QR Code in Restaurants Takes Center Stage as Owners Get Busy with Reopening Plans
How to Bridge the Gap between COVID Guidelines and Revenue Targets?
For nearly the last two years, we have been bombarded with an onslaught of negativity, as every news outlet telling us statistics on COVID-19 infections, deaths, or travel restrictions. They don’t bore me but induce fear when I want to see the world, a better place.
Then appears a silver lining, and I’ am hyped up to hear that the travel industry starts to plan its reopening; it helps several connected businesses reopen to recover. And I personally want to hang around, relax, enjoy, or have real dinner conversations (not digital) in warm, dim lighting with soft background music — just as anyone who missed the relaxing ambiance of great restaurants.
The restaurant industry, one of those completely brought to a halt by Coronavirus. You may argue that some restaurants still did well with takeaways and delivery orders. But it is not so for fine dining or the restaurants that are heavily dependent on dining.
Running these restaurants is a capital-intensive operation. When they have to fully depend on takeaways, it only helps their brand to survive and serve the customers with some layoffs.
Some countries already started their reopenings while others are preparing, it’s great news for the owners and workers. It’s cheerful news for anyone who missed them.
However, you might not still have that same perfection you enjoyed pre-pandemic as the reopening will need to adhere to stringent COVID-safety guidelines.
What makes running these restaurants with COVID-safety guidelines challenging is, meeting revenue targets and adhering to the stringent guidelines. Owners have two choices here:
- Reopen with guidelines.
- Or, reopen utilizing technology in the regular operations to adapt to the guidelines, and to support new revenue streams.
The first option is easy and simple to get back into the business, but it virtually reduces the size and the potentials to make more revenue.
The second option also virtually reduces the size of the restaurant because of COVID guidelines but increases the potentials to make more revenue. It helps restaurants to reach the revenue, they were doing pre-pandemic.
However, for restauranteurs, reopening with an effective COVID-safety plan is going to be a hard row to hoe, an extremely anxious process for some. The restaurants will need to have control over their customers and staff, opening hours, a push from a perfectly crafted marketing strategy, and still meet the revenue targets. Then finally, pray their place doesn’t suddenly turn into a COVID hotspot.
The confident owners with a focused strategy backed by the appropriate tools can turn this stressful process into a simple daily operation to achieve results.
Tools, whether the owners plan to reopen with their existing POS software, use a completely new app to handle tasks, or planning to go for an ultra-agile solution using an app builder, check out to see if these functionalities can benefit your restaurant:
1. Digital Menus
Once considered, sophistication and luxury is now a part of COVID-safe guideline. With digital menus, guests can scan their table’s QR code, view menu items on their smartphones, and place their orders right at the table.
This self-service feature helps contactless dining strategies for restaurants and at the same time, enhances the diner experiences by not having to wait for restaurant staff to attend to them. And, the diners can choose their preferred menu item at their own pace.
2. Contactless Payments
Contactless cards: With contactless payment options, customers use their debit or credit cards with RFID-enabled chips by tapping or waving over the terminal that can pick up the signal from the card to process the transaction. No swiping, entering the PIN, or signing the transaction is needed.
Before the pandemic, contactless card payment options were limited for the faster processing of low-value transactions. Some banks set daily usage limits, some intermittently ask to enter PINs, or some ask to enter PINs always higher value transactions to ensure security. There is no set standard on these limitations and it varies by bank and country.
Because lost cards or, someone standing next to a cardholder with a malicious device can read card data and use it for making fraudulent transactions.
However, to help minimize COVID-19 spreading and encourage contactless, countries have increased contactless card limits recently: This Wikipedia page has updated floor limitations by countries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contactless_payment#Security
Digital wallets: The other option is to use smart devices like smartphones, smartwatches set up with a digital wallet app like Apple Pay, Google Pay, Samsung Pay, etc., to tap or wave over the payment terminal to make the transaction. With this type of payment, users have to preset their wallets with card information and be ready to make their payments at the terminals the same way as contactless cards.
Digital wallets have few advantages over using contactless cards; they are more secure using different layers of software security and use the hardware features of the devices for user identification. Apple Pay and Google Pay come preinstall in their phones while Samsung Pay comes installed on newer models. But there are many digital wallet options available today.
QR codes: QR codes are everywhere these days, including contactless bill payments. Customers scan the QR code of the retailer with their smartphones to pay the bill, simple as that! Quick, easy, and secure option (with dynamic QR code) for small businesses with instant bank transfers. In some cases, sellers scan the personal QR codes of their customers to get the payments.
QR Codes can be static or dynamic. The difference is, with a static QR code, you can’t change the information contained in it. But with a dynamic QR code, you can keep the same QR code, but only change the details it contains. And with Dynamic, you can also track how many times the code was scanned and the location too.
A static QR code is simple to work with from the retailer’s perspective, but ideal for small businesses that are not so busy. Obtain the printed QR code from the bank or just use the bank’s app to generate it, and then print and display it at the payment counters — all the shop is ready to accept QR code payments.
But static QR codes have certain concerns too. What if someone replaces the QR code put to display at the counter? The seller wouldn’t realize it until the next reconciliation. Another drawback with static codes is, it’s the customers who fill the payable amounts after they scan since it’s always the same generic QR code that is not transaction-specific. There is a chance for input errors.
Dynamic QR codes are dynamically created for each transaction, so it has the payable amount in it when a user scans. Sellers might need to have a dedicated smartphone or payment terminal to display each QR code whenever it is generated.
3. Outdoor Dining
Restaurants can extend their dining areas to patios, poolside, or beaches to balance their capacity and maintain social distancing. Perhaps, for some restaurateurs, it’s an opportunity to realize their businesses’ untapped potentials. It helps restaurants to reopen with COVID-safe guidelines for now, but once the pandemic is behind us, it’s a new stream of revenue for restaurant owners.
As you can imagine, it’s going to be a busy place with staff running back and forth holding food plates. But how are you going to manage it with a skeleton staff to serve with COVID guidelines? QR codes to help again.
Restaurants generate QR codes and place them anywhere the customers can scan to view the menu items and place their orders. And, it notifies restaurant cashiers to open checks, or sophisticated POS systems can even register the customer and create checks for them. And additional orders from the customer go into the open check. Orders are sent to appropriate kitchens for preparation (kitchen printers and KDS) and chefs update the displays when the food is ready. It significantly reduces the staff needed to serve or manage such scattered restaurant operations.
Moving forward, keeping COVID behind us
Reopening with COVID-safety guidelines and meeting revenue targets to keep the doors open, is like trying to fly with clipped wings for restaurants.
So to make both ends meet at this difficult time, restaurants must look for ways to enhance their existing operations and find new opportunities to bridge the gap created by COVID guidelines and their targets. The best way to achieve that would be to use the tools that help simplify running a profitable operation with COVID-safe guidelines.
