Up until last year(2020), contactless dining was a term that was not common to many of us. However, the unprecedented arrival of covid-19 has brought lots of change to the restaurant industry. Contactless dining is a whole new concept, where customers view their menu, order, and pay for their meals with minimal face-to-face interaction. In fewer words, it is dining gone digital. While this may be outside the norm for most restaurants, reducing contact is necessary for the age of covid-19. These measures not only improve safety they also help customers feel more comfortable.
While contactless dining is beginning to gain momentum, understanding and adaptation is necessary to help service your customers better so, to help, we created a guide that covers everything you need to know about digital dining,
Contactless dining is a dine-in experience that involves no close contact with restaurant staff and minimal touching of shared surfaces. Guests can place their orders and pay for their meals all on their own with the help of QR codes and apps. Contactless dining also requires that tables are one meter apart to maintain social distancing. The adoption of this concept has come as a way to minimalize the spread of the virus.
Contactless Dine-in in 4 simple steps;
The first and most important is your Restaurant POS System. The system connects your digital menu to your kitchen. This software ensures that orders placed through your mobile device are sent directly to the kitchen for preparation. Without this software in place, ordering via digital means is rendered redundant. For example, Omega POS contactless dining solution fully integrates with your POS and connects each order with a table number. So the front of house staff accepts the order and sent directly to the kitchen without the need for manual entry by staff.
Once your software is in place, the next step is setting up the contactless menu for your customers to browse and order. It is one of the essential parts of contactless dining. Make sure to edit your menu to complement the digital dining experience while keeping in mind that staff will have less contact with customers. Also, consider
a. adding modifiers that will allow customers to customize their orders
b. group items by categories to make it easy to navigate,
c. attach photos and descriptions to the dishes to allow customers to learn more about what they are ordering.
After setting up your contactless menu, the next step is to make it accessible for customers. QR codes come in handy here. A QR code is like a barcode that contains information about the item to which it is attached.
Customers using their devices will scan these QR codes, and your restaurant menu will pop up to give customers access to your menu. With O-Menu, you get a custom QR code using a picture of your logo and a URL of your online menu, which you can then print and place on the tables for customers to scan. If you need help setting this up for your restaurant, contact (pos@posshop-ng.com)
Lastly, set up a contactless payment process. To keep contact with staff at a minimum level, you need to use a payment processing solution that allows your customers to pay without their cards. With this, customers can enter their debit/credit card information into your contactless ordering platform, and the payment will be processed digitally. No separate card reader is required. You can also present guests with options of digital receipts. It is also necessary to make sure that your payment processing solution integrates with your POS. So that all payment information automatically and securely syncs to your POS software without manual entry.
Although implementing contactless dining may require you overhauling your restaurant experience and setting up new technologies, the benefits far outweigh the expense. Some of which includes
Covid-19 wouldn’t last forever, but heightened anxieties in people will linger for some time. Offer safer services and touch the heart of your customers by investing in contactless dining. Need more information and a demo at no cost? Contact pos@posshop-ng.com