Matt’s El Rancho in Austin, Texas has been a Tex-Mex tradition since 1952 and was named by Restaurant Business Magazine as one of the ‘Top 100 Restaurants in America’.
El Rancho’s massive (600 seat) restaurant was put to the test when the response to the COVID-19 crisis shut down dine-in eating at full-service restaurants. In a matter of a few days in late March, the team at El Rancho completely re-engineered their operations to a 100% curbside service via online and call-in orders. El Rancho is on-pace to do over 6 million dollars in take-out sales this year—a staggering amount of business considering most busy full-service restaurants don’t normally do that volume of total business in an entire year.
This has allowed El Rancho to be able to keep 125 full time employees and all nine managers working.
General Manager, Paul Counter, stated this would simply not be possible if it weren’t for the loyalty of their customers and the dedication of their many long-term team members.