We have all been there: It’s been a long day, you’re hungry, you’re craving a meal from a favorite restaurant, and you want it here now. Somehow the effort it takes to order or adjust a past order to your preferences – never mind collect orders from others – feels like more than you want to manage. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could skip that first part and allow the restaurant to get a jump start on preparing your dish? This functionality is something that Panera is offering their loyalty club members. The new feature, dubbed Crunch Time Ordering, allows guests to pre-program their favorite meals into their app and set them to be ordered at a set date and time. The app sends the person a reminder to place the order for pickup or delivery, then they just need to swipe a prompt within the app to complete the process. This kind of functionality is something to consider if you serve craveable foods that your guests think about at certain times of the week – like a large coffee on the way to work, a soup-and-sandwich combo for lunch during a busy work day, or a Friday-night pizza to kick off the weekend. Looking at your guests’ ordering habits and the preferences of your most loyal fans, are there ways you can remove friction from your ordering process and make it a little easier for people to get the food they crave? There is a big opportunity for restaurants to improve their off-premise guest satisfaction – and the accuracy and timing of kitchen fulfillment is at the heart of it. That’s according to restaurant commerce platform Qu’s 4th annual State of Digital survey, which included responses from 85 fast casual and QSR brands representing over 30,000 locations. The survey found that many of these brands are seeing 15 percent lower guest satisfaction on orders, largely due to inaccuracies in orders and the timing of them. Using a kitchen display system to manage order flow, throttling and employee tasks can help, particularly if you’re integrating orders from multiple streams and would like to be able to not only manage order accuracy better, but also to steer guests to other ordering channels when one channel is overloaded. In the past few years, restaurant operators have made countless consumer-facing, tech-based tweaks to make themselves more nimble in the face of a fast-evolving dining landscape: In came QR codes, ordering kiosks, app-based ordering and other low-touch tools to connect diners with restaurant meals. But the landscape is shifting yet again. Operators are now noticing that some of these tools have better staying power than others – and striking the right balance between low-touch and high-service requires being in tune with guests and possibly recalibrating your approach. According to a recent Forbes report, for example, QR codes, third-party delivery apps and ghost kitchens have been losing their luster. (A recent survey from US Foods confirmed that 76 percent of people prefer paper menus or in-person ordering to QR codes.) It may be about consumer fatigue over clunky QR code ordering interfaces, reluctance about paying a premium for delivery in what has been a high inflationary environment, and/or sentiment that the restaurant experience delivered by these tools doesn’t feel as worthwhile as it could. Do you know, on a given day, how your guests are responding to the tools you offer to streamline your ordering experience – and how this compares with the previous week or month, for example? This is where your guest data can reveal patterns about what’s working and where you need to make changes. For example, being able to pull up data that helps you identify key pivot points – like what price maximizes a menu item’s profits without turning people away, and where your efforts at personalization are driving traffic – can help you use the tools you have on hand to make the experience you offer feel as worthwhile as possible. The fees charged by third-party delivery providers can take a painful bite out of already-slim restaurant profits. But your tech can make it easier and more appealing for customers to come straight to you. A recent report from QSR Magazine points to how the hotel industry has successfully done a similar thing over the years. Consider some value-added offerings that don’t cost you much but lift the experience you give to guests who order food directly from you. That could be offering a free drink with orders placed via your website or app – or subsidizing all or part of the delivery fee. Lean on your loyalty program to hook your customers. They have little reason to go elsewhere if they know you’re prompting them with targeted offers that are likely to appeal to them based on their past orders. Attract customers to your restaurant by providing enough appealing menu items on third-party delivery sites to entice them, but save a good number of options for the menu you use for your direct customers – and promote the benefits of coming to you directly. No one likes missing out. Mistakes happen. But even little ones – like a burger being served with the condiments a guest had asked to be omitted – can have significant negative consequences. At the very least, you’re wasting food and losing profits when a replacement and/or comped dish is required. So where do errors occur in your operation? Are guests unable to communicate their preferences clearly using the ordering platform you offer? Are requests somehow lost in translation between the guest and the chef preparing their dish? Are chefs misinterpreting requests that were understood by the server? Your technology can not only help you pinpoint where problems are occurring, but also bring greater control and precision to those processes and prevent one mistake from snowballing into something bigger. Whether you operate a drive-thru, or your website or phone line could benefit from some tech-driven labor savings, this may be the year that AI voice technology finally takes off. As a recent report from Nation’s Restaurant News says, 2021 marked the launch of AI voice ordering, 2022 marked its spread, and 2023 marks its improvement and perfection. Specifically, a number of companies (SoundHound is just one) are training the technology to respond more readily to natural speech patterns, versus the Alexa-style way of stating a clear demand in a quiet room and having to take turns speaking. To be sure, AI voice ordering has had a shaky takeoff in some places. But if you’re considering investing in it, expect some perfected versions to emerge this year and beyond – and ask your vendor questions about how they will be training their product to continuously evolve and improve. If there is a silver lining to the past couple of years in the restaurant industry, it could be that operators have become significantly more nimble. Technology has supported this transition, enabling restaurants to monitor and measure everything from ingredient waste to menu profitability. Expect even more fine-tuning as restaurants continue to manage steep operating costs. That will include greater precision when it comes to not just ingredient use, but also the prediction of exactly what ingredients a restaurant will need in the near future. Chipotle, for one, is piloting a “cook-to-needs” kitchen management system in select California stores that provides demand-based cooking and ingredient preparation forecasts, according to a Restaurant Technology News report. The goal of the system is to help each restaurant make the most of its ordered ingredients, maximize freshness and minimise food waste. The report said the system uses artificial intelligence and machine learning to monitor ingredient levels in real time, then notifies the team how much to prepare, cook and when to start cooking. This information then feeds data collection that supports real-time production planning for each restaurant. The ease with which your guests and staff can use your technology for placing and processing orders, as well as for making and accepting payment, can have a significant impact on everyone’s satisfaction. Your staff and guests will have different comfort levels when it comes to handling such tasks as navigating your menu and making a payment, or plugging a gift card into a tablet or splitting a check. Making these processes intuitive for as broad a subset of people as possible will help leave guests with a better impression, give them more confidence that they will receive the food they want, minimize the amount of time you need to spend training staff to use a new system, and can help ensure your tech is actively making your team’s jobs easier, faster and less prone to error. When you take a look at your current system, where are there snags are areas that could be improved? These days, so many of your guests’ interactions with your restaurant take place without even walking through your door or picking up the phone. Whether they are looking to book a table, check your future availability, order food, purchase a gift card, or simply find up-to-date information about your menu or hours, your guests rely on the functionality of your online presence. How well does yours represent your brand? Give your website a checkup to see how much it allows guests to help themselves. A recent report from The Rail advises restaurants consider using a chat widget to answer guest inquiries instead of making them wait for an email response, as well as using an FAQ section and leaning on social media to provide updates on special promotions or changes guests should know about. At a time when restaurants are feeling plenty of friction from labor challenges, inflation and the supply chain, operators should be leaning on technology to remove as much of the remaining friction as possible. An impactful place to focus is on customer ordering and payment for both on- and off-premise meals. OneDine is one company that is enabling streamlined ordering and payment in both areas. When your guests place an off-premise order, can they easily input information about an allergy or dietary preference? Can they split the bill with a friend? Consumers are eager to share meals with friends again. Restaurants that can accommodate their different needs and preferences with a user-friendly interface, while also easing the stress of paying the bill, are in a strong position to attract guests looking to gather over restaurant food. |
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