Your Point of Sale is Heading Out the Door and on to the Web

The big number from the National Restaurant Association’s infographic on restaurant tech is this: 36% of diners have ordered food online. Which means no matter how pretty a restaurant’s Facebook page or active their Twitter account, it won’t matter — not if they’re not integrating online ordering into their services. Their potential customer’s purchase has already been made. And restaurants without online ordering weren’t even in the running for their dollars.

People in sales know their ABCs: Always Be Closing. Don’t let the prospect think too long about the purchase, never let them walk away. But with the fast growing power of tech to interrupt your conversation with a customer, not to mention all the other restaurants on your street, the only sure way to own that customer is to get their order before someone else does.

When a customer sees your menu or reads a great review you are not done — you need to close. Get that order RIGHT then. You need to close…or someone else will.

Restaurants Pick Up the Social Media Gauntlet — But There’s Much More on the Way

It’s becoming increasingly clear that restaurants need to push their marketing further out from their restaurant to capture and retain customers. According to a nifty infographic from the National Restaurant Association, 28% of customers use social media to choose a restaurant; 27% use consumer-driven review sites.

Frankly these numbers seem low, and are low I am sure when you look at younger demographics- the customers who could be with you for the long haul. But even these suspiciously low numbers paint a powerful picture.

This means the decision-making process is happening long before customers walk into your restaurant for dinner.  They did it before they left their office or while surfing their phone. They did it while chatting or texting with their dinner companions while checking restaurant listings and reviews.

Restaurants are not blind to what this means — 9 in 10 restaurant operators say social media will become more important and 95% expect to be on Facebook within two years (if they are not already).

But the percent of diners who are driven by social media and consumer reviews is not the most important data point for restaurant operators. There’s a new digital landscape for restaurants to take advantage of emerging, just as they begin to master social media.

Any guesses? We’ll be posting part two with the answer later today. 

NRA Trade Show Report: Better Tech, Happier Customers, Fatter Margins

Most years there is a dominant tech solution at the NRA Show. Not this year. This year we saw a range of technologies clustered around a common theme: guest experience.

Wait list management apps, tablets for table top ordering, customer guest loyalty solutions. New solutions for old problems — not just incrementally higher-tech versions of the same solutions. Rajat Suri from E La Carte, a tabletop ordering tablet company, said it best: The modern concept of the restaurants started in Roman times and has barely changed. But change is coming.

The new tech and what it does are fundamentally different from the last generation’s tools: less expensive, more functional and easier to use and maintain. This means for the first time restaurants are not swapping cost elements; they are replacing heavyweight legacy tools for margin-enhancing, operationally better solutions. I’ll repeat to make sure you didn’t miss it: margin-enhancing, operationally better solutions.

Technology and hospitality are no longer separate. Through deep integration, we’re seeing restaurants improve the guest experience in ways we never imagined before now. The restaurant you grew up in and trained in is not the restaurant you can run today, and is definitely not the restaurant you will run in a few years. And this is a good thing.

Before, During and After the National Restaurant Association Show. Six Tips to Make it Pay Off

The National Restaurant Association trade show is massive: 58,000 attendees, 1900 vendors, more than 135 educational seminars. And away from the convention center are hundreds of other events- receptions, parties, seminars…. Months of things to do crammed in to four days.

It is easy to get overwhelmed and waste time running around. To take full advantage you need a plan. I spent years as an exhibitor and now more as an attendee. Following six easy tips can make the difference between wasted time, money and energy and a business-defining event.

Before

1. Have a Focus.  Well before the show figure out what is most important to you. Are you primarily there to meet new vendors? Learn about trends? Build a personal network? Use this focus to make schedule decisions before and during the show.

2. Make a Schedule. Make appointments with the people you most want to see; don’t assume you’ll find them on the convention floor. Know when the important seminars are. If you don’t, you will miss opportunities. 

During

3. Ask Questions. Collecting brochures from vendors is nice, but then you are only learning what they want to tell you. Ask questions while you them there, and you’ll learn what you want to know.

4. Write things down. Take a break every hour to write notes to yourself or your team. What did you learn, who did you meet? This is especially important for business cards: “wants info kit”; “like our logo”. Otherwise you’ll end up with a jumble of cards and no idea who wanted which information. 

After

5. Follow Up. I am amazed at how many people make connections at trade shows and then never follow up. Even if there is no specific next step, a simple “it was great to meet you and talk about XYZ” can create a powerful connection.

6. Share with your team. It will make everyone understand why they covered for you while you were out, make them smarter about their jobs, and organize the team to take advantage of new opportunities.

The NRA show is huge but these lessons apply to all trade shows. I hope everyone really enjoys the amazing coming together of the restaurant industry, takes advantage of the opportunity.

Bonus Tip: Wear comfortable shoes and drink plenty of water!

Facebook Timeline Integration for Restaurants? We’ve Got It

Today Ordr.in is thrilled to announce that our API and white-label apps for restaurants are integrated with the Facebook timeline. Customers using Ordr.in tools will be able to “crave” favorite menu items, and publish what they crave and order to their timeline and friends’ news feeds. 

In 1997 people wondered if shopping online would ever be mainstream. Give my credit card to a website? Uh…. And in 2005 the idea of using your phone for commerce was far, far from mainstream. Still today, socially integrated shopping — especially inside Facebook — is hotly debated. 

It shouldn’t be.

Shopping is one of the most inherently social things we do. We buy for each other, with each other. Friend recommendations are powerful drivers of purchase behavior. Social commerce is already all around us. When social shopping rock star Fab.com integrated with the timeline they saw Facebook referral traffic double. 

By introducing the first social dining app on Facebook that integrates restaurant delivery into the timeline, Ordr.in is excited to be on the cutting edge of making online shopping activities as social as they are offline.

Restaurants who want to get their own Facebook food ordering app can learn more here and pre-enroll here.  And if you have questions, contact us here.  

Friends and followers are nice. But at Ordr.in we give local restaurants the tools to find, engage and transact with customers. By adding food ordering to the Facebook timeline, restaurants can give their customers a way to bring their restaurant dining experiences to life online. 

Today’s announcement is a great step forward for restaurants and for Ordr.in.

Better Restaurant Websites: 3 Dos, 3 Don’ts

For those of us who sit in front of a computer all day it can be hard to remember that much of the world does not. They stand in front of customers or pace around work sites. The computer is secondary to how they work.

Mobile is changing this. People who previously engaged tech briefly (if ever) at the end of the day are now consuming content and information continuously via their phone. We’ve blogged about this before. But while restaurants are learning to consume information via technology, creating engaging, helpful content is another story.

A study by Restaurant Science, a restaurant data provider, reports that only 5% of restaurants have a mobile-optimized website, and only 40% have their menu online.  TechCrunch has a good synopsis.  Get with it, people! Such a loss to not have quality restaurant marketing for such a vital channel.

A good restaurant website can be built in a day by following a few simple rules. Some quick Dos and Don’ts:

Dos

• Contact info: It ain’t sexy but many site visitors just want to know where you are or ask a simple question - an address, map and phone number should be prominent. 
• Menu: You should have a menu on your website and it should be up to date. If you have the holiday specials listed in February, you fail.  And no PDFs! Downloading a PDF is an iffy proposition. The menu should be regular text.
• Content management: You should be able to update and change the content on your site easily. If it isn’t easy, you won’t do it.  And definitely make it readable on a phone.

Don’ts

• Music. Many people search for restaurant info from their job. When your carefully chosen playlist launches automatically, they’ll get annoyed, close the browser window in half a second, and never come back. 
• Flash: Flash was sexy in the 90s but is slow to load and unsupported by some technologies. Unsupported means visitors can’t see flash elements. It is like putting a big, expensive blank hole in the middle of your site. Bad.
• Text: Be to the point and stop. You wouldn’t camp out at a table and chat up a customer throughout their whole meal. You’d make quick, warm contact and leave them alone. Same online.

These Dos and Don’ts should simplify your restaurant website, making it easier, faster and less expensive to build and maintain. It is easy to do online restaurant marketing right. So do it right.

Welcome Deepthi Welaratna

This week, Deepthi Welaratna joined Ordr.in as Director of Marketing. She is responsible for all aspects of Ordr.in’s brand, communication and community engagement. We are thrilled to have her and humbled that she joined Ordr.in.

Frankly, while recruiting for the job we had a stereotype in mind. But as stereotypes are want to do, this one blew apart in the face of reality. Ordr.in didn’t know we needed Deepthi until I opened her resume and went “Oooooh.  Better.” She is the ultimate value added teammate.

See where Deepthi has worked here, learn more about her here, and follow her ramblings here. You will find a fun, thoughtful and dedicated person. A great partner and wonderful new colleague.

So much terrific stuff ahead.  We will get there faster and better with Deepthi on the team.

The Old Thing Better v. The Old Thing New

Most companies fight each other on price or product. Price is easy- sell the same thing for less. I will blog about price issues another time. Product can mean many things. A feature, service, delivery schedule… GM famously surpassed Ford by offering similars cars in different colors. They changed the product.

For the most part this kind of competition leads to incremental change. Company A offers a feature “new and improved”. But what happens when someone completely re-imagines what the customer wants? When one company changes the concept of the product? 

Corporate catering, a space largely dominated by traditional caterers and delivery services, is undergoing that kind of change. Companies like ZeroCater, Cater2.me, and Eat Club, led by techies not caterers, are doing just that.

These startups understand that consumers are increasingly picky about online shopping- dated visual design and user experiences are out. The catering product they deliver is high-quality and geared toward a younger, foodie customer. The result? New and influential customers are excited, buzz is generated, growth is off the charts and they can charge a premium. Suddenly office catering is hot. 

If you’ve been doing corporate catering for years and think you have it figured out, ask yourself how a much of techies can go from $0 to $1M+ in sales in a year. Hell, Cater2.me is less than a year old and reportedly serving 40k meals EACH MONTH. You have to wonder how are these guys doing it. This isn’t the result of incremental change. It’s the result of entirely new thinking.

Tesco Supermarkets: How New Thinking (and serious guts) Changed an Old Industry

Tesco Supermarkets was a distant #2 in South Korea with a fraction of sales and store locations compared to #1.  Traditional retail dictates they should add stores and try to grow each location incrementally. Simple math: stores * rev per store. But Tesco didn’t think traditionally. They blew up the model.

Korean shoppers have very little time for household chores. Grocery shopping was a necessary weekly pain, not a beloved ritual. But the grocery industry has always relied on the necessity of shopping. Except for Tesco. They focused on the pain. They created a whole new approach to grocery shopping that virtually eliminates the inconvenience and time required to shop at a traditional store.  Instead of asking customers to come to the grocery store, Tesco brought the grocery store to the customer.

Subway stations were wrapped with life-sized photographs of Tesco store aisles, each product QR Coded. While waiting for a train, consumers can snap QR code images and submit an electronic grocery order.  A distribution center receives the paid order and sends it out for delivery timed to arrive when the customer gets home. Consumer engagement with the new shopping experience is high- Tesco has a winner.

This is the kind of break the mold thinking that startups make. When you have nothing, you have nothing to lose. You have to think different to win. But Tesco is a multi-billion dollar company. Lots of careers at stake with such a massive investment in marketing, operations and service. Those executives could have lived happy corporate lives opening new stores and running weekly specials. Virtual stores in subways required guts. 

When faced with millions of entrenched assumptions about a market, it is more than easy to follow the established path. But the established path rarely leads to great breakthroughs. The iPad is not a better rotary dial phone. The virtual super market is more than a slightly better grocery store. Tesco focused on customer needs, even unarticulated ones. They changed the shopping paradigm and rethought distribution.  Boom. Breakthrough thinking led to breakthrough success.

A major tip of the hat for Tesco’s corporate courage and execution. They thought big and did great.

Have a Phone Number but no Phone?

At the Restaurant Marketing and Delivery Association annual meeting I gave a talk on using social media as a customer engagement tool, especially for service. I asked for a show of hands, how many businesses used twitter for customer service? How many monitored it steadily?

Out of the 100 attendees, about 4 raised their hands. 4? That is worse than having a phone number but no phone.

When you have a phone number and no phone, people- customers- can call all day and no one will answer. You have no idea if they are happy or angry, want to buy, or have an idea. But a phone is one to one communication. Only the caller knows if the call isn’t answered.

Twitter is one to many.  Every person who follows a user gets the same message- they see the tweet and they see the gaping void that follows. 140 characters is plenty of space to get across:

• Hey @business you shd call Bob’s Deli about joining your restaurant network. They are interested. Ask 4 Bob (108 characters)
• So happy with @business! Dinner was great and I didn’t have to cook or drive.  #happycustomer (78 characters)
• Where is my FOOD!? Hungry and tired here. This is getting ridiculous.  Tick tock! #lowbloodsugar #nexttimemakeshaghetti (119 characters)

If you don’t monitor your twitter account you will never know what your customers are saying to and about you. But hundreds or thousands will. When someone calls you answer. When they tweet you should do the same.