A Personalized & Convenient Restaurant Experience

How can technology help drive a personalized restaurant experience? 

Personalized and convenient restaurant experiences can greatly influence the loyalty of restaurant guests. As restaurant brands expand loyalty programs and provide compelling reasons for customers to opt-in to promotional offers, they have a plethora of data to personalize experiences. Based on customers’ preferences and previous dining history, restaurants can communicate personalized messages that are relevant and persuasive. Personalization opportunities exist throughout the entire dining journey from the restaurant selection stage, to ordering, dining, payment and the post dining experience. Based on the customer journey path and touchpoints, restaurants can leverage multiple technology tools to communicate personalized messages or promotional offers, including mobile apps, SMS, digital signage/menu boards, drive-thru and kiosks.

As labor costs and staffing challenges continue to impact restaurant services levels, how are you seeing restaurants improve operations with technology? 

When faced with high labor costs and staff shortages, restaurants often look first to improve the efficiency of the processes for ordering and payments. For QSR, fast casual or family dining restaurants, offering guests the option to enter orders and pay for their meals via kiosk, table mounted tablet or their smartphone is a great option to reduce labor costs. Fine dining restaurants can improve labor efficiencies with server-based mobile devices for ordering and payments. Some truly innovative restaurants are testing robots for food preparation, order taking, delivering meals to tables and processing payments. While still in the exploratory stage, robotics may be a long-term solution to mitigate labor challenges in the restaurant industry.

What are some opportunities for digital signage and mobile marketing to enhance both the restaurant guest experience and revenue? 

Mobile marketing, kiosks and digital signage/menu boards offer great opportunities to personalize the guest experience and boost sales through suggested up-selling. For customers that opt-in to personalization, restaurants can greet customers with personalized mobile offers as they enter the restaurant or are near the restaurant based on GPS and proximity marketing. Digital displays, while not personalized for individuals, can be customized with local offers or promotions based on regional favorites, seasonal specials or weather-based recommendations. For instance, digital menu boards that are integrated with weather-based dynamic software might suggest warm beverages on cold days and cold beverages on hot days.

How can restaurant operators learn to think more like retailers?

Historically, retailers have been more innovative than restaurants in the areas of online and mobile apps for product info, ordering and payments. From a consumer perspective, during the COVID-19 pandemic, restaurants accelerated their capabilities for online and mobile ordering, which was a good catalyst to enable omni-channel restaurant journeys and enhance guest experiences. As labor challenges continue to plague the restaurant industry, many restaurants are expanding the use of mobile ordering and payment devices for servers to improve productivity. With the continued expansion of 5G availability, more restaurants will have the ability to tap into more advanced mobile apps that rely on high-speed, low-latency network connections.

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