Like most businesses today, restaurants are continuously upgrading their operational guidelines to accommodate the consumers’ ever-changing needs. And restaurants aren’t immune to technological updates.

This is not such a bad thing. After all, technology and innovation provide countless benefits, ultimately aiming to make running a business easier and more profitable.

Are you running a 21st century restaurant that needs an update? From restaurant POS solutions to reservation management systems, below are the five essential innovations you should consider for your foodservice business:

1. Online and Mobile Order-Taking

Almost everyone is online these days, which means establishing a digital presence for your restaurant significantly affects your marketing strategy.

They say businesses should bring their offerings where the customers are, and this is what you achieve when you build a website. But that is hardly the only benefit you can enjoy when you take your business online.

You see, this surprisingly affordable innovation offers a means to reach customers who aren’t usually part of the foot traffic in your business location. It is also crucial in delivering what customers crave — more technology with their meals.

In short, a website or any form of online ordering system is vital in helping your restaurant stand out from the competition.

To help your business make a mark online, you must begin with a well-designed and user-friendly website.

Ninety percent of potential diners search for a place to eat online. To ensure they choose your establishment, you have to make your website customer-friendly, reflecting your company’s brand identity through things like an online menu.

Of course, online ordering systems help you with more than just marketing. They also eliminate any chance of incorrect orders and reduce the amount of food wasted because of mistakes from phone call orders.

On top of that, customers feel a lot less pressured while ordering and can leisurely browse the menu in their own devices. Ultimately, this will lead to more sales as it increases consumers’ likelihood of ordering more items than they initially planned.

The best part is that having everything done online also lets you get a bird’s eye view of your business’s overall performance by recording and analysing data. This also proves useful in ensuring that you serve what your customers want and reduce waste by removing unprofitable offerings from the menu.

2. Modern Digital POS Systems

It’s the 21st century, so it’s only natural for customers to look for modern point-of-sale (POS) systems. Of course, these technologies go beyond appearances.

A modern POS system that includes an iPad POS, touchscreen terminals, and others also increase your food service business’s efficiency. To make sure this happens, your POS should be able to withstand constant usage with durable hardware. It should be able to support your staff well with a restaurant POS software that has:

• An intuitive and user-friendly interface
• A complete set of features, from order-taking to payment processing and analytics

3. Guest-Facing Ordering and Payment

Order-taking may seem simple, but there are a lot of things that go into the process and can affect the resulting customer experience. For this reason, many restaurants are levelling up their order-taking game with guest-facing ordering and payment technology.

Using a handheld device (e.g., a tablet or iPad), guests can now order via a digital menu and pay for their orders right then and there. This makes for wonderful additions, especially to fast-food restaurants around the world.

Of course, such an innovation isn’t just limited to casual dining. Many fine dining establishments have also seen the wonders of this technology, allowing customers full control over their orders. Thus, it ensures 100 percent order-taking accuracy, even with special food preparation instructions, because the message is sent from the customer straight to the kitchen.

In some cases, this system also lets your clients follow along the process, from the moment they order to the time they pay (and even tip) via a tabletop tablet screen. Besides improving the quality of customer service, this also helps improve the speed at which the restaurant queue moves.

4. Expanded Digital Payment

Still on the subject of POS, another innovation you might want to incorporate in your modern restaurant is an expanded digital payment selection.

Most POS terminals today already have the ability to take credit card payments. However, more and more are expanding to mobile payments with the help of QR and barcode readers directly linked to the POS.

Besides the POS terminals you have onsite, you should also pay attention to online and digital payments. Mobile payment technologies shine best in online payment since they remove the wait time and hasten the entire bill payment process.

In fact, mobile payment techniques are much faster than cash payments and have proven to be less troublesome compared to using EMV chip cards. And with faster checkout come higher turnaround and sales.

5. Online Reservation and Booking

Nobody likes to stand and wait in a long queue, even for their favourite food. This is why advanced reservation and booking was invented.

With the help of an online reservation management system, you get to track all the bookings your restaurant receives from every single channel it is linked to. It also streamlines the entire process and makes managing your bookings easier.

Want to find the perfect online reservation and booking system? Here are some features you need to look for:

Online Booking Widgets

Replacing the archaic reservation forms and phone call bookings lets your customers reserve a table with just a few clicks on your website or social media page.

SMS and Email Reservation or Booking Confirmation

This allows your customers to know all important details of their bookings ahead of their reservation via SMS and email. These also reduce the number of no-shows as they serve as reminders for customer booking as well.

Customer Database

Keeping records of customers’ information is quite useful for tracking reservation history, notes, important dates (e.g., birthdays), and even allergies and dietary restrictions. You can use this to make customer service more personalised.

Innovate Your Restaurant

Innovations help businesses keep up with the ever-changing needs of consumers. If you own a restaurant in the 21st century, you’ll want to continue innovating to take and keep a bigger portion of the market pie. Start with the essentials listed here and seek out more ways to ensure customer satisfaction and loyalty.

AUTHOR BIO

Ross Smith is the Managing Partner at iPad POS Middle East. Based in Dubai, covering the whole of the Middle East, the company is passionate about helping restaurateurs and retailers alike find the most suitable point of sale system to meet the needs of their business. They specialise in iPad-based point of sales systems and are resellers of Revel and Vend.