December to February is considered the peak of flu season, and in a post-pandemic world, people are doing everything they can to avoid getting sick. Especially during and right after the holiday season.
As a restaurant owner and manager you want to make sure your staff and customers are protected every time they come in to order food from your establishment. Do more than just putting out a hand sanitizer station to keep your restaurant safe from contagious pathogens. Implement the right restaurant software solutions to help improve your business’ front end safety standards and provide your staff with technology to help them throughout their shift.
Digital Menus
The most touched products in your restaurant are the menus you pass from customer to customer. Rather than sanitizing menus between each customer, why not digitize them to remove the transfer of germs altogether? QR code menus are a great restaurant software to include in your tech stack.
Now these menu types are not here to completely replace physical menus. If anything, they’re a ‘smart’ addition to meet growing customer demands and tightening budgets. So those that still prefer physical menus can receive them, but if fewer customers are asking for them then there are fewer menus to clean between uses.
In a study, it was determined that 88% of restaurants are considering swapping to digital menus. Not only for the hygiene of it, but also for the ease. Having QR code menus make it easy to handle changeovers as menu items and ingredients are adjusted from day to day, without wasting paper printing new copies.
Contactless Payments
Secondly, payments can be a highly transferable method as cards and cash are shuffled between customer and staff. Including a contactless payment into your restaurant software stack will increase the options you have available to your customers while decreasing the chance of spreading sickness. Some available contactless methods are:
- ApplePay/Google Wallet
- Pay at the Table
- Tap to Pay
- QR Pay
Many of these methods not only have the benefit of limiting the spread of the flu and other illnesses, but they also have a benefit to your bottom line as they can quicken table turn time to help you get more customers in seats through the day.
Additionally, by allowing customers to take control over their own payments, you are freeing up staff to handle other aspects of your business like running orders and handling table cleanups.
Incorporating one or more of these options into your restaurant software stack will help to minimize the amount of money or cards moved between people. As well as reduce the number of times your staff needs to touch the same stationary POS screen.
Online Ordering
Lastly, the methods of ordering you offer your customers is an area in which you can add restaurant software to not only reduce the spread of germs, but also to reach more customers and increase your business’ profits.
When looking for the right restaurant software to add to your tech stack you need a solution that meets customer demands, both in-house and at home or on the go.
A Mobile Tablets restaurant solution allows your wait staff to still take orders but removes the need to go to a shared, stationary POS terminal to input order details. Your staff can handle the same tablet throughout their shift. Having the knowledge that it was previously cleaned and will be cleaned at the end of their shift will give additional comfort that they will not spread germs or catch an illness while serving customers. This also provides a safe way to offer a traditional service style to those customers that do not wish to use digital menus.
No matter how many precautions you take to keep your customers and staff safe, there are still patrons who feel a little squeamish about visiting crowded places during peak seasons for contagious illnesses. In a survey, 58% of people stated that they felt uncomfortable eating at a restaurant during the pandemic; this stat can be converted to flu season now post-pandemic. For customers that still want to eat your delicious meals but do not feel comfortable going into public or are on the go, you can offer them an online ordering option.
The key to this restaurant software is to have an online ordering solution that connects directly into your in-house POS system. This reduces the frustration of having to go back and forth between systems or the possibility of missing an order.
Safety In Software
The flu and other illnesses will always be around, but being able to protect your staff and keep your customers comfortable during this season is key to thriving no matter what time of year it is. Don’t try to do it alone. Instead, build out a POS solution that meets the needs of staff, management, and all types of customers. By reducing contact and building out your restaurant software stack you can successfully make it through the flu season and the entire year with little to no sickness-related call offs or customer complaints.
