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How restaurants can attract customers post COVID19

Introduction

If you are a restauranteur, chances are you have been hit badly by the pandemic. Amidst the current situation, we understand how hectic the crisis is for you with restaurants and cafes shut for visitors and sales continuously going down. But once the situation is under control, things have to be normalized again. Businesses are ought to start and the major concern would be to cover up the sales target that has drastically dropped due to COVID-19. But the question is, how are we going to manage things?

Fret not, we are here to help you out with your food-based business and how to carry out everything post COVID19.

For you to visualize it easily, we have categorized customers into dine-in and online ordering.

DINE-IN CUSTOMERS

Now, as the restaurants are going to open doors for the dine-in customers there is a major challenge awaiting them. Coronavirus might have dragged you down but now it is time to gear up. Getting new as well as previous dine-in customers would be difficult, but it is not impossible.

Let us look at some strategies to drive the traffic to your restaurant.

Social Media Campaigns

321 million users joined social media this year which accounts for a total of 9% increase in consumption. More than 60% of the world’s population lives on the internet.

Optimizing your social media handles like official Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram pages according to the targeted audience can help you drive traffic post COVID19. Organizing online competitions, quizzes, and other fun activities can help you to gain the attention of potential visitors thereby hiking the sales.

2. Send Out Positive Vibes

With all the negativity around the corner, it is the time you should send out some positive vibes in the form of health tips. Nobody would like to visit a place where there is a risk of getting infected again. So, the first and foremost thing you should do to get more traffic is to send out personalized messages to the would-be visitors explaining how you are managing things and keeping the environment of the restaurant completely sanitized and clean. This creates a sense of trust between customers and service providers by conveying that their safety is your priority. Again, the use of Social Media to send out such messages can be handy.

3. Set Up the Ambience

It is high time you should renovate your beautiful cafe or a restaurant. People coming back to a completely new ambiance with soulful music playing in the background is a complete mood lifter. Consider making changes in the sitting area and make it more appealing and calm so that people genuinely feel excited to visit your restaurant. This can increase the sales and ultimately will help you perform better with yielding maximum outputs post-pandemic.

ONLINE ORDERING SYSTEMS

While you may take all the steps to ensure a healthy and safe environment for your visitors, people are less likely to dine out due to the threat of catching the lethal infection again. Online ordering systems come into play here and in fact, they are a blessing in disguise. Once the pandemic is over, the workload from respective organizations would increase suddenly and people would be under strict deadlines. In this scenario, cooking meals, especially for single moms and people living alone would be difficult and they would eventually move to online ordering systems. Thus, whether a pandemic is active or not, masses would continue to order food through online delivery apps provided by the respective food-based business.

1. Offers And Discounts Like No Other

81% of the customers prefer searching for deals before buying from a particular restaurant, claims a report by Valassis. Heavy discounts and offers play a great deal when it come’s to increasing sales and growth. Luring customers with attractive deals on bigger portions prompt them to go larger than usual and thus, increasing your chances of growth and profits. Sending push notification through the optimized food delivery app of your restaurant can make this happen. We, at AIPOS, are helping millions of restaurants and cafes through our POS systems Australia by curating personalized native apps for their businesses.

2. Freebies and Rewards

Along with some regular offers, you can increase the sales of a particular food item by providing mini add-ons like mousse, a small cup of coffee, etc. This can act as a sample beverage and once the customers get accustomed to its taste, they will surely crave to get more. Similarly, rewards can appear like a steal deal to many potential consumers.

3. Premium Deliveries

With people spending more time in the office or their workplace post-pandemic, the demand for online food delivery will reach heights. Making use of this opportunity the restaurant owners can opt for premium food delivery by providing no-contact delivery along with sanitized food containers. You can also make the deliveries more customized and hassle-free for your buyers by adding options like optional biodegradable cutlery. According to a study by the National Restaurant Association, 51% of consumers prefer buying from restaurants that use eco-friendly items.

4. Customizing the Menu

Creativity goes hand in hand for better performance of a business, be it food-based or tech-based. You can add new dishes to your menu with some creative and funny names making people curious about it. This can induce a reaction of trying the food item at least once in order to explore more. While this can prove beneficial and equally rewarding, it cannot happen if you operate through third-party food delivery apps like GrubHub, DoorDash, etc. For this matter, you can turn to AIPOS, based on pos systems Perth to get across with the pros of having branded online ordering systems.

Final Words

While we have listed strategies, you can opt for attracting more customers, it is highly recommended that you keep the safety of your valuable customers in the picture while setting up things. Even you would not want to risk your health for taste buds. So is the case with many people out there.

Since most of the people are stuck in their homes right now, demand for restaurant food is going to rise amid and post COVID19. The opportunity to compensate for your lost business cannot get any better, for it is high time you should plan out things and start working out the solutions accordingly.

AIPOS is a premium venture that provides services to food-based businesses in Australia. We have a wide range of solutions for your business and can help you to grow and reach new standards. Getting your hands on the customized native app according to the requisites of your business is now easier than ever. With effective solutions like POS systems, Loyalty Programs, etc. we are here to improve the performance of your restaurant. To know more about us, visit our homepage.

Best Restaurant loyalty apps

The best loyalty program for patrons is one that really rewards customer spend behavior. Meaning, a program that rewards true value as a customer thereto a particular business.

Loyalty programs and owning an app offering great offers and discounts to customers are often a blessing in disguise. With complete control over customers’ choices, owners can increase their business by analyzing the info and improving the services.

AIPOS, the best Australian POS System may be a boon considering the competitive environment. With native app and loyalty programs alongside a variety of other features, you’ll easily increase your dine-in customers.

How then are you able to optimize your loyalty programs? How are you able to change the sport together with your loyalty programs? Well, all you would like maybe a digital Restaurant loyalty app. the advantages of going digital together with your loyalty program are many. App-based loyalty programs attract customers (who are constantly being hospitable new ideas that make everything much easier to do), actually engage your customers, and reward them for returning. Keeping existing customers actually cost but acquiring new customers.

The National Restaurant Association also conducted a survey which showed that using app-based rewards programs isn’t only a successful strategy, but also helps to create customer loyalty and increase customer retention. It’s easy to ascertain why this is often so. With the advancement in technology, almost everything goes digital. it’s more convenient to possess everything in your phone than it’s to stay things in your wallet. Most customers prefer the convenience of doing everything online.

There are two main things a loyalty app can help to realize. the primary is that, best restaurant loyalty apps can help cafe and restaurant owners to collect relevant information on customers. The second thing is that it’s an efficient way of truly making customers loyal. Having these stamps and points on their phones will make it easier for patrons to redeem their points, thus, fulfilling the aim of the loyalty program.

ONLINE ORDERING SYSTEMS

An alternative to the aggregator is that the online ordering system. This enables the business to try to things like process food orders and collect basic analytics on customer behavior.

Although there are a couple of different features available on each platform, an enormous a part of the technology is that the support of pre-orders. Customers can use an app or an internet site to settle on their food, before getting to a restaurant, and save themselves a while within the process.

The online ordering system does have a couple of cons. Businesses should remember of its basic capabilities in analytics, which may prevent a simple examination of the info they collect. Online ordering systems also can struggle with things like loyalty program integration and therefore the additional features that make a comprehensive solution.

Online Ordering

With the increasing dependence on online food ordering aggregators like Uber Eats, Menu Log, Deliver, and their High Commission on every order, this forces the worth for each product on the menu to extend which ultimately leads to lower customer satisfaction and loyalty. With the ordering functionality on the branded restaurant app, restaurants and cafe’s can build their loyal customers by allowing them to order directly from their branded app. With the Burp Engine and therefore the reform the integration in between the POS and the app, the highest trending products of the restaurants will automatically be displayed within the app therefore the customers have a neater time to order the restaurant specials.

As you’ll see, online ordering systems are often facilitated during a few alternative ways. The key to achieving even more with the function is to integrate it with other areas of your business, having it add how that leaves the customer happy, satisfied, and prepared to return.

Top 5 Benefits of having your own online ordering app

What’s the first thing that comes to your mind when you think of expanding your food-based business? Certainly, restaurant and food chain owners get into business relationships with third-party food delivery apps with the hope that it will help their business grow, lure more customers, and eventually reform their small restaurant into a brand. But things aren’t as easy as it seems. Involvement of third-party apps in your food-based business can do more harm than good. Instead you should have your own online ordering app.

Here’s why:

Negligible Commission Rates

The first legitimate reason that doesn’t support getting into business relationships with third-party apps is that they charge extremely high commission rates. This has a direct effect on small-scale businesses and new startups. Food delivery apps like UberEats, Grubhub charge up to 30% commission fees from restaurants and other food businesses, putting them in a place where they earn less profit as most of it is taken away by the third-party apps.

Gene Lee, CEO of Darden Restaurants firmly said, “We aren’t willing to give up 20-25% just to get a sale.”

Another disadvantage is that it also affects the relationship with the customers because they too pay high delivery charges on their part just for a beverage or a delicious snack.

To cover this up, you can introduce your own online ordering app which will not only help you save a lot of third-party commission but also attract loyal customers.

Recover your decline in dine-in customers

A research report by IBISWorld shows that in the last five years the industry growth was 104.9% mainly due to online ordering. While third-party apps may develop an illusion that they are helping you to attract new customers, these platforms can affect the number of dine-in customers majorly. People prefer ordering online anytime over dining out. Third-party food delivery apps take away all the due credit that should go to restaurants because most of the people can recall the app through which they ordered the food and not the restaurant.

While it is a personal choice of ordering online over dining out, the good news is food-based business owners can make use of this too. Loyalty programs and owning an app offering great offers and discounts to customers can be a blessing in disguise. With complete control over customers’ choices, owners can increase their business by analyzing the data and improving the services.

AIPOS, the best Australian POS System, is a boon considering the competitive environment. With native app and loyalty programs along with a number of other features, you can easily increase your dine-in customers.

Own your customers’ buying history

Using third-party food delivery apps puts the owners in the position where they have no access to the customer database. In simple terms, it translates to the basic fact that restaurants get the order, prepare it, and hand over to the delivery guy, nothing more than that. For your food business to grow, you need to have a close relationship with your customers so that they keep coming back to you.

Customization plays an important role when it comes to marketing your product and services, and when you are associated with apps like Grubhub, UberEats, DoorDash, etc you lose complete control over the database and eventually customization.

That’s when having an independent online ordering app becomes a necessity. Customization opens new doors to a lot of potential customers and increases sales.

When Starbucks introduced its fully effective application, the customer engagement increased several-folds and mobile ordering helped the world’s biggest coffeehouse chain to gain 20% profit on overall transactions weekly in America only, which roughly accounts for $9 million. This happened because the chain sought its own branded application and had better access to databases, choices, and preferences of customers and frequently ordered items.

Take Control of your Reputation

Customers generally blame restaurants when they get soiled packaging or soggy food. Seldom is the case when they reach out to third-party apps and confront them for their poor services. This leaves a terrible impression of your restaurant on the minds of the customers. And you can’t do anything because you don’t have control over the delivery part. With your own mobile app, you get complete control and can manage everything, from the staff to the delivery so that the food reaches safely to the consumers. Thus, you get full access to almost everything concerned with your food-based business.

Build Your Own Brand Image

70% of the consumers around the world prefer using restaurant’s own mobile app rather than the third-party food delivery apps, mentions a report by Hospitality Tech. As mentioned, third-party food delivery services create an illusion that they are marketing your products but instead they are the ones who are getting wide recognition. Even if the food tastes delicious, there are low chances that you’ll receive the due credit, mainly because people recall the app they used while ordering online. This way, the potential customers are lost, and you don’t get the recognition you deserve for your brand.

Using third-party food delivery services imposes a lot of difficulties for food-based businesses but these can be shooed away by getting an online ordering app for your food-based business.

AIPOS is the world’s first AI-based Point Of Sale system which helps to customize the application according to the needs and gives complete access to the consumer behavior statistics on the backend. The intelligent BURP engine helps you to make real-time decisions and tracks staff performance. All this comes with a low-cost monthly subscription.

The cherry on top, it gets you the recognition you deserve in the industry!

A food-based business should never depend completely on third-party apps. It is the need of the hour to take control in your hands and learn the strategy to grow your business. Let us help you with how you can build your business, increase sales growth, and improve customer interaction all at the same time. Get in touch with us for more info.

Reasons for Restaurants to have their own Branded App

1.Loyalty is usually returned

Did you recognize that it costs 500% the maximum amount to accumulate new customers for your business than it does to retain an existing one? Yet, only 18% of companies seem to specialize in customer retention. you’ll work smart together with your customers by engaging them during a loyalty program apps for restaurants, making them feel special for your business and compelling them to return. Give special discount coupons to regular diners, reward them with points that they will redeem whenever they carry along a guest. Customize your app to treat every customer who supported his/her recent searches, frequent timings, and recurring outlets. But do restaurant loyalty programs work? The Infinite Cycle shows it definitely does!

2. Always get on their mind

As a restaurateur, you’d want only your brand to return up whenever someone speaks of food. to make this impression of your restaurant, brand awareness must be taken into supreme consideration while drawing your marketing strategy. Design a singular color combination and logo for your app such it stands out on a mobile screen. Inculcate a push-notification service with the assistance of AIPOS, the simplest POS system for Australian restaurants, to draw constant attention from users. Don’t miss a chance to remind customers about you.

3. Allow them to know where you’re

According to an overall study, around 82% of all smartphone users perform “Near me” searches, out of which 84% were on food! AIPOS embeds GPS services in your app enabling customers to look at nearby outlets and vacancy per outlet. you’ll also send notifications from the app whenever a customer travel by it. If your restaurant has outlets in many cities, you’ll feature your app to notify visiting users about your presence, also giving them directions to the closest venue.

4. Provide simple choice on the Menu

Complement mouth-watering dish names with appealing pictures and descriptions. Creatively categorize your menu supported the hour, weekday, and season, or declare “Chef Specials” often. you’ll even consider offering separate menu sections for various dietary needs. On weekends or holidays, highlight your trending dish under “Popular today” or “Best-selling”. This might boost your sales as people seldom go against public opinion, be it dining-in, take-away, or order through online ordering restaurant app.

5. Manages Order Centrally

Cloud kitchens receive orders from multiple platforms. Without an integrated software that manages orders centrally, there are high chances of missing out on orders while handling orders manually. However, an integrated POS compiles customer orders, alongside important details like location, preferred dishes, etc. which is pushed to the kitchen nearest to the customer’s location. This optimizes the order time interval, and therefore the order is delivered swiftly.

6. Online ordering systems

In-app ordering and payment improves in-store efficiency. Orders placed in-app are often seen by store staff immediately, where they will prepare it for immediate carry-out — making order fulfillment easier. Additionally, shorter lines mean your in-store customers spend less time waiting and staff has more bandwidth to supply improved experiences to in-store customers — a win-win for customer satisfaction. Accuracy also improves as in-app ordering reduces the prospect for human error when verifying correct order information, a delight for patrons who wish to customize their orders.

Investing in an app for your restaurant has the power to dramatically increase your customer LTV (lifetime value) and make happier customers. To form these mobile experiences seamlessly and accurately attribute every conversion and each install — work with a partner like Branch. Contact our team to urge started.

7 Reasons for Restaurants to have their own Branded App

What is the world today without mobile phones and the Internet? A modern-day smartphone does almost everything for you, from telling you the weather at your location to the traffic around your area, from entertaining you with games to ordering food at your doorstep, all with the help of a few clicks. Mobile apps have become very common in today’s world, constituting 90% of the time spent by a user on his/her phone. Talking about ordering food from eateries, over the past 5 years, online ordering has gone up thrice as much compared to dining-in, according to National Restaurant News. It is all the better for a business if the app is first-party, as customers credit it for fast delivery, open choice of restaurant and seating, quick payment, and discount coupons. A self-owned mobile app, thus, proves to be the perfect definition of excellent marketing and customer-friendliness, ideal for a restaurateur looking to expand his scope online.

Here are 7 reasons on why you should have a branded app as a restaurant/cafe owner:

Be the Only One

The foremost advantage of launching an app of your eatery would be the steep increase in its visibility among a a large portion of mobile users. Apart from your delicious food, welcoming the ambiance, and top-class service, wide-spreading online visibility will help your restaurant gains popularity, giving you an edge over your competitors. Moreover, you can give yourself an attractive USP, Unique Selling Proposition, a term used to describe what you do best that is different from all the other brands out there.

Use the monopoly of the app to your benefit

Having full control of your app saves you the commission that you would have had to pay a mediator food delivery app otherwise; commission rates go from 15-30% of the price of the food item delivered. Make provisions on your app for online ordering, takeaway and delivery. With AIPOS, our smart, POS system for restaurants, you can make pre-booking of seats an option for those who want to make reservations during peak hours and wish to skip the waiting room. What’s more, customers can pre-book their orders even when the restaurant is closed! This way, the management will already have a to-do list to work on once the restaurant opens. Customers can collect your order as soon as it is ready.

You can also include a special feedback option wherein genuine customers (those who have had a dining history with you) can leave behind their reviews.

Loyalty is always returned

Did you know that it costs 500% as much to acquire new customers for your business than it does to retain an existing one? Yet, only 18% of companies seem to focus on customer retention. You can work smart with your customers by engaging them in a loyalty program, making them feel special for your business and compelling them to return. Give special discount coupons to regular diners, reward them with points that they can redeem every time they bring along a guest. Customize your app to treat every customer based on his/her recent searches, frequent timings, and recurring outlets. But do restaurant loyalty programs work? The Infinite Cycle shows it definitely does!

“Just having satisfied customers isn’t good enough anymore. If you really want a booming business, you have to create raving fans.” ― Ken Blanchard

Always be on their mind

As a restaurateur, you would want only your brand to come up every time someone speaks of food. To create this impression of your restaurant, brand awareness must be taken into supreme consideration while drawing your marketing strategy. Design a unique color combination and logo for your app such that it stands out on a mobile screen. Inculcate a push-notification service with the help of AIPOS, the best POS system for Australian restaurants, to draw constant attention from users. Don’t miss an opportunity to remind customers about you.

Let them know where you are

According to an uberall study, around 82% of all smartphone users carry out “Near me” searches, out of which 84% were on food! AIPOS embeds GPS services in your app enabling customers to view nearby outlets and vacancy per outlet. You could also send out notifications from the app every time a customer pass by it. If your restaurant has outlets in many cities, you can feature your app to notify visiting users about your presence, also giving them directions to the nearest venue.

Provide ease of choice on the Menu

Complement mouth-watering dish names with appealing pictures and descriptions. Creatively categorize your menu based on the hour, weekday, and season, or declare “Chef Specials” often. You could even consider offering separate menu sections for different dietary needs. On weekends or holidays, highlight your trending dish under “Popular today” or “Best-selling”. This could boost your sales as people seldom go against popular opinion, be it dining-in, take-aways, or ordering.

Ensure fast and hassle-free payment

The digital platform for payment is beneficial to both parties. As a customer, one would want to get over with the payment as quickly and easily as possible. Online payment processing is only a matter of a few clicks, saving the time taken in a restaurant for the bill to come, be taken away, and the change to be returned. As the restaurant owner, what more would you want than cost-cutting without compromising on efficiency? Online payment methods mean lesser manual labor required and more secure and reliable transactions.

According to a report by Statista, 34% of consumers spent at least 50 USD per order online as compared to the 16-30 USD that they spent physically in full-service restaurants. This clear statistics about double expenditure on the digital platform leaves no excuse for restaurateurs to hold back from having their own app. With our finest services at AIPOS, you can develop your business a branded app integrated with your POS system, and experience guaranteed boost in sales, at a relatively minimal app-building investment. Done right, it will take your business no time to climb up to the first position among your competitors. Get started today by contacting us.