The COVID-19 pandemic has been a crisis for restaurants, but, as they begin to reopen, there are some interesting lessons being learned.
In places like the United Kingdom, restaurants are only being allowed to open with table service to prevent crowding at a bar or counter for orders as may have occurred in the past.
That’s produced some surprising knock-on effects, said Chloé Bisiaux, Head of Drive-Thru Products and Product Manager for Table Service for Acrelec.
“Customer satisfaction increased, because they’re just sitting down at the table and relaxing rather than queuing. It also helps increase revenue, because your team and operators preparing the food are more focused, and it helps optimize the time they’re preparing the orders,” Bisiaux said. “It also helps decrease the number of errors on the orders, because not having the customers in front of you getting frustrated makes you work faster and in a better environment.”
Table service methods can be achieved by something as old school as putting a number on a table or as high-tech as a Bluetooth system showing where each customer is located and how long it’s been since they put in an order. Acrelec has solutions no matter which direction restaurant owners are looking to go.
“We are coming up with a brand-new solution, Table Service V. 2, which is a brand-new version of that technology,” she said. “We’re estimating 20 seconds as the gain in time and about 5% as the overall revenue increase.”
Learn more about Table Service: acrelec.com/table-service