In 2020 we have seen it all. The Grinches of 2020 made their best effort to steal the joy and positive spirit of us humans but little did they know we could outwit them and come out stronger.
This is an account of ‘The Grinches of 2020’ in the restaurant industry and ‘The Christmas Miracles’ that followed.
Grinch 1: No Online Presence
This Grinch could win ‘The most powerful Grinch’ award in 2020 when it comes to affecting businesses across the world.
Living in the digital age of 2020 without having an online presence for your brand is undoubtedly something that stole the joy of serving your diners.
For any brand, an online presence was more than important in 2020 due to people’s lack of physical presence in public places. Millions of us spent our lockdown days on the internet ordering food & on social media planning our future restaurant visits.
inresto Online Order was the Christmas miracle that saved food businesses from this Grinch.
What is inresto Online Order solution?
This technology solution can build websites, IOS, and Android apps for your brand.
It also enables an ‘order now’ widget on your Facebook and Instagram pages so that your diners can place the orders directly.
How does inresto Online Order help restaurants get rid of the Grinch of ‘No Online Presence’?
- Increases brand visibility & reach: By building a brilliant web presence, you can reach a wider audience set, acquire more customers & increase incoming orders. You can personalise your website & app to suit your restaurant’s needs & make your online presence noteworthy.
- No aggregator commission- With your online ordering platforms, you can eliminate promotion costs & total reliability on a third-party aggregator. Orders can be taken directly from the website and from your restaurant’s social media pages, which will help in customer data ownership.
- Customer engagement: Get your customers’ attention through real-time push notifications, personalised offers & engaging banner ads on your website & app.
- Integrated Digital Menu: When your diners click on the ‘order now’ widget on your social media page or website, a digital menu enabled by inresto pops open, and your diners can browse their options & place their orders.
Read – How to boost your restaurant business via Instagram
Grinch 2: Low Diner Connect
Does this happen to you that you create offers specially for your diners at your restaurant, but those diners don’t show up to avail them? What a waste, right?
This Grinch – the struggle to communicate your offers through the right channels, was always upon restaurants, but the pandemic made him more visible.
It’s not that your diners have stopped loving you, or they have found some other restaurants. Definitely NOT.
They are still fond of you, but they are unaware. The Grinch of ‘Low diner connect’ keeps your restaurant at a blind spot for them until ‘The Christmas Miracle’ of ‘inresto campaign module’ makes an entry.
What is inresto campaign module?
inresto campaign module allows you to send the right communication to your target audience via SMS and emails. This way, you can engage, interact, and retain your diners to increase the footfall.
How does the inresto campaign module help restaurants get rid of the Grinch of low diner connect?
1.Inform your audience what they desire: Anything new happening at your restaurant must reach your diners’ ears. After all, they are the consumers of all the excellent services you’ve got to offer.
A new gig? New Christmas special menu? Ladies night? BOGO? Your diners must be informed, and running SMS and email campaigns is an effective way to do so.
2. Filter out customer data: One of the main USP of inresto campaign module is the RFM feature (Recency, Frequency and Monetary Behaviour). You can easily filter your diner data based on their behaviour to re-engage with them and also to regulate your marketing spends.
3. Do targeted marketing: Identify your target audience and define the right communication channel for them. The inresto campaign management software helps you curate various groups based on demographics, visits, spending, etc., and set-up personalised campaigns for each group. This way, you can make sure the right communication reaches the right audience.
4. Monitor the impact: It gives you real-time campaign analytics and helps you understand each campaign’s effectiveness. This way, you can judge what works for your diners.
5. Automate your communication: You can automate your campaigns and schedule them based on special occasions, festivals, etc.
Grinch 3: Waiting for your car
This Grinch makes an entry after your diners had a happy and fulfilling dining experience and are out and about to leave. It seems like it doesn’t like to see your diners go home satisfied with your dining services.
It keeps them waiting for their car for a long time. The diners’ happiness curve starts going down, and it doesn’t make the restaurants any happier.
But hey! Things are not the same since the Christmas Miracle of digital valet happened.
What is Digital Valet?
inresto valet allows restaurants to manage all their valet operations through one tab. It cuts short the time spent by the diners at community areas to curb the spread of infection. Each valet is notified about the diner’s dining status & can bring in the vehicles on time.
How does Digital Valet help restaurants get rid of the Grinch of waiting for cars?
1. Real-time tracking: Digital valet helps you track parking capacity in real-time to utilize parking lots & valet drivers effectively. It reduces the diners’ wait time by giving real-time status alerts to exit only when the car has arrived.
2. Valet utilisation: Digital valet helps you achieve a 30% reduction in drivers by optimising daily valet utilisation. It provides a smooth service by assigning a driver instantly through the inresto valet app. You can measure the impact over time, including utilisation & efficiency, by daily/hourly or weekly tracking. Accordingly, you can also devise valet incentives easily & keep track of operations with timely & accurate reports.
3. Secure valet service: Since the entire valet process takes place digitally, every vehicle’s security is ensured. It is a systematic valet process, based on digital tokens, sent directly to the customer’s phone. Therefore there is no risk of fraud.
The Grinch 4: Paper Menu
Paper Menu was never always ‘The Grinch’ of our lives until 2020. We loved hanging around it at restaurants in pre-COVID time. Soon it got into the wrong company and became the potential carrier of germs and viruses.
Diners and the restaurant staff were worried and became paranoid about touching any physical menu at restaurants. We knew technology was the most significant boon but didn’t think it could help eliminate this Grinch.
inresto’s DineIn software was the ultimate saviour and ‘The Christmas miracle’ for every restaurant out there in 2020.
What is inresto DineIn?
A digital menu software allows the diners to place their food orders directly from their phone by scanning a QR code.
Your diners can scan the QR code placed at their tables using their phone camera or simply visit scan.qr.in. After selecting all the order items, the diners make online payments through digital wallets like Dineout pay.
How inresto DineIn helps the restaurant industry get rid of the ‘Paper Menu’ Grinch?
1. Eliminates high touch elements: A digital menu eliminates high touch elements like the paper menu and cash payment in the entire process of order placing. This way, there is less contact between the staff and customers, thereby decreasing the risk of germs transfer.
2. Cross-selling and Up-selling made simple: The digital menu recommends items to diners based on their order history. It also highlights chef specials or hot selling items during that season, helping you up-sell. In addition to that, you can cross-sell by creating new combos as per your diners’ preferences.
3. Reduces wait time for diners- The diners don’t have to wait for any waiter to visit them to take their orders; instead, they can directly order from their phones at their own pace. This saves them a lot of time. During the process, they can highlight any special requests.
4. Eliminates extra cost: Every time you wish to alter your menu, like adding a new combo, eliminating a seasonal dish that is no longer available, you do not need to get a new menu printed. In a digital menu, you can make the alterations any time you want.
Click here to know how digital menu helps you increase your profit margins.
The Grinch 5 – Waiting in Queues
This Grinch is usually spotted outside restaurants ruining the happy times for diners & loves to keep them away from their food until they are hangry. It shows its best work during rush hours and festivities. In 2020 we surely despised it more than ever because of the growing need & importance of social distancing.
Slowly people started withdrawing from dining out & the restaurants started losing revenue 🙁
It indeed was a difficult time for the restaurant industry, but as we know you, it’s always darkest before the dawn.
Soon ‘The Christmas Miracle’ happened, and inresto came to the rescue with restaurant technology – inresto Guest & Reserve that took over the restaurant industry. Table management became so easy for restaurants that ‘The Grinch’ could no longer hold the diners back in queues.
What is inresto Guest & Reserve?
Restaurant technology that allows restaurants to simplify the reservation process & maximise the table turnaround efficiency.
How inresto Guest & Reserve helps the restaurant industry get rid of the ‘waiting in queues’ Grinch?
1. Reservations & Table management simplified: All the reservations reflect on a single inresto dashboard, and you can assign them tables according to their preferred time slots. The dashboard gives you a clear picture of the available tables for the walk-in customers so that you can serve them equally well.
2. Notifies the diners of their exact table time: As we know from customer behaviour that they would prefer to spend their time buying Christmas gifts from a nearby shop rather than standing in a queue. By notifying the diner of their wait time and queue status, we wish to achieve exactly that.
3. Captures customer data: While checking in, your diners have to enter their contact details on a tab at the entry and get a table. During the process, the data is captured and saved at the backend.
4. Data-driven management: You can map the types of customers that visit you, for, e.g., the ones who visit you very often(regular), the ones who visit less often but are generous in their spending behaviour, etc., and prioritise tables accordingly.
Click here to know more about How to Effectively Managing Walk-Ins, Queues & Reservations!
