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At first glance it seems simple. You click a few times in an application, get a phone call from a courier who runs up to the fifth floor do give you bags full of groceries, and your shopping is done. Thanks to the pandemic, thousands of new customers have learned to shop on Košík.cz, our on-line supermarket, because they’ve realized that visiting an e-shop is significantly more convenient than a brick-and-mortar one. And that it saves tons of time.

These are truly trying times for restaurateurs. Only slightly over half of restaurants are open, and in October revenues in the industry dropped by 49 % compared to last year. The only options now available to keep a restaurant going are to have a take-out window or deliver food to customers’ homes. However, the most popular delivery services often operate on terms that make it untenable for many restaurants to work with them. Storyous, which focuses of developing technologies for the restaurant industry, and Zdeněk Pohlreich, a popular chef and owner of of several successful restaurants, have therefore come up with an alternative platform, OneMenu.cz, which is built on fairness to customers, delivery services, and especially restaurants. The project’s delivery partner is successful Czech transport company Liftago.

Sustainability is a very frequent topic in international financial publications. In the Czech Republic, it’s usually looked upon as some kind of hobby for a handful of naive enthusiasts, but that depends on whom you’re talking to. The younger that person is, the more likely they are to prefer sustainability even at the expense of other criteria such as profitability or absolute growth.

Each time I arrive at the office, I see the slogan. Hic sunt leones. Here be lions. A Latin phrase that we have at Rockaway on the wall right by the entrance; on old maps, it was used to designate unexplored territory. And now, for me it also symbolizes everything we are now experiencing.

Restaurateurs throughout the Czech Republic have been severely tested in recent months. It is abundantly clear that many people will lose their jobs (hopefully temporarily, in some cases). Storyous, which develops technology for the restaurant industry, is therefore now trying to help them. It is launching a programme entitled “Save jobs in the restaurant industry”, which will offer work to people who have lost their jobs in the restaurant industry due to anti-pandemic measures.