Restaurants in the UAE have been impacted heavily by COVID-19, but are now finally beginning to see a silver lining. Business is slowly accelerating again, although the pandemic has fundamentally altered the business mix for many restaurants – dine-in business is down and delivery orders are up. An increase in delivery orders, for the majority of restaurants, also means an increase in the amount of money “stuck” with 3rd-party food delivery aggregators. In short: Every time a customer orders and pays via an online delivery platform, the platform operator receives the money right away, but only remits a restaurant’s profit on a weekly or monthly basis, which means that, at any given time, restaurants have money “stuck” with aggregators – money that could be used to order and pay for new supplies, pay employees, or otherwise invest in the business.

Restaurants with very busy delivery operations are particularly hard it, because the amounts in question quickly reach large sums and, although, the restaurants do receive the money eventually, short-term cashflow challenges can arise, because they have to pay their suppliers and employees to be able to produce the food they’re selling via 3rd-party platforms, before receiving their sales revenue from the platform operators.

Tawreed.co constantly talks to the UAE restaurant community and we have heard many stories of cashflow challenges, which got us thinking: What, if there would be a way to put the money that’s “stuck in the system” to a better use? Tawreed Circle of Trust (TCOT) does just that: Tawreed.co acts as a trusted, independent, party bringing together restaurants and delivery aggregators and allowing restaurants to guarantee their purchases on Tawreed Market via their 3rd-party online food sales revenue – even before they received it!

A restaurant is able to use up to four times its weekly online sales revenue to buy products and services through the Tawreed Market platform thanks to a special agreement between the restaurant, Tawreed.co, and the aggregator platforms. TCOT considerably reduces cashflow challenges and ensure business continuity by allowing restaurants to use their online sales revenues to buy supplies and services on credit.

Tawreed.co Circle of Trust is an example of Tawreed’s “win-win” philosophy in action: TCOT helps restaurants to keep running even if they’re faced with short-term cashflow challenges and it helps 3rd-party ordering and delivery platforms to support their restaurant partners without any additional investments.