The F&B industry has been tumultuous long before COVID-19. Flippant diners last-minute cancellations have plagued restaurants which became a common sight.
Along with the pandemic, these problematic conditions have only worsened. With the entire world in a state of uncertainty, diners have become more cautious and more fickle-minded, putting restaurants in tough competition to stand out against one another.
Colman Andrews from USAToday shares 20 ways in which dining out may change in 2021 and beyond, and two key takeaways are the increased sophistication of customer outreach and growing Apps influence.
Similar to a mutualistic symbiotic relationship, tech solutions serve restaurants valuable data and provide a platform to showcase their offerings, as well as enable predictable traffic flow and higher dine-in rates from consumers. With consumers becoming more loyal to apps, due to the array of benefits and rewards offered than any silo restaurant, restaurants may need to consider turning to increased use of Apps for an extra boost. This is more pertinent even after the pandemic lockdown is removed.
Is your reservation platform able to solve your last-minute cancellations?
A table reservation involves two parties — a restaurant and a customer. Like all relationships, nothing is perfect, and sometimes external parties come in to resolve issues. In the world of table reservations, we see multiple reservation apps championing their cause, offering solutions guaranteed to resolve all worries — for the customer.
Brian Fitzpatrik, Kokonas’s CTO shares that “reservation apps are totally customer-centric, but they don’t really solve the restaurant’s problem”, and we see that coming into play in Singapore’s table reservation market.
Almost all existing reservation tooling provides comfort and flexibility to customers — free for all to tables reserve, cancel, and consequence-free behavior. As such, consumers are conditioned to be fickle, and flightiness stands as a sore spot for restaurants. With so many benefits geared towards consumer satisfaction, we are left to wonder about the conditions of the restaurant. How have restaurants been dealing with such drastic behaviors? The short…
