Tech Check is a regular column on restaurant technology by Senior Editor Joe Guszkowski. It's also a newsletter.
We devote a lot of space in this column to the cutting edge of restaurant technology. AI, robots, etc. But the reality is that the vast majority of restaurants are operating far from the cutting edge. Believe it or not, a significant number of restaurants don’t even have a website.
So this week I asked some restaurant tech experts for their favorite examples of low-hanging fruit—the no-brainer stuff that's easy and cheap to do but nonetheless can have a big impact.
Here’s what they said.
Get a website
According to tech supplier TouchBistro, more than 30% of restaurants don’t have one. That is a big disadvantage at a time when a restaurant’s digital presence is arguably as important as its physical one.
The first thing most people do before visiting a restaurant is Google it. For some, browsing the menu online in advance has become a standard part of the dining experience.
“Restaurants that don’t have websites will rarely come up on that Google search because their SEO is so low,” wrote Marsha Edmands, who has worked for a number of restaurant tech suppliers. “Lots of businesses think that having a Facebook or Instagram page is good enough, but it screams ‘junior varsity’ to me.”
The solution here is pretty simple. Go get a website! It doesn’t have to be fancy. But securing a piece of online real estate is the first step to implementing many of the other ideas below.
Set up a Google Business Profile
Here’s another thing that can go a long way in strengthening a restaurant’s online footprint. A Google Business Profile is what shows up on the right side of the screen when you Google a restaurant or other local business. It can include a wealth of information, including hours, location, photos and even an ordering button. Restaurants will want to set one up (for free) and make sure that it’s comprehensive and current, said Anna Tauzin, CMO for Texas-based restaurant group Molak Corp.
“Ensuring your menu, hours of operation, and high-quality photos that capture the restaurant’s vibe are accurate and up-to-date is crucial for attracting diners and helping them choose your restaurant,” she wrote.
Turn on re-ordering
Once a restaurant has a website, then it can get into the really fun stuff, like online ordering. Most POS providers now offer an online ordering tool, and there are many other companies that specialize in it for smaller restaurants.
When shopping for an online ordering app, one feature to look for is the ability for customers to re-order their most recent purchase, said J Goel, SVP at Hyphen Robotics who previously spent time at restaurant ordering marketplaces like Postmates, Uber Eats and ChowNow.
Reflecting on those prior experiences, he wrote: “One thing that was clear was how customers were creatures of habit. Seventy percent ordered from the same one to three restaurants every time.”
With that in mind, restaurants need to make it as easy as possible for customers to satisfy their habit.
“I would make sure if [the restaurant is] on a digital platform that the ‘re-order’ feature is front and center in that app. At ChowNow we made this a priority for a reason,” he wrote.
(Another tip along those lines: Make sure “pickup” is enabled as an option for online customers. “In this inflationary environment, more and more folks are OK to pick up vs. paying delivery fees plus menu inflation,” Goel wrote.)
Send a welcome email
With online ordering up and running, restaurants will be able to start collecting information about customers such as emails and phone numbers that can be used to communicate with them. To do this, operators should get a basic email marketing tool. These come standard with most POS systems and there are also plenty of free options out there like Mailchimp.
Some of these tools can get pretty fancy with specialized campaigns and message sequences. But what restaurants should be looking for at minimum is the ability to send new customers a welcome email, said Abhinav Kapur, co-founder and CEO of Bikky, a customer data system.
“This means very simply: A guest orders from your online ordering website for the first time and you send them an email the next day and say ‘thank you’ with a few sentences about the brand,” he said.
This brief outreach can have a meaningful impact. Some Bikky customers who sent welcome emails saw 8% of recipients order again within seven days.
“It goes to show that a good welcome campaign (again, can be as little as one email) can have tremendous results in nurturing a new guest to order again,” Kapur said.
Offer free wi-fi, with a catch
Online ordering is not the only way to start collecting customer data. It’s now fairly simple to offer walk-in visitors free wi-fi in exchange for their email address or phone number, said Jeremy Julian, host of the Restaurant Technology Guys podcast.
“In general, the biggest thing I think restaurants miss is a way to communicate with their guests,” Julian wrote. “They can give away wi-fi and capture that information and just communicate with them.”
Even if a restaurant has online ordering, this is a smart way to start gathering data on walk-ins who might otherwise remain anonymous.
Julian recently discussed this topic on his podcast here.
Turn off your marketing services
Sometimes the smartest tech thing you can do is turn your tech off for a while.
Jim Collins, a restaurateur, consultant and former president of tech provider Perfect Co., said online marketing services that promise to get restaurants more customers or drive up average check can often be “a sinkhole.” To find out for sure, he encouraged restaurants to shut them off for a month and see what happens.
“It’s an unpopular viewpoint, but 99% of these services do little or nothing to help a business grow,” he wrote.
Collins added that restaurants shouldn’t be afraid to update their older technology—even big-ticket items like POS systems. His restaurant—Town Kitchen & Grill in Montrose, California—saved about $5,000 a year by switching to a newer POS. “It has been well worth the month or so it took us to make the switch,” Collins wrote.