What a horrible year 2020 has been. But we survived!
For TableBoost, we had such high hopes for 2020 and it started off so well for us.
In January we started our Beta program and 9 of the first 10 restaurants we spoke to all signed up with TableBoost.
In February we added more customers and made improvements to our product. It was a great start! We had built a great team and we were flying high.
In March we got a few investors, and we were planning on officially launching the company at the New England
Food Show in Boston at the end of the month. We had our booth all set up, we created a great professional video,
and had prizes and shirts… then COVID shut down the show and essentially shut down the industry.
April, May and June were a blur as everyone scrambled to figure out what to do and how to survive. TableBoost
started looking at other food service related businesses that weren’t as hard hit as restaurants (including
cloud kitchens, convenience stores, caterers, grocers) and started experimenting with alternative sales and marketing
strategies, because walking into a business and asking to speak with the owner/manager just wasn’t happening
anymore.
So we did our research and experimented with different ideas, we continued to improve our product, and added
Dining Alliance the #1 restaurant GPO as a partner.
We slashed our budget but kept our team together and even brought on a group of amazing college interns.
We had no chance of achieving our initial goals in terms of # of customers and revenue, so we set new goals;
“Survive to thrive after COVID”; enhance our product; and build our brand.
Over the summer we kicked off our Social Media marketing programs with two posts per week on FaceBook,
Instagram and LinkedIn along with an active Twitter account. We then created a weekly Blog and now operate like a
well-oiled machine. We added QuickBooks integration and other product improvements. We discovered that Insurance carriers were very interested in the Risk and Loss reducing benefits of TableBoost. We also
started using HubSpot to implement outbound email marketing programs.
In the Fall we welcomed a new team of college interns, we added key Partners like Parts Town for replacement parts
and Ascentium Capital for equipment financing, and also discovered that TableBoost is a perfect tool for Hotels.
As the year is coming to an end, we are increasing our focus on the hotel industry. We are adding hotel specific
product features, we hired a hotel industry veteran as our VP for the Hotel Division and most importantly, we’re gaining more hotel customers every week.
So, having survived COVID so far, we are picking up steam at the end of 2020, and 2021 is looking very hopeful.
Stay Safe and Be Nimble!
Pray for a quick end to COVID, and 2020,
Good Riddance to Ye!
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