The North Shore Business Improvement Association wants to help some of its member businesses provide ordering online.

Executive director Jeremy Heighton says this has been a topic of conversation since the COVID-19 pandemic started in the middle of March.

“We have been talking about online ordering basically since March 13th, when a lot of this sort of came about. And the challenge I think for small business is it is an overwhelming task when there’s one or two of you in a store and you have to do your inventory, you have do all your photography, you have to move everything online, it can become an overwhelming task.”

Heighton also points out services like Skip the Dishes can actually hinder small businesses, which take 30 per cent of revenues off the top.

“In fact, we have a contractor working with us, and we have offered for our restaurants specifically, if they want to transition to an online process we will pay the first hour of consultant fees. So that they can sit down and see how they will want to move their businesses online.”

A new report on the Tranquille Corridor called “Bring Back Main Street” says only eight out of 27 food or retail businesses on the block offer ordering online.

The report says there were an estimated 71,677 visits in-person to Tranquille Corridor businesses in April, which is down 44 per cent from April of 2019.

“It can be overwhelming but there are people here to help you. And so you need to embrace the fact that doing business differently will actually yield you some very positive results. I’ll be honest with you, the only reason Amazon has shown phenomenal growth in the past three months is it’s easy. It’s simple. So why not create that for your business?”