There are ways restaurants can deliver the highest standard of service, and safety, even if they can’t be physically close to their customers.
Jackie Walker
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In the past decade typically referred to adopting mobile payment options. While COVID-19 has increased demand for delivery and pick-up, restaurants were already looking to optimize the order-to-fulfillment process. Now, the crisis has forced restaurants to expand their view of “contactless” and how it relates to every aspect of the customer experience.
The three stages of the order-fulfillment process – ordering, food prep and food pick-up or delivery – are already undergoing change and will need to adapt to meet customer expectations for food quality and safety in the new normal of social distancing, waves of viral outbreaks and intermittent dining-room closures.
The Wall Street Journal reported that McDonald’s, the world’s largest fast-food chain by sales, announced a 59-page dine-in reopening guide for U.S. franchisees that includes commitments to clean bathrooms every half hour and digital kiosks after each order, and enforce social distancing.
The National Restaurant Association estimates that three percent of all restaurants in the United States, which includes QSRs, have closed due to COVID-19 and more than 10 percent could close in the coming weeks and months. The association also estimates the restaurant industry lost $25 billion in sales for the first 22 days of March.
In a March Rakuten consumer survey, some 80 percent of respondents said they’ve avoided restaurants since the pandemic began and 66 percent said if a restaurant would proactively communicate the health and safety precautions they’re taking it would increase the likelihood of them ordering from that restaurant. To that end, conveying how a restaurant is implementing contactless solutions would also go a long way.
Mobile ordering is projected to drive more than 10 percent of sales for the sector in 2020, and this trend will persist as more consumers view mobile as a safer and more efficient way to order. Here are three considerations for how the ordering process is being disrupted:
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Many restaurants are grappling with workforce challenges as workers have health and safety concerns and operators have to optimize costs and service. But the demand for crews to be able to respond quickly to various fulfillment requests ranging from pick-up to delivery is more important than ever. Crews will need new tools and notifications to let them know if an order is being prepared for curbside pick-up or delivery. Third-party delivery services like Uber Eats often pick-up multiple orders at a time, making packaging prep time paramount depending on how the food will reach customers and how long the journey will take from the restaurant kitchen to dining table.
Robotics could also be a game-changer for crews and customers alike. Robots could increase productivity and reduce costs, but so far robotics haven’t been deemed as essential to businesses because they haven’t recognized their value. COVID-19 has been a wake-up call for how necessary this technology may become.
“As we think about contactless from order to delivery, we have to think creatively about how to drive contactless into back of the house functions, said Kalliecharan. “Can we use robots to reduce touch points in order prep or packing? We’ve started seeing robots in grocery aisles – could QSR kitchens also be fertile ground?“
Brands like Instacart show how to get the pick-up or delivery experience right, where micro moments in the process are optimized to remove contact and friction. For pick-up, customers opt-in to allow the company to geo-locate phones so that a store knows when a customer will arrive and when to have their groceries ready to load into the car. However, at QSRs, people won’t be able stand by counters waiting to pick-up food as social-distancing guidelines become more common. Staggering pick up times is going to be essential in reducing contact. Digital solutions need to have the intelligence to predict pick-up time based on kitchen congestion.
“How many of us have gone to do pick-up and you have to get on your phone, and you have to call the restaurant and tell them that you’re there and the food isn’t ready?” said Kalliecharan. “This sort of guesstimating on what time to arrive and food not being ready isn’t an option for brands in the post-COVID-19 world, not when there are better alternatives.”
In a re-imagined and optimized pickup process, customers know when to arrive, are informed when their order is ready, can notify that they are on their way, have arrived or have geo-fencing technology detect their arrival – all without contact.
For delivery, restaurant mobile apps can send customers alerts letting them know when their food is in transit and the expected delivery, along with offering contactless delivery so that delivery staff don’t wait at front doors for a customer to receive the food. Consumers are going to demand more transparency into the health of QSR crews and will want reassurance that food has been prepared to the highest sanitation standards and hasn’t been tampered with. In China we’re seeing QSRs taking daily temperatures of delivery staff to reduce virus transmission. As this crisis prolongs do alternate delivery methods such as smart lockers and robots present more options that are sterile?
“This crisis has put a spotlight on QSR vulnerabilities – specifically on the speed at which solutions can be deployed,” said Kalliecharan. “The nature of this crisis with its ongoing waves and the emergence of increased focus and productivity at HQ is going to afford QSRs some relief to focus on improving their engineering agility, and it’s important to remember that some of the biggest innovations came in times of crisis .”
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Even though social distancing restrictions are easing in some locales, QSR brands will need to build resilience by having an agile response to future outbreaks. In this quest to build resilience we’re already seeing brands deploy additional revenue streams that cater to contactless:
QSRs have little to lose in elevating their health and safety standards and going contactless. Taco Bell has publicly announced that it is going to be the “winner” in this category. Seventy-six percent of consumers interviewed said, “a restaurant’s cleanliness and food safety will matter more to me after COVID-19,” according to Datassential, a food and beverage industry analytics company.
“We have to prepare for disruptions that are going to happen in multiple ways,” said Kalliecharan. “We have to do some lightweight solutions for now, but then we have to plan for more robust features in order management and back of house systems. We need to be able to turn these on or off, depending on environmental factors, and flexibility in order entry and fulfillment is going to be key in this new normal.”
As more QSRs begin to address these considerations, they’ll discover that making their business increasingly contactless, mobile and flexible gives them the opportunity to engage directly with their customers. This will also enable QSRs to deliver the highest standard of service even if they can’t be physically close to their customers.
Jackie Walker
Senior Director, CX&I
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