How Tier 2 & 3 Restaurants Are Offering A Tech-Oriented Experience

The Indian Food Industry is one of the most vibrant industries that has seen exceptional growth in the recent past and continues to expand swiftly. India is flourishing with food joints with a new restaurant coming up every now and then.

Indian Fine dining sector is growing steadily over the years and this can be allocated to the changing demographics, increase in disposable incomes, urbanization, and technology-equipped by restaurants for excellent customer services through the advanced restaurant automation system.

As per the report released by NRAI (National Restaurant Association of India), the current restaurant market in India is worth over 3.09 Lakh Crores in 2016 and expected to reach 5 Lakh Crores in 2021 with an annual growth of 10 %.

Eating out is considered more like an experience today; a family entertainment; a way of socializing in a circle where people meet together in a preordained ambience while savouring delectable delicacies. To make this experience more joyful and memorable for their customers, apart from serving the lip-smacking food to them restaurants nowadays are adopting the technology that has taken the restaurant operations to a new height altogether.

Apart from the restaurants in metro cities, restaurants in tier 2 & 3 cities like Patna, Lucknow, and Udaipur are also progressively adopting new technological innovations to make the restaurant system more comprehensive that will boost the restaurant sales.

Trends That Are There To Stay And Shaping The Food And Beverages Industry

Digitized Point of Sale (POS) Systems

Nowadays, the digital restaurant POS system is one of the most important pieces of technology in the restaurant industry. It allows business owners to improve their inventory purchasing patterns, marketing strategies and flexibility with the types of payments they accept.

The system also helps in the retention of both customers and employees by providing appealing, up-to-date services like sign up for loyalty programs, post updates, and photos on social media, waitlist management, e-feedback that improve the customer experience and reduce stress for employees.

Offering Free Wi-Fi Service For Dine-In Customers

Since we are living in the era of smartphones, it’s in the business’s best interest to give potential customers every reason to eat at your establishment. It will attract customers who continue working remotely while they’re eating. Also maintain a reputation for being modern, up-to-date and keep internal operations speedy.

Customised Marketing

The next restaurant technology which is trending is personalized marketing. The past year has seen an upsurge in specially tailored and customized offers & discounts offered to the customers. With the help of Enterprise Marketing Module, restaurants can now run special marketing campaigns using email, SMS, website and social media channels and can run specific offers at different restaurants, depending on what works in that certain region. This customization allows restaurants to strengthen marketing campaigns and generate better results.

Handheld Order Taking Devices

With more restaurants understanding the importance of handheld devices for order taking, the traditional pen and paper-based order taking will soon fade away. The orders taken by the servers directly reflect in the POS systems. Servers can also avail of the entire order history of specific customers as these hand-held systems are well integrated with the overall restaurant management platform.

Taking orders on handheld devices decreases the table turnaround time and restaurants can take more orders with improved return visits.

Installation Of IoT Sensors To Enhance Equipment Safety And Performance

Internet of Things is a common term that is echoing throughout many different industries and the restaurant industry is no exception. However, the most fundamental pieces of restaurant equipment are bulky items, like walk-in refrigerators, deep-freezers, flat grills, etc.

But, it can still make a big difference in keeping those crucial components in working order. By using simple and easy-to-install IoT sensors to the kitchen equipment, restaurants can use the data to measure temperature in a refrigerator or a heating station, to maintain proper equipment performance by making timely fixes and can avoid bigger repair costs.

New technology in the restaurant industry has significantly reduced the manual labor involved and helped in cutting down costs through automation. The restaurant tech ecosystem will continue to change as the industry grows. We are to witness the ever-increasing influence of new restaurant technology that will sweep the restaurant industry off its feet in the coming years.

Note: We at Inc42 take our ethics very seriously. More information about it can be found here.