As reopening differs largely from state to state, with some areas continuing or returning to shelter-in-place orders and others in the beginning stages of reopening, it seems like questions facing restaurateurs outnumber the answers.
Should we reopen for dine-in service? What are the federal, state and local guidelines to manage? How do we provide safety for our guests and for our workforce? What do customers even want from their restaurants in a post-coronavirus world?
Safe to say, few industries have changed more drastically than food service in the last few months. The pandemic reshaped the entire economic model of food. And our fundamental roles as restaurant-goers and as social beings have changed. What’s the go-forward strategy for that?
It seems we are, at aggregate, less employed, less willing to gather and less inclined to spend. At the same time, many of us are more sensitive to the risk of being in a crowd, more aware of the value of a dollar and more interested in helping local brands stay afloat.
How does a brand respond to all of this? How do we make choices in our restaurants for reopening, while weighing the possibility that the changes we make today must also account for the risk of a second wave looming over the next horizon?
The answers, you might be surprised to learn, are the same as ever: We strengthen systems that get customers in and those that get customers out, efficiently and safely. Some of these systems are about building better order management workflows. Other steps are toward launching better technologies to manage delivery and online ordering, while others go the extra mile to present warmth and hospitality of service in an unusually sterile environment.
Successful restaurants in the reopened marketplace must think about everything in a new way. Here are a few strategies worth considering:
Lean into mobile ordering and payment for on-site experiences.
Working in the restaurant technology space, we’re finding that many restaurants are choosing to get rid of menus entirely, reducing the need to disinfect menus between guest uses and allowing for a more contactless experience.
Instead, technology solutions can allow guests to walk into a restaurant and take a picture of a QR code at the end of their table or pull up the restaurant’s mobile app. This leads to a menu that your guests can access via their own devices.
Servers can still come over to talk and answer questions, but orders can be processed online, with a line item inserted for order name or table number. When ordering online, guests can also process payment online, thus reducing hand-to-hand interaction between guests and staff.
Build new ‘bring-to-table’ and ‘pay-at-table’ service models.
It used to be that servers and food runners would deliver food and checks by hand to their tables. But as people look for less contact and more touchless solutions, the delivery of food and checks comes into question. At a minimum, servers and runners should wear gloves in the delivery of food and checks, and they should change gloves often.
But for restaurants looking for an even more visible change to the standard system, consider integrating a cart to deliver food and checks to guests around the restaurant. This allows guests to take the food or bill themselves and enables servers and food runners to reduce interpersonal contact.
Become service-agnostic.
For most restaurants, the old model was defined: Guests showed up and waited for a table, while a percentage of incremental business was done via delivery or pickup, as ordered over the phone or through the app.
Today, we’re finding that model is less clear. Guests are often not sure until they show up whether they plan to eat in or order takeout. It may seem inconsequential on the surface, but there are fundamental backend tech capabilities needed for every restaurant to process shifting orders.
A restaurant must be able to place orders out to the kitchen at the right time, flag orders, change the queue and geolocate guests. Restaurants today should ensure that tools and processes are in place to serve a marketplace where guests come from every angle.
How do you take other parts of the restaurant experience and enhance them?
Here’s a thought: What is a smile worth when your server is wearing a mask? The answer is not much if the eyes aren’t smiling too. These are the kinds of minute details that today’s restaurant leaders must recognize as different and find creative ways to enhance.
How do you create a waiting list if nobody is willing to wait on-site for a table to open up? How will you ensure that your best customers can always get a table when they arrive, even though half the tables are no longer usable? How do you set your floor up for social distancing? Is it two tables, or four or six? How will you manage an eight top? Or, if such a thing even exists anymore, a dinner party?
In these situations, the industry tends to standardize over months, and best practices may emerge over time. But for now, it’s essential that you make clear decisions on how many tables for two, how many tables for four, how many tables for six and more. Restaurants must develop actionable plans for the return to filled (and distanced) dining rooms.
As we begin to reopen, the return to full dining rooms and long waitlists — and the return to the economic environment we left behind in March — is not around the next corner or the corner after that. Today’s restaurant brands must lean into technology, service and solution-oriented creativity to weather this storm and define their path back to normalcy in whatever form comes next.
