The Power of Smart Restaurant Digital Ordering System

Think Resto
4 min readApr 12, 2022

In the restaurant industry, growth is driven by customer experience. No matter whether a customer dines in or orders online, the customer’s experience from placing the order to receiving it determines whether or not they return to your restaurant again. Restaurant ordering systems are therefore crucial to the growth of the restaurant business.

Today automation systems are present in all areas of life, whether home, office or large industry. In addition to automating internal processes, restaurants and hotels are now using tablets to take orders and robots to deliver food. All of this affects the customer experience directly and indirectly. Electronic menu cards, such as tablets, enable customers to choose items from the menu and place their orders easily.

Here are few statistics that imply the importance of investing in Restaurant Digital Ordering System:

  • Online food ordering has grown 300% faster than dine-in since 2014 and now accounts for approximately 40% of the total restaurant sales.
  • Almost 60% of diners expect that they will order more online in 2022. Of those diners, 42% plan to order somewhat or significantly more directly from restaurants, 3x more than those who plan to order more from third-party apps (14%).
  • In 2022, the number of Americans using apps to order food and other groceries is expected to rise from 27.9 million to 30.4 million.
  • It is estimated that online ordering food revenue will rise and reach $220 billion in 2023–40% of restaurant sales.
  • Nearly 60% of restaurants can expect more sales when they offer online ordering.

A well-planned smart restaurant ordering system results in overall business growth

A Smart Restaurant Management System takes care of the 3 most critical touchpoints:

  • For dine-in: the staff that takes the order can provide the customer a personalised experience
  • For online-ordering: a well-thought of and designed ordering system can provide a seamless experience of ordering and tracking the order to the customer
  • For the Chef handling the kitchen: the KDS-related control system can be of great value to create customization in food preparation

With the growth of your restaurant business, the complexity of operations will increase. Customers will get more touchpoints via which they can engage with your restaurant, both online and offline. An effective restaurant control system would ensure that the restaurant’s operating team has a clear visibility across all order input channels.

The first step to install an intelligent restaurant management system: Integrate the online order into your website

Having a website is the first step in providing customers with a digital experience. If you provide an optimized ordering system, your customers are more likely to order from you in future.

Restolabs makes online ordering simple, fast, consistent and commission free for Your restaurant. Restolabs creates a perfectly on-demand ordering experience for your food business, complete with contactless dining and curbside pick-up options. They understand you and your industry and strive to make your business successful — every step of the way, by offering features specifically designed to amplify your digital offerings and increase customers. Few of these features are:

  • Custom Branded Ordering: Simple customization options that allow you to give your ordering site a unique personality, voice and attributes with which your customers can associate themselves with.
  • Insightful Analytics: Restolabs dashboard offers detailed sales, customer and product reports to help you make smart, enlightened and useful business decisions. Analytics includes predefined reports such as higher-selling items, gross sales over a period of time, revenue report, and much more.
  • Simple to Use Menu Configuration Dashboard: Enables you to instantly add, modify, and delete menu items in real-time. The menu control panel allows you to control the following- Easy menu creation and its management, Combo creations such as adding Meal Deals, Auto Combo creation, depending on the items present in the cart.
  • Real Time Order Notifications: Enables you to receive a real-time notification whenever a new order is created, updated or cancelled
  • Multiple Delivery Controls: Easy delivery management and control for multi-restaurants and chains via area control, radius control and map based control.
  • POS Integration: Simple and quick integrations with all major POS Platforms so you don’t have to deal with multiple software in order to manage ordering operations.
  • QR Code Ordering: Make a fast and secure order with Restolabs QR Scan Ordering, which allows your customers to browse the menu and place orders from their mobile phones.

Restolabs allows you to make your restaurant website a customer-friendly one with features that allow you to provide a lucid and branded user experience, while maintaining a smooth workflow for your employees in the background. You can book your demo for free today!

What questions must you ask before investing in a restaurant ordering system?

There are certain things that you should clarify before you decide to move ahead with a certain restaurant ordering system. Make sure you ask questions and gain total clarity. Here are the questions you should ask:

  • Will the ordering system help you manage all commands on all channels in a singular view?
  • Is your restaurant POS equipped with the primary and advanced requirements of an ordering system?
  • Will your existing restaurant ordering system updated when you scale your restaurant business?
  • Is the restaurant ordering system designed in a customer-centric manner?

Ending Note

Thus, a restaurant should not under-estimate the power of a smart digital online ordering system. A smart system that is thoughtfully designed will help you kickstart your business as well as accelerate it. If you have not invested in an ordering system yet, it is time to do so!

Not sure if this is the right stage to invest in a new system?

Get Restolabs Free for 60 days now!

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Think Resto

Restaurant Blog that might have some answers for you.