This success story of the corona crisis comes from Tartu, Estonia: example of the street food restaurant Kolm Tilli (Three Dills). As soon as the corona crisis began, Kolm Tilli had to close its doors to customers. As they were used to see hundreds of people eating in their large rooms, they didn’t want to think about a complete closure, because too much effort has been put into the restaurant.
In the beginning of the crisis, customers were only offered a take-away option and food delivery via Wolt and Bolt Food apps. When it was seen that the crisis is deepening and there was not enough work for all employees, it was realized that there is a need for changes. In order to avoid the worst case scenario, the question arose, how two biggest problems could be solved: how to keep the work for waiters and how to maintain a turnover. In addition, the whole solution should work with as little human contact as possible.
This gave rise to the idea that Kolm Tilli employees could become couriers and deliver food to customers by themselves. To put a new and useful idea into practice, Kolm Tilli started to cooperate with two Tartu technology companies Voog and Fleet Complete. Voog is a tool for building online stores that can be used to receive orders and payments online. The strength of the telematics company Fleet Complete is solutions for managing mobile work tasks, such as courier services. Voog.com and Fleet Complete co-created the solution that will help each restaurant launch its food delivery service using its existing workforce, avoiding the need for Bolt or Wolt. The solution allows restaurants to accept both orders and payments online and then distribute all orders to couriers as work tasks. Orders come conveniently from the web and go directly to courier phones, which makes the restaurant’s work more efficient and faster. This co-created solution helps to save on courier companies’ commission fees, and in addition, saved money gives for Kolm Tilli opportunity to offer free delivery in Tartu city. Kolm Tilli was the first restaurant that started to use this new solution in Estonia, few weeks later many domestic restaurants and shops followed them and began using this innovative solution. We can say that this solution worked as a lifebelt for lots of Estonian companies during corona pandemic: Businesses can continue to operate, waiters can still work, and the customer receives the goods in minutes.
Besides personal contactless courier service, Kolm Tilli came up with another great idea during the corona crisis. As one of the bestsellers in Kolm Tilli is pizza, they started offering “Cook Yourself” pizza kit for home cooking. Set includes high-quality raw materials, Kolm Tilli own handmade pizza dough and a carefully thought-out tutorial by the pizza masters, following the instructions of which you will get the same pizza experience as in the restaurant. Most raw materials come directly from Italy and is of the highest quality. The idea of the pizza set was to create an opportunity for families to cook and spend great time together and offer a delicious food experience.
More information: https://kolmtilli.ee/en
Prepared by Laura Gredzens, Innovation Broker in Valga Municipality Government
