53% of Millennials use Digital to Augment Dining Experience: Study

According to a report from BRP and Windstream Enterprise, restaurant guests, especially millennials, use mobile devices to enhance their dining experiences.

Digital is becoming deeply embedded into the entire dining journey. Pre-meal research is a habit across all generations and demographics, especially for discovering new restaurant choices and selecting fine dining options. Digital ordering (whether from home, by app or at restaurant) is a growing expectation while sharing results of dining experiences with friends via social media has become a form of entertainment in itself.

This has significant impact on how restaurant operators need to think about the entire lifecycle of a guest’s dining experience, including how restaurant operations, processes and IT platforms need to quickly transform to support this new data-driven demand and influence. Restaurants must rapidly adopt new technologies to digitally enhance the dining experience.

Millennials use digital devices to enhance their dining experience over half the time (53%). Their digital activities range from researching where and what to eat (60%) to checking ratings/reviews while in a restaurant (51%) to sharing pictures and content (23%) during and after the visit.

Digital-driven influences impact 40% of all dining visits. Therefore, embedding full digital dining support – everything from social engagement to guest WiFi to flexible ordering options, and real-time promotions – should be part of every restaurant’s strategic DNA, according to the report. 

The Restaurant Digital Crossroads: The Race to Meet Guest Expectations report, based on research conducted by Incisiv and sponsored by BRP and Windstream Enterprise, combines findings from surveys of 1,225 restaurant guests and 60 restaurant executives.