Post-covid process: the pros and cons of digital menus and contactless ordering
After the last few years in the hospitality industry, you may be wondering what the best approach is to run a successful cafe post-covid-19, and how to implement systems and processes that safeguard your business for the future.
A lot of cafe owners implemented digital menus and contactless ordering during 2020 and 2021, and if you are one of those businesses you may be wondering if it’s worth keeping those systems in place moving forward. Or maybe you haven’t jumped on the contactless train yet, but you can see a desire in your customers to embrace more of that style of business. It’s a tough call to make, but here are some of the pro’s and con’s to consider when weighing up your choice!
PROS
Safety for workers
As a business owner, you are responsible for ensuring the safety of your staff, and hospitality workers have had to deal with a lot of anxiety over the last few years around working on the front line as essential workers, and potentially exposing themselves to illness. With a lot of hospitality workers returning to the industry, they may be wondering what you can do to help to protect them.
By implementing contactless ordering and digital menus, you can reduce the amount of contact that your staff have with the public, keeping them safe and also safeguarding your business against the struggles of finding staff when your team is sick.
Accessibility
Digital menus are a huge advancement for accessibility. Whether it’s for customers who are sight impared, who have the option to enlarge text on their screen, or for deaf or speech impaired customers who would usually struggle ordering with a server, digital menus allow for a huge increase in accessibility for your customers. You could even include multilingual options, or clear images of your items, so that speakers of different languages can still order with you.
Reduced staffing needs
Often, when cafes implement contactless ordering, they find that their staffing needs reduce for front-of-house. If you remove the need for staff to stand at tables taking orders, that time can be freed up for the team to focus on other tasks, or to run a smaller front-of-house crew.
CONS
Less interaction for your regular local customers
If you’ve invested in top-tier staff for your cafe or restaurant, you likely hired them for their skills but also for their personality and the way that they interact with your customers. Often, if you have a loyal returning customer base, a large part of their loyalty will be the relationship they have with your front-of-house staff. And with contactless ordering and digital menus, you remove those little interaction points that can make your customers return, which could mean that they take their business elsewhere.
Less work satisfaction for front-of-house workers
If you ask cafe staff why they love the hospitality industry, many of them will say that it’s the banter and relationships that they have with the locals. And while removing the interaction with the public is key for increasing safety for staff, many of them will also find that they just don’t have a lot of job satisfaction if they don’t have those points of interaction and conversation, so if your staff are the kind that love a good chat with the locals, it may not be a change that they are very happy with.
Less nuance and niche for customers
One hallmark of successful cafes is how well they are able to create what feels like a personalised experience for customers. Maybe this means your front-of-house staff recommending the perfect dish, or maybe it’s being able to customise a dish to suit dietary requirements. Without face-to-face contact between your staff and the customers, it becomes increasingly difficult to create these little moments of personalisation.
We weren’t kidding when we said there are both pro’s and con’s to consider! And depending on your staff, your customers, and your business goals, you may swing one way or the other when it comes to contactless ordering and digital menus. Whichever option you choose, it shapes the way that your business presents to the public, and the interactions that your customers have with you, so don’t rush! Take your time to review the pro’s and con’s, and consider your specific business needs - the future looks different for every cafe so you have the ability to shape yours.