Best Ideas of Contactless Services for the Restaurant Business in 2021
With the start of the coronavirus pandemic & the present situation of the fourth & fifth wave of coronavirus transmission, it is difficult for restaurants to function the way they normally do before the pandemic. Government has forced lockdown and various other restrictions and social distancing has become the new norm. People are afraid to step out from their homes and are at some places there are still restrictions from offering dine-in services.
Given the prevailing situation, restaurants have to change their common methods of offering their food and services to keep their business up and continue to serve their customers as well. Keeping in mind that social distancing and no-touch behavior the best method of keeping things going on is to offer contactless services at the restaurants.
Here are the several best ideas of contactless services in the restaurant food business:
- Contactless Dining: Due to COVID-19 the world has changed because the diners are not willing to go out and are quite worried about touching unclean or virus-prone surfaces. Contactless dining uses technology and provides diners contactless dining experience in which it is very little or if possible no human interaction. QR-based digital food menu, Digital ordering, digital payment, online table reservation are few things that are making contactless dining experience better.
Digital menus replace traditional paper menu, which is easy to scan through mobile device & avoid human touches in the restaurant premises.
- Contactless Seating: Provide your customers the facility to reserve tables online through a digital table reservation system following all social distancing norms like having a 2-meter distance between tables. Table number will be a lot at the time of booking or restaurant manager send to customer mobile device before the time of actual booking.
- Contactless Menu: Allow your customers to scan your menu through their mobile phones. Contactless digital menus make the dining experience of the customers safer and better as can easily see your menu through their smartphones.
Also, restaurants are using QR code menus which enables the customer to quickly scan the QR code and view the contactless menu of food instantly without downloading any app. Customers are able to see the food menu along with their descriptions and pictures and can quickly place orders right from their smartphones.
You don’t need to touch the physical menus placed at the restaurant’s counter or at the dining tables because they undoubtedly can be a source of infection from the fatal coronavirus.
- Contactless Ordering: Due to COVID-19, it is advised to reduce the contact between the restaurant staff and the customers when they come for dining at the restaurants. Contactless food ordering provides the facility to the customers to order food of their choice directly from the digital menu through their mobile devices and there is no need to go to the order counter or call the waiter for taking the order.
This not only provides guest and staff experience contactless but it also makes the dine-in experience more engaging as guests have a personal as well as more interactive dining experience when they are ordering their food from their own smartphones.
Also, restaurants have the opportunity to highlight their food menu items customization that is not possible to do with printed menus.
- Contactless Delivery: Many restaurants are using contactless delivery methods as a way to reduce physical human interaction at the pick-up point or delivery. In contactless delivery food order is left outside the door or at a location agreed by the customer to keep the order to the delivery person.
The payment for the contactless delivery is either paid at the time of ordering the food or is paid online via payment apps so that the whole delivery process involves no touching or contact with the other person thus keeping both the customer and the delivery person safe.
- Contactless Payments/Digital Payments: Doing cash transactions has a high risk of infection because when the cash is transferred from one person to another person in the form of notes or coins there are chances that the germs are being transmitted from one person to another person.
So, it is best to stop accepting cash transactions at your restaurant and allow for only online payments such as Google Pay, PayPal, Amazon Pay, etc. The more options you offer; your sales will get better.
- Contactless Wallets: Also, to ease the process of digital payments for not only the customers but for the restaurants also, payments through e-wallets can be done through which you can avoid cash transactions and follow social distancing also. Digital wallets also reduce the time spent at the waiting areas when people go for curb-side pick-up at restaurants.
- Contactless Feedback and Reviews: Online feedback system allows to give real-time feedback from the customers on their dining experience in the restaurant. As a lot of business work nowadays is dependent on the digital world, so customer feedback is also collected through digital methods.
With help of few methods feedback from customers can be collected easily such as social media platforms, feedback and review option in the mobile app, customer survey software, e-mails, QR codes, etc. specifically at this time of crisis where everyone is practicing social distancing and does not wants to touch any form or any other thing to give their feedback.
Our lives are disturbed in such a manner during the COVID-19 pandemic that we have never imagined before. Our daily interaction with people is restricted, we can interact with our near and dear ones in the same way we used to do it before, we are avoiding crowded places, and many more. All these things have changed the behavior of people and the food industry is no exception.
As today the most important thing is to keep everyone safe, restaurants have to keep safety and hygiene at their top priority because according to few latest surveys while selecting a restaurant customers are ranking safety and hygiene as their top factors.
Therefore, people in the restaurant business must think to change their operations from conventional methods to modern digital and contactless methods in order to keep their customers safe and staff safe during the COVID-19 pandemic. It is important to gain the trust and confidence of your customers that you are well aware of the crisis and are taking all possible efforts to follow all the safety and health guidelines as prescribed by the Government.
