With a little reorganizing, there’s a way to keep the smiles of your front-of-house team at the forefront of your dining experience, even as COVID-19 forces your restaurant to focus on delivery.
Just redeploy your wait staff, bartenders, and greeters as drivers and have them pass on a little taste of a night out with every meal that’s sent to your customers’ doors.
It’s a simple trick that can improve service, retain staff, and impress socially isolating customers. And if you apply some similar thinking to your delivery ePOS functionality, you can unlock business efficiencies that bring welcome savings during this time of uncertainty.
Delivery Is Keeping Restaurants in Business
The social distancing measures at the heart of the community response to the COVID-19 pandemic have forced restaurants to find safe, cost-effective food delivery methods to maintain their links with customers.
The necessary refocus on packaging the dining experience for remote customers has resulted in dining-to-go sales tripling and quadrupling across 2020. While COVID conditions have obviously impacted revenue, the acceleration of home-delivered options is expected to ultimately produce additional revenue streams, more efficient digital practices, and boost the productive use of customer data.
EPOS systems are at the heart of any successful scaling of delivery services, and there are several tips you can employ to simplify the process:
- Keep everything in one place
- Reflect the kitchen’s availability accurately
- Simplify the menu
- Encourage online payments
- Outsource deliveries
- Issue digital receipts
- Analyze every spend and sale
Delivery ePOS solutions are COVID-19 necessities, but when implemented properly, they can become the hub of all future business once the recovery comes.
How Delivery ePOS Tech Helps
An ePOS system is the digital heart of 2020 restaurants. It is an evolved form of the register that converts hardware into the boundless simplicity and mobility of iPad and internet functionality. Add business software into the mix, and you’ve got yourself an all-in-one platform that links every aspect of the industry, from logging purchase orders to finalizing customer accounts.
It is a digital/real-world connection that makes it easy to add delivery to a kitchen’s capabilities. When delivery ePOS best practices are followed, delivery becomes a natural and financially rewarding extension of an existing kitchen.
Seven Tips for Streamlining ePOS Delivery
Let’s further explore the seven aforementioned tips for simplifying delivery using your ePOS solution:
1. Keep Everything in One Place
Digital ePOS works best when all its functions are integrated. Every member of the team needs to receive and be able to respond to delivery requests, and the details of every order need to be captured for future analysis. Make the delivery transition easy by keeping all service and management tools available from an easily accessible, always-connected source.
2. Reflect the Kitchen’s Availability Accurately
Increasing the reach of delivery means giving customers a remote, easy-to-master way of ordering. The online menu needs to accurately reflect what is currently available and guide a remote diner through the full range of possibilities, from appetizers to dessert. The leading ePOS providers can help design an online presence that enhances the anticipation of having quality food delivered.
3. Simplify the Menu
Make things easy for diners by offering designed meals that capture the essence of a restaurant. A simplified menu can take the worry out of ordering without the aid of a waiter, so consider offering multiple course meals by theme or flavor. A quality delivery ePOS system can convert all the modifications and dietary requirements a customer may have into simple checkboxes and notes that can be easily passed onto the kitchen in a highly visual, easy-to-read display that increases accuracy and on-time efficiency.
4. Encourage Online Payments
The most obvious purpose of a digital ePOS is to transfer the clunky register experience into an efficient, flexible payment system that can accommodate any customer preference, but delivery, especially contactless delivery, often works best with online payments. It’s easy to encourage such transactions on the online menu, and it opens the door to stress-free deliveries that don’t need to be bogged down by in-person, close-contact transactions.
5. Outsource Deliveries
While repurposing front-of-house staff to act as deliverers is a great way to keep your employees busy during COVID-19 conditions, partnering with food delivery tech and services represents the best long-term value. The leading providers take responsibility for service and training, and it limits the logistical and insurance headaches associated with a full commitment.
6. Issue Digital Receipts
Delivery via ePOS provides the opportunity to convert every customer interaction into an easy-to-capture digital event. Issuing digital receipts via email or SMS is another way of communicating with potential repeat customers, and it can provide a final piece of conversation that creates a permanent connection in the customer’s phone.
A single transaction describes what customers want and provides an avenue to delivering it to them again in the future.
7. Analyze Every Spend and Sale
As stated above, organizing a restaurant around a single all-in-one digital platform makes it easier to get the best out of a business. With all the information from pre-service spend to post-service sales available within the same platform, it is possible to see exactly how delivery impacts revenue.
The data analysis available through modern POS solutions quickly reveals practical information such as the most popular orders over any given timeframe, the most profitable ingredients, the impact of promotions, and the importance of loyalty programs.
These insights can reveal the real value of delivery service and provide guidance on how to maximize its potential.
Delivery ePOS Is Restaurants’ Key to Success
No one could have anticipated the onset and impact of COVID-19 on the restaurant industry. With the latest in digital delivery technology and techniques, however, there is a way to retain a working connection with customers and continue to provide a meaningful dining experience.
Whether it’s sending out the best smile on the team to hand-deliver a steak or creating online menu options that still satisfy the fussiest diners, delivery ePOS can help keep things going during uncertain times.
In a period of change, talech has a number of POS solutions that can help your business adjust operations smoothly. From reaching new audiences to engaging with your existing customers more often, we give you the tools to adapt quickly and with confidence.
