How Restaurants Can Best Use The Current Technological Trends (Essay Sample)

Student’s Name: Professor’s Name: Course: Date: Restaurant Marketing Recently, technology has had a massive impact on business. No matter the size of the market or operations, the internet has had both tangible and intangible benefits. One of the areas that people have not utilized the advantages of technology to the optimum is the food industry. This blog post will specifically focus on how restaurants can best use the current technological trends to keep their businesses booming both locally and internationally. Online ordering has become one of the most demanded services by customers in the hotel industry (O'Neill). This applies to both restaurants offering takeout and table-serving services. Online services are the best option for entrepreneurs who want to save their customers from making the long queues or waiting on the line to make orders. With the online ordering systems, the clients get the chance of ordering any kind of food from the comfort of their homes. They can leisure do so while surfing the internet. The lack of pressure when rushing to the restaurants or making phone calls to order can encourage one to request extra items. This will therefore increase the sales of the store. Also, the days when people ordered food through making a voice call are long gone. The main reason being the numerous limitations that come along with this traditional method. Firstly, there is a number of barriers to effective communication that may make the process hard. For example, in case the customer is in a loud place, the message will be distorted, and the person receiving the order may end up sending the wrong food. This will eventually lead to wastage of food and resources hence losses to your business. Some customers also find that making calls only makes their phone line tied. Online ordering eliminates all these variables. Data tracking can be made easy and efficient if you decide to go digital. The obvious logic behind this is that your website will keep all the records after every sale. Additionally, some websites have been integrated in such a way that the administrator gets all the financial records, hence doing away with the tedious bookkeeping that was traditionally done manually. Also, the information collected on the internet can provide a basis for checking the customer satisfaction and hence help the restaurant in improving on the weaker areas. Apart from the online ordering, the internet enables restaurants to adopt digital Point-on-Sale (POS) systems. In developed nations, this technology has been widely adopted in the hospitality industry. An alternative to this is the Electronic Register System, but many people prefer the POS since they have become more sophisticated recently. An example of a POS is the Digital Dining where potential customers get an opportunity to view the menu online, place orders, or make reservations and pay for themselves easily. To make this easier, the restaurants have integrated the systems on tabletop tablets. That brings us to our next discussion which is the customer-facing tabletop tablets. To match the competition from rivals, restaurants are widely leveling up their ordering game by using devices such as tablets. Clients get a chance to view and place an order from a digital menu. They can then easily and safely pay on a touchscreen tablet, using their debit or credit cards. Clients prefer this type of method since it offers some degree of privacy, making customer ordering one of the most important types of technology. Self-ordering technology first started with Quick Service Restaurants (QSR) that became too popular as many people welcomed the idea. This enabled customers to place their orders just with a simple click on a mobile application. Another similar program was the Taco Bell that provided the same services. After they were first used, the restaurants recorded an average of 20% increase in the total revenues (“Interactive Walls”). This is done by comparing the sales made online and the traditional one using cashiers. Therefore, self-service technologies have been received p...