As restaurants in the United States start to open again, Yelp is developing new tools to enable businesspeople to take security measures to keep customers and employees safe.
Yelp is launching a new COVID-19 section for today's platform companies. Between the name of the company and reviews, the section will allow business owners to demonstrate their offer of services, such as indoor or outdoor dining and the safety measures they take such as temperature controls.
Several attributes under the COVID-19 section are available. Business owners may check whether they are complying with different safeguards such as contactless payments and compulsory face masks and employee gloves.
Yelp's consumer product boss, Akhil Kuduvalli Ramesh, told The Verge "Different cities have different protocols." "We have created the 10 protocols most widely accepted that consumers expect to see and companies have adopted."
Yelp further stated that each time a business owner updates the COVID-19 section, the time stamp will be published so that clients can see whether information such as operating hours or business updates are up to date.
The businesses can add all of these details and update them themselves, but to do so the organizations must claim their Yelp list and log into their Company Yelp account. Once they check a particular company, consumers can also check these safety and health guidelines for any Yelp listing.
Yelp also adds to its Yelp Waitlist feature a new COVID-19 tools.
Restaurants can print out a QR-code that customers can scan to join the waitlist of a restaurant and provide contact-free access to it.
In addition , corporate owners will be able to adjust the waiting time estimates manually by adding restrictions such as reduced capacity, and will be notified via the app when the restaurant reaches its capacity or exceeds it.
Yelp also released the first COVID-19 toolkit, for example, to allow business owners to tell clients whether they have been temporarily closed down or only available to delivery or order.
They also launched a $25 million fund that provided local companies with free advertising and Yelp services.
