BarterPay is a social profit enterprise that helps businesses across Canada acquire the products and services they need without having to use cash. Today, BarterPay announced a grant program that will distribute $5,000,000 in value to independent restaurants across Ontario to help them recover from the Covid-19 pandemic.
“The restaurant industry is suffering tremendously right now,” said John Porter, Founder and CEO of BarterPay. “We want to do whatever we can to help them during this difficult time. Being able to obtain some things they need using their own gift cards as payment instead of cash is a big win. Now that we’re offering a grant as well, it makes it that much better.”
BarterPay helps Canadian businesses convert their unsold time and space and idle inventory, ‘spare capacity’, into Barter Credits at retail value. The Barter Credits can then be exchanged for other goods and services they need. This provides restaurants the ability to purchase supplies and services at their wholesale cost of goods rather than using cash during these trying times.
“Prior to Covid-19, all businesses had some spare capacity, but we’re in a situation right now where downtime and idle inventory is magnified because of the pandemic.” says John. “It’s a tragedy to see value not being monetized. By leveraging BarterPay, business owners can capture that value and then redeem it later. An empty seat at a restaurant expires and creates zero value whereas Barter Credits™ never expire and can be used to offset future cash costs.”
BarterPay has teamed up with one of their national partners, Restaurants Canada, to help promote this new program.
“In an industry where the average pre-tax profit margin is only 4.2%, restaurateurs are continuously looking for ways to improve the bottom line,” said Christopher Barry, Director of Membership. “This $5,000,000 grant program could not have come at a better time as the pandemic has caused unprecedented cash flow challenges for operators across Canada. We are glad that this program is now available to give them a much-needed boost.”
Here’s how it works…Upon opening an account, BarterPay will advertise the restaurant’s gift cards out to the network for Barter Credits at face value. Once the restaurant earns 1000 Barter Credits, typically within the first 2 weeks, BarterPay will match it with an additional 1000 Barter Credits. This gives the restaurant 2000 Barter Credits that they can now utilize back within the BarterPay ecosystem to offset some costs. They can redeem for anything on the system like PPE, printing, advertising, employee gifts, construction, signage, web design, social media management, draft line services and so much more.
“Our team is standing by to help as many restaurants as possible”, says CEO John Porter. “Currently we’re offering the grants to Ontario-based independent restaurants, but we plan on expanding it across Canada in the coming months.”
