The benefits of building and maintaining a strong online presence for your restaurant are unlimited – but to reap the rewards, it’s important to harness the potential of the omnichannel operational model.
What is an omnichannel model and what does it mean for your restaurant? Let’s have a look.
Rethinking the Reach of Your Restaurant
An “omnichannel strategy” means ensuring your customers have multiple platforms through which to engage with your business – whether that’s to order, browse your menu, rate their dining experience or receive their meals.
As part of functioning in an omnichannel capacity, you may find links between demographic and ordering platforms or behaviours – for example, maybe a certain age group is more likely to make an online order through an app, or a locality that hasn’t been on your radar has a comparatively higher average spend per order. This is vital information for planning targeted marketing campaigns and to build on your new customer base, so that your revenue grows in line with your widened reach.
You can strengthen the scope of your online presence even further by making full use of social media, email campaigns, and customer loyalty initiatives - anchoring these marketing channels drives traffic to your delivery platforms or ‘one stop’ POS system.
Consistency is Key
Making sure that your customers have a consistent experience across all platforms is very important: it promotes the impression of professionalism, makes it easier for your customers to engage with your business, and helps to build and maintain brand identity.
Using a single POS (point of sale) system across all channels is a great way to build consistency into your online business model, and will ensure a slick, convenient and seamless service for your customers.
The Benefits of Omnichannel – ness
For the restaurant, having an automated omnichannel system to process key elements of customer interaction means that staff are freed up to deal with the fundamental business of creating and serving up great food. You can focus on new strategies and campaigns to drive your operation forward rather than needing to expend time overseeing the ordering process.
Potential new revenue streams, as a result of incorporating an online, cross-platform model, are a key benefit for your restaurant, as is the boost to orders that comes from giving your customers both what they want and expect to see when they decide to order online.
Future Proof your Restaurant
The customers of today expect to be able to order their favourite meal or snack online, and to be able to do this in a variety of ways; whether that is via an app, on a website, or from a kiosk. Providing a consistent, branded experience across all platforms is important to optimise the potential for repeat patrons and to build your restaurant’s identity and USP.
By becoming an omnichannel restaurant and utilising the power of multiple digital platforms, you will be taking an important step in future-proofing your restaurant and positioning your business to make the most of the additional revenue streams that this model offers.
