3 Ways Text Ordering Will Transform the Restaurant Industry

While the restaurant industry as a whole faced a lot of growing pains this past year, one silver lining that came out of the struggle was the rise of digital solutions like text ordering.

Innovative restaurant technology acted as a saving grace for many restaurant owners who struggled to keep up with the chaos of last year. Between changing customer preferences and a barrage of new safety concerns, many restaurants relied on these solutions in order to stay afloat.

Now, savvy business owners are leveraging these solutions not only to stay afloat, but also to actually grow their business again. One of these solutions is text ordering. This is exactly what it sounds like—a solution that allows customers to place orders via text, just as they would if they were texting a friend.

Here’s a look at how text ordering can be leveraged to help restaurant owners improve their businesses and grow their profits:

Provide the Ultimate Convenience to Customers

Restaurant owners have always had to keep an ear to the ground when it comes to identifying ever-changing customer needs. It’s normal to update your restaurant to stay competitive, let alone relevant. But never before have restaurants had to adapt so quickly as they have in this past year. Restaurateurs had to think on their feet and come up with quick ways to address the growing needs of customer convenience.

Text ordering has been a major asset for many restaurant owners. Some benefits include:

• Give customers quick, easy ways to order without having to venture out.
• Save customers the stress of having to re-enter their payment information with every order.
• Since the solution can be integrated with your restaurant management system, customer order and digital payment history can be saved for future, repeat orders.

The first time a customer completes a text order, they are directed to make the first payment on the restaurant’s online ordering site for ample security. After that, guests will text a PIN number to use past payment information.

Plus, text ordering allows customers to place orders without taking up internal storage space that an individual restaurant app would use. While this might seem like a small benefit, internal storage is in high demand these days. Especially with all the new video conferencing apps everyone had to download when they began working from home.

Optimize Orders With Text Ordering for Restaurateurs

Your customers aren’t the only ones benefiting from text ordering. Text ordering is beneficial for restaurant owners as well. This digital ordering channel allows more orders to be placed in a shorter time frame while simultaneously freeing up staff to be able to manage the influx of orders.

Phone orders are slow and inconvenient. They take up valuable time that your staff could be using to do more profitable and productive tasks. Not to mention, they lead to a greater increase in order errors simply because of how easily they lend themselves to miscommunications.

However, with the right provider, text ordering can connect to your restaurant management system and communicate orders directly to your kitchen staff—eliminating the middleman, as well as the risk for incorrect order entries. Not only does this lead to greater accuracy; it also leads to increased speed. When orders can be communicated to the correct staff members instantaneously, the time it takes to fill those orders gets cut down significantly. Your kitchen staff can begin working as soon as the order is sent, and customers can get their meals faster.

Create Stronger Customer Relationships

You can’t build strong customer relationships unless you know your customers. But with an entire restaurant to manage, many owners don’t have time to get to know their customers individually. That’s where data comes in. Customer data can be used to identify macro-level trends, and can drill down into details and see individual customer ordering patterns.

Armed with this data, you’ll make smarter, more informed business decisions. In turn, this will help you hone your menu to suit the tastes of your customers. Plus, you’ll improve marketing strategies, so that your promotional efforts are more effective and driving revenue. Between text to order and your restaurant management system, you’ll access a wealth of customer data at your fingertips.

This means that you can gain critical insights on details like where your customers are located for example. Then you can see what zip codes to target your marketing efforts to reach new, potential customers. Once you know the customers you’re trying to reach, implement other strategies. For example, you can launch social media campaigns, retargeting ads, and other digital marketing targeted to these specific areas.

With text ordering, you can set up text marketing to strengthen your relationships with existing customers and stay top-of-mind. Regardless, text ordering opens the door for new opportunities to grow your business and improve communication with your customers.

Get OrderAI with HungerRush

HungerRush is excited to offer OrderAI, its new text ordering solution to enhance the customer experience and drive digital orders. This integrates with our existing multi-functional platform to streamline your multi-unit enterprise operations.

Interested in learning how this can scale your operations and grow your business? Request a consultation with one of our experts to learn more.