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Bhavuk Kaul, How Gift a Plate Is Trying To Help Local Restaurants, Hungry

Recently, A new, nonprofit organization, Gift A Plate (www.giftaplate,org), launched effrts in Los Angeles, to allow people to donate to help both restaurants and families in need. The organization said it is looking to help aid restaurants and families who have been greatly impacted by COVID-19 in LA. The new nonprofit is was created by software company PlateIQ (www.plateiq.com), and is led by Bhavuk Kaul, who who chatted with about the new effort.

What is PlateIQ, and how did you come up with Gift a Plate?

Bhavuk Kaul: We are an accounts payable payments platform for the restaurant industry, and we are transitioning to serve other industries, such as the hospitality industry. We work with over 10,000 restaursnts, a lot of them in Southern California. When COVID happened, our industry was the first one to be hit, and we're now trying to recover from COVID. People are only now starting to eat out, and there is a lot of employment, and from that perspective, we wanted to see how we could help. What we are good at, is building technology and technology platforms. People want to help, but don't know what to do. Our goal, was to create a platform where individuals can donate money to cook food for people who don't have access to good, healthy meals. We started in San Francisco, where we are based, and recently launched in Los Angeles with our restaurant platform.

So explain what Gift a Plate is?

Bhavuk Kaul: We have partnered with other tech companies, as well, such as HotSchedules, to build out this initiative. Individual restaurants are listed, and also have their own landing pages, so they can ask for funding from their patrons. Once we have enough contributions for them to cook 50 or 100 meals, we partner with shelters and organizations in each of those markets to cook those meals, deliver them to those nonprofits, and feed people who need it.

Given the huge impact of this pandemic on the restaurant industry, what has been your strategy for how to get through this?

Bhavuk Kaul: We run our business pretty efficiently. We were already profitable, growing 120 percent year-over-year. We have always been very cost conscious, even though we are venture backed and in Silicon Valley. When the pandemic happened, we had just raised a funding round, and our investors have helped us make sure we could raise that money. We are burning some money, but not a lot, and that's enabled us to survive this downturn.

How long did it take you to come up with the idea to help your restaurants?

Bhavuk Kaul: It took a few weeks for us to figure out what was happening, and the impact on our business. Once we figured that out, I believe in very early April we started to think about building this. It took two or three more weeks to get other partners on board.

How are restaurants doing through this whole thing?

Bhavuk Kaul: 100 percent of restaurants were impacted by this. No one has not been impacted by this pandemic. Restaurants of all different sizes and numbers of locations were impacted, and it's been maximum impact, because these businesses do not have a lot of money on their balance sheet. They all run on a very month-to-month basis. With government help, they're keeping the lights on so far, but on a very large scale, we're assuming 20 percent of restaurant locations will not come out of this. That has a direct impact on our business. We were growing very rapidly, but now our growth has completely halted because of this. We're now giving deep discounts to our customers on our fees, as well. Our entire business is generating 50 percent of the revenue we were generating pre-COVID. It's increasing now, and we're hoping in July the restaurant business will get back up to speed.

What's the biggest lesson you've learned from all of this?

Bhavuk Kaul: Before this, everyone was already saying that it was going to be a recession coming, and that something was going to happen, and a market correction would happen. We always budged that we might lose 20 percent of our business, but nobody though we'd ever lose 50 percent of our business. What we realized, is to keep your business running you have to have a big reserve in capital. You have to have good reserves, and figure out what the opportunities exist once something like this happens. That requires you to think on your feet, and change what you are doing based on what you've learned. We think we've managed to do that, as well.

Thanks!