This edition of Modern Restaurant Management’s “Ask the Expert” features advice from EZ-Chow Inc. CEO Mo Sloan. Click here to read the full article.
Now that restaurants are focused on re-opening and there is some light at the end of the proverbial tunnel, a few technological changes, updates and reconfigurations are taking place across the country.Some of these shifts have been a long-time coming, while others have been in response to necessitated by a post-COVID dining environment.
The first big shift is in contactless payments. It’s taken a long time for that trend to take hold and it seems big changes are finally taking place. Contactless payments have been huge in Europe (thanks to chip card/EMV transactions); however, in the U.S., consumers always placed emphasis on the interaction rather than the transaction, one of the reasons why contactless payments took so long to be adopted.
The second trend is curbside ordering and bi-directional communication. Bi-directional communication allows for restaurant staff to respond to texts sent by waiting customers who placed an order for curbside pickup. In the past, communication was more of a one-way interaction. In today’s environment, it’s all about moving toward the ability for restaurants and customers to send and receive text messages. This means customers can see when their orders are ready via a text from the restaurant, and operators can see where customers are parked if they ordered for curbside pickup. This means in a post-COVID world, restaurant operators have to reimagine their traditional dining experience and their contactless one.
