The use of effective technology within catering spaces should no longer come as a surprise. We have been successfully using pre-ordering applications, customer ordering terminals and loyalty programmes through mobile devises and computer screens in our venues for many years before the new way of working.
Now more than ever, it is fundamental that we apply these technological advances to innovate with true purpose, and by this I mean, how we use technology in our catering outlets to enhance a customers’ experience in today’s catering venue, and understand how it retains their loyalty?
This can only be achieved without hindering or removing some of the things we love the most about our business; day to day human interaction, serving the best food to our customers, selling and enticing through an exciting display of food, and ensuring clear information of the product is compliant and readily available.
We have been working closely with our technology partners and talking to our clients to enhance the platforms already in use in our contracts. Not only do we focus on tailoring our technology to maintain a quick and straight forward ordering solution with ‘the goal of reducing queue or waiting times’, we also look beyond this for what else we can offer.
People will still play the leading role. Our ordering app is setup and fully customisable by our onsite teams and they maintain the ability to tailor the technology to their venue and the needs of our clients. This ‘virtual café or canteen’ is designed to be maintained by our people within our venues, and this ensures for a fit for purpose, high end service for our customers which evolves with the offer and marketing calendars we adopt at our contracts.
A new means of communication in your workplace? We use our technology to talk to our customers. Push notifications can be applied to communicate special deals, one off sales and advertising theme days, adding value to your workplace whilst growing sales and reducing catering costs.
How does this differ in today’s way of working? We must allow for a safe delivery of our products with social distancing in mind and technology is playing an important part in this. We have innovated our systems, originally designed as a ‘click and collect’ platform, to operate as a bespoke ‘click and deliver’ solution, and this may work better for you in your workplace, and I ask – “who doesn’t want their favourite coffee waiting on their desk for them when they arrive at work the morning?!” Furthermore, our app remembers these trends for repeat ordering, and adds on the coffee loyalty points automatically!
We are innovating our technology to support the safe return to offices, our clients and their colleagues can resume working with minimal disruption and peace at mind that their catering service can support the repopulating of workplaces in the future. Technology will continue to play a very important part in supporting this, with the relationships of people, and quality of our product and service remaining at the heart of foodservice.
Ben Wilson, Operations Director