Food & Wine News South Africa

Eat Out launches crowdfunding efforts for SA's restaurants, postpones Restaurant Awards

Eat Out has made a couple of decisions to assist the South African restaurant industry during the Covid-19 lockdown. In addition to launching a crowdfunding on GoFundMe and BackaBuddy to support local restaurants, Eat Out has also postponed its annual Restaurant Awards and has stopped reviewing restaurants.

“With our restaurants in severe crisis right now, Eat Out’s core focus is to do everything in our power to assist the industry in recuperating,” it said in a statement.

“To safeguard businesses and the salaries of restaurant staff, we’re mobilising our audience to help support the restaurants they love, using the crowdfunding platforms GoFundMe and BackaBuddy,” it added.

“We believe the restaurant industry will need time to recover once we are through this difficult period, and it would not be accurate or fair to judge them until they are strong and back to offering the eating out experiences that have made South Africa a world-class culinary destination,” said Eat Out regarding the postponement of the annual Eat Out Restaurant Awards – which was due to take place in November 2020.
It has also paused reviewing for the same reason.

“To help support restaurants financially, we invite diners who would have gone out to eat to offer some of that money to the restaurants. This can be done via GoFundMe or funds can be pledged to individual staff members through BackaBuddy,” added Eat Out.

Eat Out has a new dedicated page that connects diners to these restaurants.

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