Off-premise dining – Part 1 – Technologies to use
Off-premise dining
The current pandemic has changed restaurant operation and customer behavior. The restrictions and the extended quarantine moved people toward off-premise dining experience.
The pandemic caused the delivery and take-out to become restaurants’ mainstream operations. It doesn’t matter which type of service you run. You need to consider, establish, or improve the off-premise services.
I keep saying off-premise as it’s more than online ordering. Online ordering is only one piece of the puzzle of the practice. You, as a restaurateur, need to adjust your operation to offer a proper off-premise dining experience.
In summary, you need to consider the following adjustments for off-premise dining:
- Technology in use
- Menu mix,
- Quality control,
- Packing,
- Delivery practice,
- Digital presence,
- And Marketing.
When the ambiance and music are out of the window, you need to create the hospitality differently.
We will review the different elements of the off-premise dining operation in this post and the next future five.
Definitions
It’s helpful to define some terminologies:
Off-premise dining is self-explanatory. It’s the dining experience outside the restaurant four walls. Off-premise dining refers to delivery, contactless delivery, curbside delivery, take-out, and catering.
Restaurant online ordering is the way customers order meals through the Internet. The order can go through your website, or a portal belongs to a delivery aggregator.
Mobile ordering is like an online order, but it takes place through a mobile device.
Contactless delivery is a COVID-19 buzzword. It refers to food delivery without physical contact between the driver and the customer. Contactless delivery can cover online payments or contactless payment at the delivery spot.
The core technology, the Point of Sale
All restaurants have a point of sale to handle their billing, kitchen orders, and reporting. The POS is coming with many add-on modules to ease the back office works. I don’t want to get to the details of POS systems, legacy POS or cloud-based POS as well as fixed or mobile POS. POS is the core of the IT infrastructure of any restaurant. I believe your restaurant has a POS as a basic necessity.
Some POS might provide an on-line ordering (OLO) module. OLO Module can ease the integration of online orders with the on-site operation and reporting.
Does a restaurant need a website?
Your restaurant can run online ordering and offer an off-premise dining experience without having a website. But, still it worth evaluating the need for the website. And it’s advisable to have one for a restaurant.
Usually, your service provider manages the hosting and front end to your customer when you establish an online ordering portal. And, you can use the administration access to maintain the menu and related setup.
The restaurant website will be the cornerstone of creating the digital experience of your restaurant.
The website is the showcase of your restaurant on the internet. The website provides essential information about your restaurant. It can host the processes like:
- Reservation
- Menu mixes
- Customer reviews
- Link to the social media page
- Link to online ordering
- Hosts the entire online ordering process
We can summarize more significant benefits of a restaurant website as follows:
- The site attracts new customers and can bring traffic through search engines
- The digital presence through website creates brand awareness
- Website showcases vital restaurant information, as well as the latest restaurant offers
- The site helps you grow your local audience by providing the locations of the branches
- The website can add more processes like selling a gift certificate or host the reservation process.
Who should handle the restaurant website?
When you decide to set your website up, the first question is, should you handle the website in-house? Or, hand the entire website over to a third-party service provider?
This is a business decision and depends on the available resources to develop and administrate a website.
A single venue restaurant or small chain restaurant, most probably, does not have the technical resources to handle the job. It’s better to hire a company to develop and establish a website. But a more extensive operation, who can allocate funds for the job, might choose a different path.
Consider the following aspects of the website development, for either small or large operation:
- Is there any budget available to establish a website?
- Does the business have in-house technical resources for developing a website?
- Who is going to develop content for the website? I mean all creative works and copywriting.
- Do you have the resources to manage the content and search engine optimization (SEO) of the website?
- What other processes and services you want to establish on the website?
You should not sacrifice the quality and look of your website. The website can act like your restaurant decoration in the internet space.
And, did I mention content? That’s what the website visitor sees and relates to the restaurant. This is far more important than just the website look. The content will have a significant impact on further digital marketing activities.
Don’t forget the social media presence. We will discuss social media and digital marketing separate posts on!