This is a classic example of digital dining with minimal contact embedded with a high-end customer experience. 

You must be intrigued by how such a seamless operation is possible. It’s the sheer power of technology.  

In this blog, we shall dig deep and unearth some ways technology can help your dining business gain more patrons as you offer customers an unmatched dining experience. 

What’s on the table tonight?

Gone are the days when customers visited a restaurant, waited for a server to be seated, to order food & drinks, or to hear the special attractions. Instead, they are on the lookout for immediacy. 

The three cornerstones that are gradually shaping the consumption patterns in the F&B industry are: 

70%1 of diners today prefer to order digitally rather than in person.

Hence, to have that competitive edge, restaurants should implement scalable technologies to showcase menu variability, pricing, and promo options across locations. Embracing digital channels is the need of the hour not only for convenience but for delivering an unparalleled guest experience.

1 https://www.restaurantnews.com/survey-shows-changing-consumer-preferences-in-restaurant-ordering-for-both-on-site-ordering-and-order-ahead-delivery-082521/

An Evolved Dining Experience in the Digital Era

Over the last year and a half, the downloads of QR codes have grown by 750%2.

QR Codes

Scanning QR codes will soon become a permanent feature of new-age restaurants since it offers a win-win situation both for restaurateurs and customers. Using QR codes fulfills all three criteria for the customer namely, ultimate convenience, frictionless digital experiences, and heightened COVID safety. From the perspective of restaurateurs, the quick-scan technology gives those at the backend a 360-degree view of customers and a single source of truth. A link that can ideally connect all the systems that are integral to a restaurant business, such as marketing, service, and point-of-sale to every dine-in customer.

2 https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/21/qr-codes-have-replaced-restaurant-menus-industry-experts-say-it-isnt-a-fad.html

AI and Machine Learning

AI and machine learning go a long way to recommend apt food and drinks to customers. The new currency for AI and machine learning is data. AI software analyzes customer data based on their age, gender, demographics, social media behavior, order histories and recommends them food or drinks. The recommendations are so accurate that they can increase the overall order value of a customer and the best part is that most of these are personalized recommendations, which add to the customer’s delight.

End-to-end Connected Order System

An efficient ordering system is incredibly important to ensure growth in a restaurant business. Therefore, an omnichannel approach to managing the ordering system is the new normal. A seamlessly connected order system along with the POS and the kitchen display keeps the customer at the center of the experience. A smart and well-integrated restaurant POS streamlines the order-taking mechanism from multiple channels and also gives a unified view of the complete order input to the output cycle, along with the stakeholders involved. Besides, a POS backed with an ordering system allows restaurateurs to track item-wise sales and they can also find out the best-performing and the least performing items based on the order history. The chances of errors are largely reduced and there is an increase in operational efficiency. All these gradually translate to heightened customer delight.

Digital Payments

Contactless payment seems to be the future of financial transactions. No wonder the restaurant businesses have been quick enough to join the bandwagon. Debit cards and credit card payment modes are things of the past. The F&B industry has gone far ahead by making mobile wallet apps like Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Samsung Pay popular. With technology taking over the payment method, both restaurateurs and the customers are on the winning side. For diners, it is another example of heightened customer experience, since they have the autonomy to pay at their discretion and there isn’t any dependency. For the ones in the F&B industry, there are a couple of benefits as well, such as they have increased operational efficiency and there are reduced instances of internal theft. Also, they can attract more customers since customers in such restaurants are spared from waiting in the payment queue. Digital payments are effective ways to deliver customers’ convenience while increasing the operational efficiency of restaurants.

Apt Digital Channels: The Viable Option to Dial in Consumers

End-to-end digital dining not only gives customers better control over their experience but also allows restaurateurs to streamline their operations along with revenue growth.

The time that waiters once spent on mundane tasks like taking orders, delivering them to the kitchen, disbursing a physical check, collecting payments, and then entering these details in the POS system is now utilized for serving customers quickly.

Speed, accuracy, and seamless service are equally important in a food industry, along with food quality. Digitization of services like order placement to checkout has the potential to quicken services, increase revenue, and customer loyalty.

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