How is Technology Transforming the Restaurant Industry?

Technology has made the development of many innovative ideas in almost all major fields of human endeavors possible; including the restaurant industry.

Innovation in technology has made our lives easier in such a way that some things that were virtually impossible to accomplish before, are now possible – thanks to the latest developments in digital transformation. So, how do these affect the way the foodservice industry does business and deal with customers? Below, we rounded up the7 ways technology is reshaping the restaurant industry.

Drives Sales and Growth

How? Gone are the days where newspaper, print, and tv ads are the only marketing platform available to reach your customers. Today, not only did technology make marketers’ lives easier, it made marketing campaigns cheaper, too. With just a few clicks of a button on social media channels and emails, you are able to reach out to an even wider market.

Everybody uses smartphones now. Businesses use this fact to take advantage of marketing, sales and growth opportunities. Buying decisions are made almost instantly when potential customers are presented with the information that they need to make a purchase. Attention span is shorter than ever – and competition is tougher as businesses use all avenues to try and buy in customers with their ideas, latest offerings, and whatnot.

To get tips on how you can drive more sales to your restaurant, read this post.

Automation of Restaurant Systems

Your customers’ dining experience tells a lot about your restaurant’s service level. If you’re averaging 4.5 stars on customer feedback and reviews, then you surely would like to keep it this way. How do you up the ante and keep delivering a great dining experience for every customer that enters your restaurant?

With the use of restaurant systems management apps to automate some of your restaurant systems, you’re on your way to having more time to focus on developing your menu specials and even improve on operation efficacy. Which means more chances of getting those 5-star ratings and excellent service feedback.

Tip: one of the first things you can consider automating is your ordering system. You can put in place an ordering kiosk at your restaurant instead of the usual practice of service staff manually taking orders.

Taker can take care of your ordering system automation. More info here.

Increase Customer Service Efficiency

Technology also helps take innovation to your restaurant customer service. The way in which you respond to your customer inquiries, concerns and issues is critical for business success.  Your response must be quick to offer resolutions for your customers’ issues. Customer complaints are inevitable. But poor customer service is the last thing you want your restaurant to have.

Also, when you use a customer service software where you can set up canned responses and chatbots to direct common customer inquiries to a resource center somewhere on your website it allows for better management of customer issues and inquiries without breaking the bank. You won’t have to hire more employees to man your customer service hotline or live chat round the clock. Doing so is also a nice way to let your customers feel that you’re serious in improving their dining experience.

Reach A Wider Market Segment

Using technology allows your restaurant to tap a wider market segment as compared to simply relying on your current restaurant location. Adapting to the latest trend of online food delivery services This is an opportunity for more brand exposure and a higher chance for growth since you’re no longer restricted by location.

When you are readily available with a simple tap of the “Place Order” button, you are offering your products to a wider audience – who are potential repeat customers (yes, that market segment where a good percentage of restaurant business profits come from).

A Convergence of New Ideas and Existing Methods

This may surprise you but technology is key to bringing new ideas to life – most of which sprung from current methods that are already being implemented in a business. Technology enhances these existing methods to create better results. An example is the preparation of financial statements which usually takes time and effort from your finance department – you can now easily accomplish this by downloading a nifty software off the internet.

Another example is the birth of virtual restaurants that are fully operating online. You can learn more about virtual restaurants here.

Develops Good Corporate Governance

One of the key functions of corporate governance is transparency. With the help of technology, you can now publish company news and performance reports in real-time on your website. Engage your stakeholders, potential investors, and customers by sharing your brand’s story and advocacies.  It humanizes your business and makes your audience feel involved in your brand.

Encourages Customer Loyalty

The best thing your restaurant can get from your customers is their loyalty. When you’re able to establish a good network of loyal customers, your business will thrive. Take advantage of technology to build your customer and fan base – it’s your ticket to business growth. Taker helps restaurants grow by setting up their own loyalty program in their ordering app.

How to delight your customers and keep them coming back for more? Read this post.

Takeaway

Knowing the importance of technology in the restaurant industry isn’t rocket science. But what we laid out above is somewhat just the tip of the iceberg. Technology plays a big part in every industry, but those can be discussed on a different blog post. We do hope that we are able to shed some light on lingering questions you might have if you are currently on the fence about integrating technology into your food business.

By understanding how even the simplest of technology works, you can embrace change, adapt the use of technology to your business, and blend it with the current systems in your restaurant to make your systems and day-to-day operations more efficient, if not better.

If your restaurant is looking for an online ordering system

contact us now.

Why Restaurant Kiosks are Important?

The nature of restaurants is changing like never before and what is driving this change is technology. Of course, this is happening to keep up with the demanding customers who already have embraced technology in all ways. One aspect of it is self-service restaurant kiosks.

Here we talk about the top reasons why restaurant kiosk is spreading:

Improve Service Efficiency

If you have a busy restaurant, changes are you’re going to a long queue of customers waiting to order. No doubt, this can be very frustrated for hungry customers and very stressful for your staff. That certainly might lead customers to stop coming back to you which is bad.

Self-service kiosks help you avoid all of that because customers order on their own without need a cashier to take their orders.This will have a direct positive impact on revenue as restaurants can have more orders while maintaining a good customer experience. At the same time, this takes the pressure off your staff which makes them much more productive.

Increase Revenue

Visually presenting the menu in an appealing way revokes customers’ appetite. With a click away, they are motivated to add more items to the cart easily and simply. Moreover, restaurants can smartly show high margine items first in the kiosk menu which increases the likelihood that customers will buy them. Also, Taker kiosk equips restaurants with a configurable cross-selling functionality that shows up while customers’ are checking out. Here is Applebeebee’s kiosk report

Beside that, kiosks help increase throughput, which helps increase revenue. Also, it improves customer experience and ,in turns, loyalty which means more frequent visits.

Get Accurate Orders

In many places on earth, people may not speak the same language so they tend to use a common one that might be poorly spoken. With that, cashier or intercom agent might get the order wrong which badly frustrates the customer.

Restaurant kiosk with a visual menu in front of the customer, the margin of errors is greatly reduced. Which means, less frustration for customers, less pressure for staff and happy experience.

Cut Labor Costs

By freeing cashiers from consuming their times taking orders, restaurants’ managers can cut down staff members. Or, if restaurant kiosk leads to more customers and orders, they can be moved from front-of-house to kitchen and customer service. This means you don’t have to hire more staff.

To learn more about Taker Kiosk, contact us on the link below

If your restaurant is looking for an online ordering system

contact us now.

What are Virtual Restaurants?






Virtual Restaurants, also known as “Ghost Restaurants”, are online-only restaurants that serve customers exclusively through delivery. In other words, it does not have dine-in or pickup options. So virtual restaurants prepare the food from a location that does not have to be apparent to people, just a kitchen. This concept has started to grow in popularity since prepared meal market is eating out a large share of the grocery market. That is probably due to the nature of the society and business conditions where people just don’t have time during the day.

 

Digital Expansion

Studies showed that %60 of restaurants fail within the first five years because they are capital-intensive. Therefore, selling online is the only alternative as it is a great way to increase sales. However, that is not the only reason why restaurants should sell online. It is also a great expansion strategy where you expand digitally through an ordering app and website not through brick-and-mortar branches. So virtual restaurants do not have to spend so much money each time when opening a new location to cover new areas. All they need is just replicating the existing kitchen and preparing delivery vehicles and drivers.

 

Benefits of Virtual Restaurants

There are many benefits of having virtual restaurants and because of that the concept is growing in popularity specially in busy cities. They don’t require a prime location which means you’ll be spending a lot less money on the rent. Since there is no walk-in customers, you don’t need fancy decorations that are of the highest capital expenditures. Also, no need to hire waitstaff which means no managers to manage them which means less operational expenses.

Moreover, Your website and app can reach a larger set of customers than your physical branch. Not only that, it has a very easy call-to-action where customers can make an order within a few clicks. Compared to the physical branch, the ease to respond to the call-to-action can be the biggest factor in your strategy to increase sales.

 

Using Data in Virtual Restaurants

Since virtual restaurants are tech based businesses, it means customers have to provide their identifying data. This includes name, email, number, delivery location …etc. in order to be able to process their orders. Their data is your treasure because you can use it in way that helps your business grow.

Being tech-based enables as virtual restaurants owner and manager to answer critical questions about their business such as:

  • How many customers downloaded your app?
  • How many visited your website?
  • How many of those signed up?
  • How many actually made an order?
  • How many repeated their order? and during which period?
  • How many made an order but never repeated it for 3 months?
  • Which  area is generating orders the most?
  • Which item is is the most popular in respect to areas?

Those insights are essential to understand your business. Without them, you will miss out what gets ahead of your competitors. Once you have the answers, you can apply some techniques to retain customers as well as re-engage them.

 

By now, it is very clear why restaurants should have an online ordering system. It is actually to take the restaurant to the next level and keep up with new era of the food industry. So if you need to have your own branded ordering app and website, contact us

Restaurant Delivery, Do It Right.

Eating from restaurants has become a social habit whose intensity differs from a place to another. That is not only dine-in or takeaway orders, also people order food while staying home. This can intensify when people choose to stay home like at exams or sports seasons. At this time, people don’t go out and don’t have time to cock because they are busy. Since we know restaurant delivery is a great way to increase the sales, doing it right is key to achieve that.

Here is some tips to do it right

Fancy Packaging

Fancy packaging makes your brand shine dominating the place where it is placed to catch people’s eyes. That’s a great marketing to a targeted set of customers. Make sure your packaging designer follows your branding guidelines like logo dimensions, color code and shapes. Keeping it consistent across all channels makes it stick in customers mind forever.

A few simple touches can make a big difference. It can be just adding branded a stick on the sandwiches or a sticker on the wrapping papers. While deciding the packaging, just make sure it is also needed to keep your food hot and fresh so it does not lose its taste.

Clear Operational Guidelines

You may have done a great job optimizing the experience for customers dining in or taking food away with them Delivery also needs the same. Taker has done a brilliant job optimizing the user experience on the ordering app and website, now it’s great and delightful. But what happens when the delivery order arrives at your end?.

Inside your restaurant, you need to map out the steps from the moment you receive the order till it’s delivered. It includes going through the kitchen to make and be ready for driver pickup to deliver it. Any inefficiency within the steps can cause troubles to you and to the customer experience. Needless to say that one of the biggest mistakes restaurants make is that order arrives different from what they ordered. That is very bad specially if it is less as this means some won’t be able to eat.

Offering and managing the restaurant delivery service isn’t very easy but it can be lucrative if done right.

Train Drivers

Your drivers are your representatives. In fact, they are a key in the delivery process and customer experience. Therefore, making sure they present your restaurant well is essential. Train them how to drive when carrying food, train them how to talk to the customer starting from calling him/her to inform he’s at the door till he meets to hands over the food. Train them how to deal with unhappy customers to retain them. Again, they are your representatives so choose how you want to be represented.

Restaurant Delivery Management Software

Every order has two steps, order preparation step and order delivery step. Normally, restaurants do a good job in the first step, but when it comes to delivery, it gets so complicated. This is because three parties are involved in the process, the restaurant, the driver and the client to accomplish the delivery job. So in order to make this step professionally accomplished, Taker has partnered up with an advanced delivery management software, Dook. This is to help restaurants streamline their delivery operations to increase the efficiency -which leads to cut cost- and dramatically improve the quality of the delivery service.

If you enable Dook, your orders will accurately be sent once you accept them along with all the details that the driver needs. It includes the customer location, name, number as well as the order details itself so the driver also double checks the order before delivery.

If your restaurant is looking for an online ordering system

contact us now.