Contactless dining has become an integral part of the restaurant industry today. As technology trends come and go, contactless dining looks like it’s going to change the restaurant experience as we know it.
While it might have seemed futuristic in the past, QR menu ordering is being embraced by cafes, restaurants, and bars all over the world today. A Quick Response Code or a QR code allows customers to access your digital menu in one split second. Forget servers rushing about to hand menus to walk-in customers, QR menus make the ordering process much more optimized.
The QR code is simply coded pixels that upon scanning, leads the customer straight to an online menu. And it doesn’t have to be limited to just ordering- your customers can pay through their phones as well. All in all, it’s a 100% contactless dining experience.
In this article, we’re going to look at the top 10 reasons you need to implement QR Menu ordering in your restaurant:
Upselling is one of the most effective ways to increase average order values, and this is a well-known fact in the hospitality industry. However, when it comes to upselling face to face with a customer, things can get a little awkward. Sometimes, it might lead to a customer feeling pressured or even overwhelmed. But this is where QR Menu Ordering comes in- for starters, upselling is extremely easy online and the customer doesn’t feel any kind of stress about opting for it or not. Next, you also have the option of offering upsells based on a customers’ order history. Naturally, this increases the probability of a higher order value.
In light of the pandemic, it’s become clear that employee safety is of utmost concern. With QR menu ordering, you get to minimize human contact between customers and employees to a large extent. Instead of running from table to table and jotting down orders, they’re free to focus on other restaurant activities as customers order through their phones. If you want to go one step further, you could also set up a collection point or order pickup zone where customers can collect their orders on their own, instead of servers taking food to them.
Enticing images of food that can make your mouth water instantly serve as great marketing tools. Physical menus are limited in space and it’s not feasible to have images of every food item. But with a digital menu, you’re free to include beautiful pictures of as many food items as you like. Naturally, these pictures are bound to look even more appetizing on a screen as opposed to on paper.
Using printed menus is synonymous with high printing costs. This includes different kinds of ink, lamination, printing charges, and so on. And in the scenario that you want to edit prices, add or drop items, it can be quite a nightmare to print more menus. This is expensive but also far from eco-friendly. With QR menu ordering, updating your menu is a breeze and can be done free of cost, as frequently as you like.
One of the prime difficulties faced by restaurants is serving the maximum number of customers as quickly as possible, without making the dining experience feel rushed. QR Menu Ordering makes this much easier. Customers no longer have to wait for extended periods of time, trying to catch a server’s eye to place their order. Instead, ordering can be done as soon as they’re seated.
When a customer uses QR Menu Ordering, he has to submit his phone number or email address as part of the process. This data can be recorded in your online ordering system and can be used for any future marketing. Additionally, you can build a more accurate customer profile with more and more orders based on customer data that you’ve collected, such as order timings, preferences, and so on. In the long run, this can help you increase sales.
In the traditional dining experience, it’s common for customers to share the same physical menus, discuss what they’d like to eat while flipping every page, and then finally place their order. The main disadvantage here is that as menus are passed around a table, there’s a lot more contact than necessary. QR codes allow customers to skip this physical contact entirely and place orders in a span of seconds from their own phones.
With digital ordering, you can play around with your menu and find the most user-friendly theme and layout possible. If you want to promote a certain new menu item or a seasonal beverage, you can place it front and center in the menu with just a couple of clicks. When you’re running low on certain foods, you can easily remove them from the menu as well. It’s also much easier to highlight separate breakfast and lunch menus.
QR Menu Ordering is a relatively simple concept but you’d be amazed at how much it ramps up the customer experience. It simplifies the dining process greatly-all the way from ordering to payment. And the best part? There’s hardly any scope of error. Your staff also gets the liberty to devote their time and energy to other restaurant processes.
Whether you’re putting a sticker of the QR code on a restaurant table, or printing out a flyer, you could always put forward a prompt to download your restaurant’s app as well. Given that a customer will already have his or her phone in hand, downloading the app is much more likely. You could also include links to your social media profiles, or snippets of your Instagram grid. In this way, it becomes easy to promote your restaurant on different platforms.
At Restolabs, we can set up a seamless and effective QR Menu Ordering process for your restaurant. Our contactless dining solution features can be enabled easily and are sure to impress all your customers with an elevated dining experience.
