2019 has been a watershed year for restaurants and hospitality—a year that has witnessed a sea change in the uptake of game-changing trends such as…
- The rise of online ordering.
- Experimentation of dining experiences and restaurant aesthetic.
- ‘Conscious consumers’ and ‘brand ethics’.
- ‘Health & wellness’ themes and menus.
And of course—the ‘res-tech’ takeover.
Over the past few weeks we’ve skimmed across and deep-dived into some of the critical challenges, pain-points and success factors that restaurants need to identify, resolve and deliver against in order to avoid, at best, the downsizing that some of our favourite fast-casual eateries have had to face, and at worst, going the way of certain famous Italian chains.
If you’re ready for the bill, let’s foil and bag a few final take-homes.
Success Factors: Surprise & Deloitte
What do diners actually want?
Deloitte knows… and now so do you thanks to the tantalising insight unlocked in their seminal study, serving up a great restaurant customer experience: Through the eyes of guests
Here are the 5 golden CX virtues at the core of Deloitte’s findings that every restaurant should have writ large on their staff room wall.
Engage me. Be hospitable and genuine with me. Treat me as a person.
Empower me. Give me the ability to customise to my specific needs.
Hear me. Demonstrate awareness of the situation and acknowledge my needs.
Delight me. Create moments beyond my expectations that I will remember and share.
Know me. Remember me and my preferences. Anticipate my changing needs.
Read the full post on how ‘res-tech’ helps deliver against Deloitte’s big-5.
Drink, eat, relax—repeat: How team-tech gets diners coming back for more
To stress the point, restaurants need to empower staff
What’s the enemy of team morale, coordination, communication and overall performance in hospitality and restaurant environment?—STRESS.
Apparently hospitality F&B handlers suffer more stress than doctors and architects. Leaving employees…
“…at far greater risk from heart problems and 58 per cent more likely to suffer an ischemic stroke.
That’s pretty serious.
These were the findings of a study by the Southern Medical University of Guangzhou, China explaining that the stress of other job types tend to be reduced by a strong sense of status, responsibility and empowerment.
What does this mean for restaurants? It means investment must go into infusing teams with a sense of status, responsibility and empowerment—and the right team-comms tech can achieve that.
Learn exactly how this can work in the full post: Restaurant Tech: Soothe the indigestion of ops pain-points.
Customers perspective & reviews MATTER
And the right ‘res-tech’ can help keep those stars up.
Without exception, hospitality and restaurants are the most reviews-dependent industry out there.
Earlier in the series, we looked at just how much impact negative reviews have on the restaurant sector and how ‘res-tech’ can be deployed to consistently push those reviews stars up. We discovered that…
“An extra half‐star rating causes restaurants to sell out 19 percentage points (49%) more frequently, with larger impacts when alternate information is more scarce.”
Source: Learning from the Crowd: Regression Discontinuity Estimates of the Effects of an Online Review Database
Here’s the full post explaining exactly: why restaurants are turning to tech to solve the ‘reviews’ pain point.
The power of ‘earned media’
On a similar tangent to the ‘reviews’ point, we learned that ‘earned media’ is the gold dust that restaurants should be aiming to collect.
Earned media is effectively…
“…any material written about you or your business that you haven’t paid for or created yourself. Although this type of media is always published by a third party, there are ways marketers can position themselves for earned media opportunities.”
Source: HubSpot— Earned Media, Explained in 400 Words or Less
According to a 28,000-respondent study by Nielsen across 56 countries, 92% of consumers around the world say they trust earned media, such as recommendations from friends and family, above all other forms of advertising.
So it’s clear that people’s experiences are heard far beyond the four walls of the restaurant—restaurants should ensure they provide the right tools, training and customer-service tech to empower teams to deliver against expectations—or risk watching those 1-star reviews pile up like dirty dishes.
Discover how the right ‘res-tech’ can help restaurants keep those frustrated, 1-star reviews to an absolute minimum by: Connecting front and back of house
That’s it! Last orders, show’s over…. well, not quite
In our mission to educate restaurants about the virtues of team-voice tech as a vehicle for meeting critical success factors, we showcased our ‘res-tech’ wares at Restaurant & Bar Tech Live, at ExCeL, London this week.
The two-day whirlwind show hosted some of the most cutting edge ‘res-tech’ out there—it was a pleasure to speak with so many industry professionals so conscious about the operational challenges they’re facing.
The takeaway for us has been that there is a genuine industry appetite for technological solutions to tackle the emerging threats facing restaurants, hospitality and bars.
With vendors bending over backwards to innovate fixes to old and new challenges, we’re likely to see a continuation and an acceleration in the tech-revolution that’s driving the kind of operational change and efficiency that will hopefully safeguard a bright future for the restaurants, eateries and food spots we love.
Check in across the next few weeks during which we’ll be looking at the challenges facing fashion and clothing, plus the tech-trends retailers are adopting.