More Than
Transactional
Adapting to the new ordering and payment reality.
Brought to you by Zebra Technologies and ReSource Point of Sale
Scan, tap, swipe, ring, repeat. Today’s guests have more ways to pay than ever before, and they increasingly hold the transaction right in the palm of their hands. But this bold new model has significant operational implications for restaurants—from the front of house to the back. What does the uptick in unattended transactions mean for your business and how do your strategies for loyalty, payments, and inventory need to adapt?
If you’re looking for the answers to questions like these, you’re in the right place. In this eBook, we’ll dive head first into the new payment reality, including causes, effects, critical success factors, and the role of high-impact technologies and partnerships to orchestrate it all. Are you ready to get started?
About ReSource Point of Sale
ReSource POS was founded in Chicago and now serves customers in offices located in Illinois, Florida, Bosnia and Paraguay. We work to empower business owners in the retail and restaurant sectors to differentiate themselves with our best-in-class solutions and services.
ReSource POS by the Numbers
- First established in 2003
- 170+ full-time team members
- 5 international offices
- Supporting more than 12,500 endpoints
About Zebra Technologies
Zebra Technologies provides customers with cutting edge solutions to achieve operational visibility at every point in the process. Providing intelligent hardware with real time insight, Zebra’s solutions enable more informed decision making, efficiency and data maximization to meet your business needs.
Zebra by the Numbers
- Founded in 1969
- Offices in 120 countries
- 10,500 colleagues
- 10 industries
The Evolution of Payments
A bold new payment reality has arrived in restaurants.
Today’s restaurant customer journey is a patchwork of diverse opportunities to order, pay, and engage. This is a stark contrast to the ordering and payment models of old, which almost universally included a customer in-store, at the drive thru, or at the table. Let’s take a closer look.
Before guests arrive
- At-home pre-ordering
- Loyalty app integration for personalized offers
From the car
- Drive-thru line busting
- Drive-thru mobile ordering
- Drive-thru pickup for pre-ordered food
- Curbside pick for pre-ordered food
In the restaurant
- In-store pickup for pre-ordered food
- Self-service kiosks
- Traditional counter
- Tableside tablets
- Traditional table service
These diverse ordering scenarios are made even more complex by a proliferation of new payment preferences, including card payments, mobile payment apps, digital wallets, digital currencies, and more.
The ability to accept orders and payments in a versatile way is fundamental to sales. But it’s also fundamental to customer satisfaction. A survey by Retale found that nearly half of respondents would like to see more kiosks and 20% of millennials don’t even like interacting with cashiers at checkout.1 Additionally, more than 65% of the 2,000 QSR customers interviewed said they would visit a restaurant more often if self-service kiosks were offered.2 Stats like these suggest ordering techniques like self-service improve satisfaction and even prompt an uptick in spending.
Customers spend 15-20% more on orders when using self-service kiosks.3
How payments are evolving and why.
Currently, 79% of consumers worldwide are using contactless payments, while another 82% of respondents say contactless is the cleaner way to transact.4 Much of this behavior change was initially prompted by the Covid-19 pandemic of 2020, which caused cleanliness to become a key consideration for consumers—even during the ordering process.
Research tells us that younger consumers favor self-ordering scenarios overwhelmingly. In fact, a significant 36% of young consumers will order their restaurant meals via app or website before even arriving at the store.
Usage of online ordering/takeout since pre-pandemic has increased 44% and is projected to grow another 21% by 2025.5
Percentage of restaurant meal order via app/website by age:6
36%
Young
28%
Middle
9%
Senior
The payment shift is not over. Consumer habits continue to adapt.
Over the past three years, change has been swift and unavoidable for consumers and restaurants alike. But the change is far from over. Technological advancements and shifting consumer preferences continue to evolve the ordering and payments landscape. In order to remain ahead amid the ongoing changes, restaurants need to form a flexible and adaptive technological foundation that enables them to ramp-up new ordering techniques quickly and without disruption.
A Look at the Causes
What has driven the adoption of new ordering and payment technologies?
If we look beneath the surface, we discover that today’s dynamic ordering and payment reality is the result of several factors that are societal, generational, and technological in nature. Let’s examine a few of the contributing causes.
1
Pandemic eating habits
The Covid-19 pandemic of 2020 prompted a significant change in the restaurant industry as in-person establishments closed and consumers were forced to make the switch from in-person dining to remote ordering and takeout. This transition meant restaurant owners and franchisees had to adapt to consumer needs and find solutions in order to keep their business up and running. Before Covid, 40% of consumers ate at a restaurant. During Covid, that number decreased to 21%.7 As in person dining continued to decrease, drive-thru traffic rose 16% from February 2020 to November 2021,8 and digital ordering rose 117% from February 2020 through February 2022.9 While in-person dining has increased from pandemic levels, digital ordering and pickup remain engrained habits among restaurant customers in both limited service and full-service segments.
2
Commoditization of mobile technology
Today, 97% of Americans own a cellphone, with 85% of those owning a smartphone device. This number increased tremendously from a mere 35% in 2011.10 With such a large number of Americans owning a smartphone, there is a significant decrease in resistance to the utilization of technology, including those inside the restaurant. Research tells us that consumers expect technology everywhere they go. Approximately 76% of consumers and 84% of associates expect the retail environment to be just as technologically advanced as their everyday lives.11
3
Rising customer expectations
The natural evolution of technology has contributed to a ‘right here, right now’ customer expectation that permeates virtually every sector—not just restaurants. Today’s customers are accustomed to immediacy, personalization, and control without compromise. For restaurants, this means intense demands for speed, order accuracy, customization, and value.
Speed
Most restaurant customers don’t want to wait more than 5 minutes to order.12
Customization
72% of customers expect to be able to customize their orders.13
Accuracy
Just over 77% of diners said they received the correct order when dining outside the restaurant.14
Affordability
Consumer interest in affordability has gone up by 70% in the 12 months to July 2022.15
4
Evolving technological capabilities
As technological capabilities continue to advance, restaurants are utilizing new capabilities to simultaneously enhance customer satisfaction and efficiency. Many restaurants are now venturing beyond self-service kiosks and tablets, exploring enhancements like QR codes and AI for ordering, menus, and more. In addition, touchless payment technologies provide greater speed, stronger security, simplified business processes, and increased hygiene.16 It is predicted that more than half (53%) of global POS transactions will be contactless within the next 5 years.17
Zebra Technologies was named to Forbes’ America’s Best Employers for the past six years.
A Look at the Effects
How does the new ordering and payment reality impact front and back of house?
Despite all of their potential, unattended transactions can have challenging operational implications—particularly in well-established restaurant models that remained fairly consistent for the two decades prior to this one. And the impact isn’t just limited to the front of house—the kitchen and back office are equally affected.
Front of house
In the front of house, the most obvious impact of the new payment reality is an intense need for highly intuitive interfaces across all of the customer-facing and crew-facing channels. This includes traditional point of sale, kiosks, drive-thru line busting tablets, and mobile transactions. It is important to note that a human user sits at the other end of all these devices. A highly intuitive interface tends to have the same qualities, whether it is facing your customer or a member of your crew. Look for a solution provider that understands the importance of usability across channels, and is known for the intuitiveness of their solutions no matter who the end user is.
In addition to necessitating a higher bar for intuitiveness in your cross-channel user interfaces, the new payment reality has fundamentally shifted the roles inside the restaurant. While many restaurants are experiencing a decrease in front of house order takers, they are experiencing an increase in kitchen crew who are tasked with receiving, prioritizing, and fulfilling a higher volume of orders across channels. In addition, many restaurants have opted to add new roles, such as individual crew members who are tasked with making sure the front of house is clean and presentable, or troubleshooting any questions guests might have as they enter their orders. The right partner can help you harmonize technologies and crew roles to elevate guest experience through each and every channel.
Finally, self-service and remote ordering models naturally necessitate more transparency, starting with proper labeling so a customer can identify nutritional data, ingredients and potential allergens. In addition, customers require accurate pricing and LTOs, both of which demand a digital framework that can systematically populate updates across channels.
Elevating the guest experience is top-of-mind for business owners to breed customer loyalty and satisfaction. Many restaurants have adopted digital customer loyalty programs to promote this elevation that include discounts, coupons, memberships, promotions, sales, and more. Transitioning from physical coupons to a digitized format with much more to offer, restaurants need to be prepared with the proper technology to handle a variety of media formats and be able to scan any device. Additionally, it requires trained employees who can adapt to the ever-evolving tech industry, assist customers with locating promos and sales across online and mobile platforms, as well as identify the best deals whilst serving customers.
Back of house
New ordering channels all come together in the back of house, where they converge in a highly fragmented frenzy of orders. With the more complex order landscape and an associated uptick in the level of order customizations, crew working in the back of house require a more robust solution for order management, fulfillment, and prioritization. This typically involves a combination of software, hardware, and labeling solutions which work together in a well-orchestrated kitchen workflow.
It is important to note that the emergence of new ordering channels have also impacted demand patterns and challenged traditional day parts. As a result, many restaurants are outgrowing their old approach to inventory management in favor of a more robust, technology-enabled solution. This is particularly critical given today’s intensely high food prices.
With multiple channels for ordering and management, there is a strong need for integration across all solution areas—including technologies in the ‘extended front of house’, the traditional front of house, the back of house, and the back office. Enabling this kind of integration requires a partner that views restaurant technology holistically as an integrated solution rather than a set of disparate parts.
Ultimately, this kind of integration enables greater insight. Cross-channel analytics are key to navigating evolving ordering preferences and their profound operational impact. But without a properly integrated solution, many restaurants are left to rely on guesswork and instinct.
Critical Success Factors
What is needed to thrive in this new ordering and payment reality?
The new ordering and payment reality can be overwhelming and even confusing to navigate. Which channels should a restaurant adopt? Which should it avoid? What technologies are best-suited to enable this change? Which will prove to be a long-term bottleneck? Ultimately, there are four critical success factors that should drive a restaurant’s strategic decisions about ordering channels and technologies. Use these as your restaurant’s guiding star as you fortify your technologies and processes for the future.
Flexibility
Flexibility refers to your ability to adopt new channels as payments continue to evolve, and to adapt your approach based on guest preferences and other factors like weather and seasonality. Restaurants that choose flexible technology solutions will find themselves differentiated by their ability to adapt faster than their competitors and optimize their technologies to match the needs of their customers and their business.
Integration
Integration refers to connectivity across every channel and device in your point-of-sale landscape, from ‘extended front of house’ ordering to your back of house operations. Restaurants that choose technology providers and solution partners that are known for their expertise in integration will find themselves differentiated by their efficiency, responsiveness, speed, and accuracy over time.
Intuitiveness
Intuitiveness refers to simple, frictionless technology experiences for guests and crew alike. As fragmented ordering channels continue to add operational complexity to the restaurant, the role of a simple, easy-to-use solution has never been more important. Restaurants that embrace technologies which prioritize the human user will be set apart by their quality of service and engagement.
Insight
Insight refers to the conclusions that can be derived from high quality visibility and data. In the restaurant, this critical success factor is closely related to integration, which closes the gaps between technologies in the restaurant environment. Restaurants that prioritize integration, data, and analytics have the power to understand performance and pursue continual improvement.
Helpful Advice from Natalie Hrudka,
National Sales Executive at ReSource Point of Sale
The Zebra Suite
How can Zebra’s technologies assist with the impact of the new payment reality?
Payments
Restaurants continue to adopt new payment models to delight guests and secure their competitive advantage. Zebra provides payment solutions that are set apart by their simplicity and intuitiveness.
Mobile Ordering and POS
Zebra’s handheld solution helps enhance productivity, increase sales, reduce errors and improve customer satisfaction. These products include: mobile computers, printers, tablets, interactive kiosks and more.
Enterprise Grade Tablets
This durable, mobile computing device assists with drive thru line busting. With long battery life, Wi-fi, Bluetooth and cellular data connectivity options, and real-time data, this tablet improves productivity and makes taking orders fast and easy.
Loyalty
With the rise of customer loyalty programs taking many forms, restaurants need a partner that can manage it all. Zebra’s innovations can change the game for your loyalty programs and enable personalized service at scale.
DS9300 Series Scanner
With Zebra’s digitized scanner, your customers can scan their loyalty cards with ease no matter the platform. The Presentation Scanner fits anywhere and scans everything with reliability, providing 50% faster checkout times compared to competitive scanners.
Loyalty
Zebra also provides loyalty and access card printing to enhance the current customer loyalty program experience. With mobile barcodes, physical card printing, and barcode scanner, Zebra can power a loyalty program designed to your unique goals.
Inventory
The fragmentation of ordering across channels has made inventory management more complex. Proper food labeling supports more accurate inventory management practices while also satisfying the customer demand for transparency.
Inventory Management Solution
Zebra’s solution provides real-time data with automated inventory tracking to improve your efficiency and accuracy with a variety of hardware solutions including mobile computers, printers, and more.
Food labeling, printing, and scanning
Zebra’s food labeling solution allows your restaurant to be compliant with FDA regulations, and create customizable, food-safe and dishwasher safe cards and labeling ribbons. These cards and ribbons are quick to print and update, support food quality and inventory management efforts, improve brand awareness, and help customers make more informed decisions.
Zebra was ranked #1 among top companies in the tech industry in Newsweek’s list of America’s most trusted companies in 2022.
More Than a Transactional Partner
Working with RPOS to optimize your experience.
Solution Design
Choose the right technologies
Install and Integration
Make it all work together
Training and Support
Instill confidence in your crew
Customer Success
Continue to evolve and optimize your approach over time
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Allow us to put our commitment to client success to work for your business.