The purpose of restaurant apps is evolving. According to research from App Annie, Gen Z, as compared with other generations, is 30 percent more engaged in apps that aren’t about gaming and other forms of entertainment. Instead, they value apps that are key to the mobile checkout process and help to keep them loyal to and engaged in a brand. Last year, Americans overall spent 140 percent more time in food and drink apps than they did during the two years prior to that. While there are certainly more apps joining the market that help account for that growth, operators are also becoming more savvy about guest engagement. Connecting with consumers and elevating their level of engagement is less about having an app that entertains and more about providing a simple, relevant, customizable experience whether the person is accessing the restaurant online or in person.
Adopting new technology for your restaurant may seem like a necessary evil — the initial investment can be substantial, there are multiple pieces and functions to consider, and it’s impossible to know how quickly the popular tech tool of the moment will become obsolete. Still, the numbers show clearly that restaurants that don’t adopt technology will be left behind. Operators from brands including Wings Etc., Fazoli’s and Your Pie have struggled with this dilemma and they addressed it at the recent Restaurant Franchise & Innovation Summit in Louisville. According to a report in Kiosk Marketplace, the leaders emphasized that operators feeling vexed over tech decisions aren’t alone. The best way to make progress, they agreed, is to focus on doing one thing (or a few small things) well and then gradually improving upon those efforts. Zero in on your biggest pain points or opportunities: Your Pie has set out to perfect its AdWord campaigns to find the right customers, while Fazoli’s has focused on building upon its data-rich loyalty program. For whichever tech tools you decide to focus on, create a broader strategy that considers all of your stakeholders and spells out how they might contribute to (and benefit from) your success.
The real power may lie not with restaurants but with the delivery apps and food delivery companies that help them get their food to consumers. That’s the implication of two recent reports in the Wall Street Journal, which indicate that these companies are poised to move away from traditional introductory offers and toward subscription-model services designed to entice consumers into becoming habitual “superusers.” At a time when millennial consumers are believed to lack loyalty, delivery providers have noticed that offering a one-time discount won’t translate to follow-up business. How does your delivery provider entice customers to return regularly? DoorDash, one provider offering a subscription program, says it has more than 30,000 users signing up each week for their service. It now leads the online food delivery market in total consumer spending.
Operators typically consider restaurant technology options with an eye toward improving the guest experience or boosting the efficiency of front- and back-of house teams. But it just might help you attract and retain employees too. A recent Deloitte study found that 74 percent of millennials indicated they want technology to be part of their workplace. It doesn’t have to cost operators a lot either. The Rail reports that even free tools like What’s App and Google Groups can help, as can more-targeted paid apps like HotSchedules and RedEApp. Streamlining communication, assigning tasks, shift scheduling and switching, and managing employee payment via tech are all important, though even the quality of your wifi can make a difference to employees looking to log on during breaks. Before a new employee even joins you, tech can help you manage the talent pool more effectively. Tools like RoboRecruiter, for one, which has a multilingual platform, use an online chatbox to automate messaging and help you sort and engage your candidate pool.
The practice of standing in line or waiting at a table to pay a bill is gradually becoming a relic of the past. As operators and tech companies have observed the valuable time often wasted at these common pressure points for restaurants, new solutions are popping up to hasten table turnaround times and minimize guests’ anxiety in their time spent at a restaurant — and they won’t necessarily require the guest to download an app to do it. Take Qikserve. Skift Table reports that the company is rolling out technology throughout this year to restaurants in California and Pennsylvania — including 3,500 partner brands — that will allow guests to make a mobile payment and eventually order at the table by either using the brand’s app or by visiting a web page loaded by scanning a QR code at the table. It’s aiming to make life easier for the occasional restaurant visitor not interested in downloading another app. (It also has the potential to turn that occasional visitor into a loyal regular.)
Having a loyalty app is a great way to build a strong following — if you don’t look at it as a “set-it-and-forget-it” kind of tool. As Cake suggests, having a loyalty app can go far in helping you connect with your audience — especially Millennials and Gen Z, who are apt to spread the word about you on social media. But on the flip side, those guests also have high expectations of your transparency. If you’re targeting this population with your app, be willing to share details about how your food is made, where it comes from and how you manage your business (or at least be ready for questions about it). Having an app is a strong upselling tool, helping you to build check totals by suggesting menu items that may not have been front-of-mind for customers. Just be sure to focus on your guests’ preferences and frequency of visits, as visibly focusing on check tallies (and tying rewards to dollars spent) can be a turnoff. Finally, having a loyalty app can be a data goldmine — but you need to have the foundational technology in place to funnel that data into insights that feed your broader marketing strategy.
Your mobile presence has power: Mobile search behavior by people who search for food using their phones or tablets has a nearly 90 percent conversion rate, according to the study “Mobile Path-to-Purchase” by xAd and Telmetrics. You may be pouring a large portion of your ad spending on mobile as a result, but proceed with caution. Research from the online advertising firm WordStream found that unless a business has a thoughtful mobile strategy, it’s too easy to miss out on business opportunities. Since so many businesses want a piece of the mobile market, the mobile click-through rate decreases 45 percent faster in lower search positions than it does on desktop or tablet computers. The share of impressions on mobile is low as well, with mobile ads less likely to be shown (even in top positions) than they are on desktops. Search costs per click for mobile have also been increasing dramatically in the past year.
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