If your restaurant is located within close reach of an airport or sports stadium, look for potential opportunities to branch out into new new business streams via third-party delivery companies. (And these options aren’t about delivery but about bringing extra convenience to people in places where they really need it.) Uber Eats is offering order-ahead pickup options at airports for participating restaurant vendors, allowing customers to order ahead via their app, then pick up a favorite item en route to a connecting flight. Meanwhile, Grub Hub now offers fans at FedEx Field in Washington, D.C. the ability to scan a QR code on the back of their seat and place a pickup order for food from stadium vendors – allowing people to avoid long stadium lines. The QR code has been among the many tech advances to have experienced a sharp rise in usage during the pandemic. To be sure, it delivers safety benefits within restaurants as a tool that limits face-to-face contact, and it helps restaurants swap menu items quickly and collect more insight-rich data from guests. But it’s not for every guest or every restaurant – and what has been embraced as a useful tool while consumers are concerned about the spread of COVID-19 may become less appealing once the pandemic is safely behind us. FSR Magazine indicates, it comes down to the experience a restaurant offers. Do your guests want convenience and speed delivered in a less personal way, or a relaxed opportunity to reconnect with friends? If your restaurant falls somewhere in the middle, consider how you can balance efficiency and the need for a special experience. If your restaurant has successfully used QR codes in recent months to enable guests to review your menu or place an order, consider doubling down on them – they provide not only a fast, contact-free ordering and payment option but also a digital window onto your guests and their consumption habits. QR codes connect your POS to your guests. You can use that connection to bring your menu to life on the guest’s phone through videos you share about special menu items. Further, when a guest is already on their phone to order, it’s that much easier to get them to sign up for your loyalty program or agree to answer a few survey questions – further feeding the insights you can use to make improvements to your menu and overall business. QR codes, which have enabled no-touch digital menu reviewing and ordering throughout the pandemic, all while helping short-staffed operators keep up with orders, have become ubiquitous in recent months. The National Restaurant Association said half of all full-service restaurants in the U.S. have begun using the codes since the start of the pandemic. But now concerns about privacy are making some question consumers’ use of the codes because businesses can gather valuable data about consumer spending patterns through the codes – and it’s all connected to their credit cards, the New York Times reports. If you’re using QR codes in your business, be sure you understand how the tech companies enabling your codes are using your data (i.e. ensure they aren’t selling it) and how you can best protect your customers and business in the event of a breach. Restaurants are managing orders from more sources than ever – yet still need to prepare those items at the same time. If they’re short on staff, juggling this and keeping customers informed about their order can be a challenge. But smart pacing tools for order fulfillment can help. As Pymnts.com reports, that could include an automated text to a guest when their food or their table is ready, or a QR code that allows a guest to place an order or pay from the table as they leave. The pandemic has pushed restaurant technology several years ahead of where it would be otherwise – and our increased ordering of takeout in the past year has made us more comfortable ordering food on our phones. Could allowing guests to order by phone work for you on-premise as well as off? At a time when labor is scarce, it may be worth considering. During a recent episode of the restaurant webcast The Barron Report, the founders of Branded Strategic Hospitality spoke about how they have invested in their entire tech stack, to include the app Bbot, which enables QR code scanning for ordering from the restaurant. If you have a tech-savvy guests who are just as happy to read a menu on their phone as on a piece of paper, you might try experimenting with QR codes for not only menu review but also ordering. Bring the right tech mix to your service Now that people are coming back to restaurant dining rooms, operators are having to determine exactly how much of their in-person service to bring back and which tasks to relegate to technology. Choosing what to do is about understanding your customers and the experience they would like, as well as your time challenges. A recent Restaurant Dive report indicates, that might be about shelving the QR codes in favor of paper because guests want to hold a menu in their hands, but keeping self-payment options because of how much time they save you when you’re trying to turn tables. Finding the right balance might also require you to be more methodical about when your staff have in-person interactions with guests to help reinforce the experience you’d like them to have with you. |
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