RestoTech: a user-centred approach to innovation
The restaurant industry is notoriously a high risk, go hard or go home environment, with pressure only intensifying during the pandemic. Many culinary gems were forced to close their doors but a few rose to the occasion with novel delivery and takeaway experiences. However, the food and drink sector has been among the hardest hit by the cost of living crisis and energy price increases. Supply chain issues exacerbated by Brexit have made importing goods more difficult due to increased costs at the end of the EU transition period.
These challenges are scary but they also create opportunities for innovators to address pressing customer needs. The aim of this article is to offer some user-centric guidance to spark ideas for those trying to make the world a tastier place.
What’s trending in RestoTech?
- Online ordering systems and delivery apps are now the norm for takeaways to be discovered by new customers and remembered by regulars. Even after the pandemic, QR codes have remained as an ordering option at many fast-paced venues like Brewdog pubs.
- Autonomous delivery robots like those created by Starship Technologies are becoming more commonplace for last-mile delivery.
- Online table reservation systems are becoming more complex with enhanced customisation features, allowing customers to manage seating arrangements, dietary preferences and join waitlists for walk-in-only restaurants.
- The pandemic drove food businesses to be more imaginative, conceiving innovative customer experiences beyond just the food like OpenTable’s Unique Experiences, independent cafes and bakeries building community in case another pandemic brings the world to a standstill again and high-end fine dining restaurants sending out meal-kits to build a range of reliable revenue streams.
- Engaging with social media influencers has become core to boosting discoverability as the food recommendation business is becoming increasingly decentralised from institutions like TimeOut and TripAdvisor.
- Automated inventory management software and Kitchen Display Systems enable seamless communication between the point-of-sale and inventory, facilitating wastage reduction and reduced costs.
- Unifying the data from these systems is key to link decision-making to customers behaviours and preferences, designing menus to align with forecast inventory and considering the data investment that customer make every time they engage with a restaurant, storing that data to make the experience more curated to them for their next go-around.
How do customers feel about all this?
Cost of living is front of mind for customers at the moment. With food and drink seeing the highest levels of inflation, consumers are cutting back their spending on restaurants and going out. Takeaway saw a necessary spike during the pandemic but growth here remains strong, with 62% of diners preferring to order directly from restaurants.
What can be done?
Opportunities abound for tech groups to help restaurants provide beyond-food value for cash-squeezed customers. I ideated around the customer problems, business issues and contexts above and came up with the following areas ripe for innovation:
Building incentivised community
How might we build support communities of patrons that feel emotionally and financially invested in the restaurant’s success?
Integrating systems and data into the creative process
How might we leverage the trend of integrated backend systems and consensually use customer data to improve their experience for their next time around?
Enhancing the standard delivery experience
How might we deliver more of the on-premises experience to takeaway customers?
Open for business when the lights are off
How might we leverage new tech to develop a model that generates value even when the restaurant is closed?
Showcasing independents
How might we boost awareness of unique offerings from independents who are going the extra mile?
Enhancing the standard delivery experience
To demonstrate what an example output might look like, I mapped the typical takeaway experience to find gaps for innovation taking advantage of current trends.
How might we deliver more of the on-premises experience to takeaway customers?
A new medium of discovery
- Allow users to discover new takeaway restaurants with influencer reel posts, each a short video review much like those found on TikTok or Instagram
- At present, food influencers are creating plenty of content but there is no direct call-to-action for customers to order due to platform limitations
- The digital equivalent of walking around a street corner and making a spontaneous decision to give a new restaurant a try because you caught a waft of beautiful aromas and saw people eating in the window
Pairings
- Make takeaway customers feel more of the vibe of the restaurant by allowing the owners to post content about movies or music they think aligns with their brand
- Reward restaurants that post content by prioritising them in the Discover feed
- They could write more in-depth information about the dishes themselves, sourcing and ingredients, much like Beer52 include in their subscription deliveries to help develop a sense of fandom
Loyalty cards
- These are commonplace at cafes and lunchtime restaurants so why not for delivery?
- This would help develop repeat customers for takeaway restaurants, giving customers good value for money and a stronger link to customers for the business
Trends that could shape the future of RestoTech
- Metaverses were a hot topic in 2022, with interest somewhat dampened by economic downturn and the collapse of crypto markets. Beyond the fad, the underlying technology holds promise to solve real customer problems for the restaurant business. Restaurants could create their own metaverse table booking systems so customers get a feel for exactly which table they will be booking, if it’s too close to the toilet or in the perfect cosy nook in the corner.
- Augmented reality menus could allow customers to see what dishes really look like in perspective, leaving less to speculation. Is the portion size appropriate for the customer? Is it actually messier to eat than you might think?
- Virtual reality to onboard new recruits. Hilton Hotels has deployed this technology to train new kitchen staff without interrupting the flow of the real kitchen by giving them virtual tours and training [citation]. Could this become more widespread?
- NFTs to offer experiences that are truly unique and developing memberships as a reliable and forecastable revenue stream.
Wherever restaurant innovation goes next, we should be careful to not get carried away by technological fads but to balance ensuring we’re solving real customer problems with the art of cooking that cannot be over-engineered and comes from the creative spirit of the cook. Such is the delicate but beautiful tightrope of the food business.
