Consumer customization isn’t going away. In fact, looking beyond your menu to give your customers even more options to customize their experience may help you gain a competitive advantage. Tech is enabling those changes. According to Dana Macke, the director of trends for the Americas at Mintel, current efforts to expedite delivery are going to evolve into efforts to offer greater flexibility. That means that going forward, restaurants will be able to give customers greater control over when their delivery order arrives, for example. We can also expect greater use of predictive technologies to help restaurants ensure their guests’ orders are tailored to their schedule and needs. Can you enhance the customization of your customers’ ordering experience? Staffing is difficult enough right now – but it’s even more challenging when an operator must schedule a team to work an unpredictable, potentially sleepy day part. (It’s part of the reason why companies like First Watch have a single, 7 a.m. to 2:30 p.m. shift.) But what if there were another way? The technology you use to customize data-driven, strategic guest offers is designed to improve sales performance during specific day parts. When you have improved, consistent traffic, you require more hours from staff, who are now able to get the hours and pay they need to stay with the business. Is there a day part in your business that has great potential but needs a lift to be able to retain staff? Consider how you can use your loyalty technology to turn the customer who stops in for an afternoon coffee each day into someone who also comes in for breakfast or lunch. Boosting certain convenience technologies you use in your restaurant could elevate your check totals – or result in your leaving money on the table. That’s according to recent research from Pymts.com, which surveyed consumers about the technologies that most influence their purchasing. The most popular features among respondents were the ability to order online, which 41 percent favored as part of their experience in a restaurant, as well as loyalty programs, which came in at a close second with 39 percent of respondents saying the programs drive them to make a purchase. If you’re struggling with labor right now, are there front-of-house tasks that can be offloaded to technology? Consider each step of the guest journey. In your dining room, can you encourage guests to use a QR code to view your menu, place a customized order and, later in the meal, order refills or dessert? Off-premise, can a customer just as easily navigate your site or app with a minimum of scrolling? Do you make it possible for them to make substitutions or additions? Implementing technology to make ordering and payment more seamless, as well as to automatically route orders to your kitchen, can greatly ease the burden on any front-of-house staff (and help you turn tables/orders more quickly too). If you have a loyal base of customers, they are likely expecting you to have a digital rewards program that makes their patronage all the more worthwhile. But as these programs have become so widespread, it’s also become more difficult for operators to make them stand out. Research from Pymnts.com predicts that this year, restaurant brands will find more sophisticated methods of driving personalized messages and offers to guests in ways that don’t sacrifice profitability. That could mean offering menu items that are exclusive to loyalty program members, or simply gamifying your program with contests and virtual rewards. Late last year, Chipotle, for one, started offering achievement badges in its rewards program. They have no monetary value but have still resulted in a spike to loyalty program membership, according to a company spokesperson. Elevating your loyalty program is key to retaining guests and maintaining profitability. Increasingly, artificial intelligence (AI) integrated with a restaurant’s POS, online ordering and overall payment system is being used to ensure that the loyalty offers restaurant guests receive are precisely fine-tuned to their evolving preferences. As AI algorithms analyze data from customer orders, they spot patterns and adapt to them continuously – then translate that information into targeted promotions and coupons. These offers can mean the difference between retaining a customer who goes a bit out of their way to collect an order from you versus one who debates whether to use a third-party aggregator to order from you or a nearby competitor. Even if you have already embraced digital ordering, QR codes and other front-of-house technology to help your operation run more smoothly, your kitchen may still look like it did a decade ago. The Spoon predicts the digitization of the restaurant kitchen will take off this year, enabling restaurants to run more nimbly and, by extension, better manage labor, monitor inventory and portion sizes, and reduce waste. Powerhouse Dynamics and Perfect Company are just a couple of the players bringing more real-time management and automation to the back of the house. Do you currently use just-in-time tools in your kitchen that allow you to flex in the moment with what’s happening in your business? Replacing an employee can be an expensive task for restaurants – according to the Center for Hospitality Research at Cornell University, the cost of employee turnover averages around $5,864 per person for a typical front-line employee. That expense is all the more debilitating when staff leave frequently. You can minimize those challenges if you can find staff who are a good fit for your business from the start, then ensure they have a smooth onboarding process. New research from the HR tech provider Sprockets suggests a number of tech tools operators can consider for help. Among them: JazzHR and TalentReef can help you track applicants and data based on your specific needs so you can better target applicants suited to your business. Spark Hire and Honeit can provide interviewing support, including tools to help you get a better sense of a candidate’s personality and store the comments they share. Finally, your training program can pave the way for a productive employee relationship (or provide a reason for a new staffer to disengage). Eloomi and Axonify can guide you through the process of developing a program that works for you and also track an employee’s progress. As restaurants strain to manage the ongoing labor shortage, as well as guest concerns over health and safety, technology may be able to provide some relief from the responsibilities associated with those concerns. Jim Balis, managing director of CapitalSpring’s Strategic Operations Group, recently told FSR magazine that robotics and AI can help reduce liabilities associated with safety and sanitation while automating tasks so that hours and staffing can be reduced. There is no risk of a missed shift, for example, and labor costs can remain fixed. Digital tools can help you improve line checks, conduct self-assessments and audits, monitor equipment, and track how well you’re adhering to cleaning and sanitation protocols. This year, more restaurants that are struggling to meet demand amid labor shortages will be turning to tech. When you’re short on staff, which parts of your operation become most vulnerable to health and safety hazards? Could any of them be automated or outsourced to a tech-based solution? If there is one area of tech to focus on this year, you’ll be in a good spot by smoothing out the process your guests must go through when placing orders and making payment – and finding low-touch, low-interaction ways of doing so. According to a new report from Oracle about consumer expectations for restaurant dining, 73 percent of restaurant patrons would like to reduce their use of cash, 49 percent would like to minimize their human interaction, 46 percent want to settle their bill on a mobile app, and 71 percent wouldn’t mind if restaurants, at the time of online booking, communicated a limit to the amount of time guests could keep a reserved table. This is good news for operators struggling to keep labor. What aspects of your guest experience might be better managed by outsourcing them to tech this year? |
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