Order ahead for restaurants is revolutionizing the customer experience in the quick-service industry.
Our world is an on-the-go, have-it-now evolution of the supply and demand service culture. Consumers know what they want when they shop—from a tailored online destination to an adaptable mobile solution—and that creates an opportunity for savvy retailers and restaurateurs.
The modern customer experience demands innovative solutions from businesses that want to capture consumer interest and maintain customer loyalty. Fortunately, this challenge is one that order ahead for restaurants platforms understand well.
As a result, order ahead options and applications that help bridge the gap between consumers and businesses are thriving. Here’s why:
Millennials Are Ruining Everything
Millennials are ruining everything. It’s true. At least, that’s the media’s reaction whenever consumer trends show traditional industry taking a hit.
The benefit to millennials ruining everything is the opportunity presented by shifting customer preferences. Perceptive business owners know trends are never constant, and consumer habits tend to change. For quick-service restaurants, it was only a matter of time before the millennial generation (people born between 1981 and 1996) defined what customers wanted from the quick-service industry.
Today, mobile ordering, order ahead, and social media offers are how millennials tend to interact with QSRs.
Mobile Order Ahead is Modern
Mobile ordering is responsible for 60% of a restaurant’s digital orders, according to market research company The NDP Group, and mobile orders will represent for almost 11% of all QSR sales by 2020. The reality is simple: consumers prefer mobile options when it comes to interacting with brands and businesses. This is increasingly true for quick-service restaurants.
More restaurant chains and independent quick-service establishments are jumping on the mobile bandwagon. Traditional brick and mortar brands like Pizza Hut, Subway, McDonald’s, and countless others are investing in mobile ordering and loyalty program innovations. Things like branded mobile apps and social media discounts have replaced traditional punch cards and physical coupons, and customers are all for it.
This shift from analog to digital in the quick-service restaurant business paved the way for third-party and proprietary solutions to fine-tune the mobile experience. It’s easier than ever to offer a custom, intuitive, value-added customer service experience for consumers who want to order ahead at your restaurant.
Mobile Moves Money Easily
In 2017, U.S. Bank found that 47% of consumers surveyed preferred digital payment options over using cash. That was two years ago, and since then, mobile methods for moving money have gotten even more popular.
Mobile payment apps that dominate consumer and person-to-person transfers and transactions include:
- Venmo
- PayPal One Touch
- Apple Pay
- Google Pay
- Square Cash
- Zelle
Take mobile payment service Venmo as an example of mobile payment making waves. The company reported more than $21 billion in payments processed in the first quarter of 2019, outpacing most big banks. The writing is on the wall: people will use a mobile payment option when it’s available.
Pair that mobile payment mentality with order ahead restaurant functionality, and you’ve got an all-in-one quick-service solution that’s hard to ignore.
Order Sizes Increase with Order Ahead
Business News Daily cheekily attributes the increase in order size for order ahead customers to people feeling less guilty about what they order when there’s no one judging them at the counter. Business Insider avoids the judgment sentiment and instead hypes Taco Bell’s 30% average order increase through mobile and Starbuck’s 10% mobile share of total transactions in high-volume stores.
Order ahead for restaurants and mobile ordering apps are still in their early days, but (for whatever reason) signs point towards customers buying more when they order ahead. QSRs are recognizing the potential for increased sales and developing mobile order ahead options as a result.
Order Ahead and Mobile Offers Drive Repeat Business
Digital coupon cutting still incentivizes customers to order more, eat more, and pay less. This holds true when mobile and order ahead options enter the picture.
It’s easy for QSRs with reliable, intuitive order ahead and mobile platforms to offer customers discounts and track loyalty purchases. Analytics analysis also helps businesses better understand those customers in order to improve marketing efforts with data-driven decisions. All of this comes together to fuel the cycle of customer retention and repeat business.
Forbes reported that Starbucks’ mobile pay and ordering were big contributors in the first even in the first quarter of 2017, with mobile pay alone being responsible for 27% of all U.S. company-operated transactions. Customers are more likely to utilize a discount offer earned after a previous purchase, easily applied through a mobile app, if it means saving money without extra effort.
Order Ahead is On Demand for Good Reason
Not only is order ahead for restaurants a no-brainer from the consumer’s point of view, but the ability for QSRs to easily implement mobile order ahead options can be a game-changer for how you do business.
Mobile order ahead is disrupting the QSR industry. Restaurants can track and utilize consumer trends and also capture and retain customer loyalty, and customers can order how they want when they want. Plus, you don’t have to have an internal marketing department and a software development team for your restaurant to jump on the order ahead bandwagon.
Platforms like PoppinPay help make branding a web and mobile order ahead app a piece of cake. Contact our team of industry experts to get started and roll out your mobile order ahead solution today!