provides immediate and ongoing support in the following areas:

• Multi-lingual online food ordering platform and widgets to enable restaurants to seamlessly and easily add ordering capabilities to community websites.
• Support for no-contact doorstep delivery and minimal-exposure pickup options.
• Automated and streamlined collection and remittance of city/county/state sales and use tax.
• Business consulting and coaching on topics including how to drive improved order volume leveraging social media and the web, creating new family-style meals and packages for take-out, and customer service for curbside pickup and take-out orders.
• Training on best practices and templates for printed materials to promote employee and customer safety in accordance with City, County, State and Federal orders.
• Guidance on applicable emergency relief measures for micro businesses.
• Ongoing community supported forums and workshops.

To qualify to participate in the program, restaurants must be independently owned and operated, doing business in the Orange, Los Angeles, Riverside or San Bernardino county-area.

There are no costs to participate in the program. 100% of the webinars and support delivery through the RR platfform is fee.

However, the only cost for the COVID-19 Offer has a $135 one-time, third-party fee to connect to the Stripe payment processing gateway, and a Stripe per-transaction fee of 2.9% +$0.30.

A per-transaction “Service Fee” a $0.79 is charged to consumers to help offset the administration of collecting and remitting Sales and Use Tax. Please refer to the State of California’s Marketplace Facilitator Act of October 2019, for more information.

Until dining rooms are allowed to reopen, restaurants can only generate revenue orders through off-premise channels like delivery. But with commission fees as high as 30% per order, restaurant advocates say third-party delivery can cause more harm than good.

Earlier this month, San Francisco’s mayor capped delivery fees at 15% to help restaurants during the pandemic.

Restaurants Rising helps restaurants break free from reliance on third-party delivery services that take a big bite out of your revenues. Saving 20%-30% in fees can boost revenues, keeping restaurants open and staff employed.

The program provides restauranteurs with a low-cost online ordering and delivery platform, which allows for the retention of more than 95% of the order proceeds, giving financially stressed restaurants more revenues to pay rents, payroll, and offer more value to customers.

As well, third-party order and delivery services take 7 to 10 business days to deposit funds, with Loqalli, you are paid within 24-48 hours of credit card settlement.

Restaurants Rising is being offered by Socialincs, a technology-assisted marketing and consulting group, and a sister company of Opis, which launched the nationally acclaimed program to help “100 Businesses for 100 Days” in 2010 in conjunction with 14 cities, including Buena Park, Costa Mesa, Newport Beach, Santa Ana.

Local Southern California restauranteurs who wish to enroll in the Restaurants Rising program can participate in a series of informational overview webinars to learn more. The webinars will be held on Monday, April 27 at 2:30 p.m. PT and Wednesday, April 29 at 2:30 p.m. PT, and will repeat weekly on Mondays at 2:30 p.m. PT and Wednesdays at 2:30 PT.

To learn more and to register for the webinars, please visit: https://restaurantsrising.com/.

Coping with health and financial distresses can be overwhelming. In addition to the resources listed above, the program offering free access to area clinical psychologists, psychiatrists and mindfulness coaches via virtual support groups (not HIPPA compliant) and also will refer participants to free clinical resources for critical needs.

Stress is the number one trigger for mental illness. Restaurant owners are facing financial stress on top of the existing exacerbated stress of having to shelter-in-place. Others have had to make the difficult decision to lay-off employees. Many small business owners are suffering from adjustment disorder, which often brings on depressed mood, anxiety, norm-violating or inappropriate conduct, or other maladaptive reactions such as problems at work or school, physical complaints, or social isolation.

Adjustment disorder is associated with increased risk of suicidal behavior and substance abuse, as well as the prolonging of medical disorders or interference with medical treatment. When it persists, it may progress into a more severe condition such as major depressive disorder.

Per the National Restaurant Association, the industry is on track to lose about $80 billion in revenue by the end of April with industry-wide losses pegged at $240 billion through the end of 2020.

The NRA said 3 million jobs have been lost in the industry. Roughly 15% of restaurants have permanently closed or will by the end of April due to the COVID-19 crisis.

Only 1 in 5 restaurant owners believe with certainty that they’ll survive the COVID-19 pandemic, according to new survey data from the James Beard Foundation and the Independent Restaurant Coalition.

California is the world’s fifth largest economy – as such, the restaurant industry is a driving force of the state’s economy.

Per the California Restaurant Association Foundation, restaurants are the largest employer of people aged 16-25, 10% of the U.S. workforce works in restaurants, and 1 out of every 3 Americans got their start in restaurants.

Every dollar consumers spend with restaurants contributes $1.75 to $2.03 to the state’s economy.