Why Digital is the Key Driver of Disruptive Restaurant Services?

Authored By: Smit Nebhwani - Founder & CEO - Voolsy

Earlier, several erroneous brands would easily find a way to mislead customers with clever copywriting tricks and tactics, but in today’s digitally smart and well-connected world, bamboozling the customers is not an easy deal and is increasingly becoming a thing of past.

With Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and several other social communities connecting portals available right at their finger clicks, customers now have easy access to all good and bad information relating to each industry. Also, as the market grows, people are more mobile friendly and believe on digital information. They are aware enough not to neglect digital promotion or user engagement. That's why restaurants are referring to capture the market through digital activity.

The restaurants are now more inclined towards the real-time analytics. They want to inform/educate or promote offers to the customers who are seated in their restaurant same time. It helps the customers to understand what's new restaurant has to offer them and gives a chance to restaurants to increase their sales.

With the blogging trend at peak, the information relating to all the best and worst products of the food industry, its origins, benefits, ratings, and availability all gets posted at online portals and can be found easily by the customers while relaxing or working on something more urgent. This increasing inter-linking is making the brands take a load of accountability like they never did before.

From Customer-oriented to Service-oriented Research

With rapid digitization, automation and artificial intelligence entering the scenes, technology has enabled researchers enormously gain knowledge about the food ingredients and make further new discoveries thus, adding further new dimensions to the present knowledge of nutrition. Precisely talking, big data has helped the food world detect consequences of certain ingredients that were earlier going undetected by the food experts and scientists.

One of the biggest changes brought up by digital intelligence is the new war against sugar. Earlier, it wasn’t detected how horrible sugar could be to the human bodies, but thankfully, big data has helped the masses to know its side-effects and look for its substitute, instead to maintain good health. Food research which was earlier limited to the knowledge of groceries in the kitchen, their origin and other basic knowledge related to cuisines and their making has now further added the technological dimension to it.

Innovations are the Real Incentives

With loads of information being uploaded on the digital portals on a daily basis, online is the new screen from where awareness is generated and delivered to the masses on a daily basis. Talking about the food world, in particular, issues like organic farming, food wastage problem and global warming have gained limelight of most amongst the online community.

But it’s not the problem tellers but the problem solvers who will lead ahead in the ever competitive scenes. Considering the present scenes, food companies addressing these problems with innovative solutions might just have the advantage of gaining growth by tapping on the ethical points in the society, but in future situations ignoring these issues wouldn’t be easy as they will soon convert into mainstream demands of the industry.

Digital Data Gathering

The much enhanced and innovative mobile phone technologies like that of iBeacons have added a new dimension to the overall dining experience. From getting the data of customer’s likes and dislikes to providing the detailed charts of new vs repeated customers, these location tracking apps have enabled the food outlets in gaining access to the in-depth and accurate- most details of their customers.

A better insight of the customer’s thoughts has further enhanced the restaurant owners’ ability in ensuring positive dining experience for their customers, which includes training staff, improving delivery times, and using the aforementioned tools to delight customers. From sending targeted deals to rewarding diners for spending time in restaurants to efficient order tracking these technologies have made the interaction between customers and restaurants all the more fun.

Going Digital, Going Waiter-less

During the peak hours and weekends, the restaurants usually face the issue of manpower inability in tackling the number of people soaring in to dine and enjoy. To get over with this, the creative and tech-oriented food chains are offering the tabletop technology facility, be it in the form of tablets or smartphone apps to their guests for a smart and instant facility to order and pay the bill right from their table in a few clicks. This on-the click facility has ensured the deliverability of accurate orders and has also provided the ease in payments with varied modes of paying the money (mobile wallet, debit card, credit card and internet banking).

With the restaurants switching towards the usage of more and more of such apps, the manpower present in the system can be saved and utilized for more crucial purposes of the catering and dining arena. Also, restaurant management understands that creating a standalone app takes time and a good amount of investment.

That's why they tie up with existing universal food apps, which helps them save their money. The universal app system empowered with huge user data and the confirmed audience is not just a good bet for restaurants to trap new customers but also valuable to customers in enriching their dine-out experience.