What are Restauranteurs’ Biggest Tech Fears?

While 93% of restaurant owners agree that restaurant tech has favorably affected guests, bolstered loyalty and created repeat business, there are still fears surrounding technology that prevents some restaurant owners from embracing the future. The main fears that restauranteurs have can be broken down into 5 distinct issues: 

1. Cost of implementation and infastructure

2. Cost and difficulty of service and repair

3. Customer reaction

4. Training costs

5. Keeping up with new tech

Let’s take a look at why these issues scare restaurant owners and why modern F&B solutions render most of these fears unnecessary. 

Cost of Implementation and Infastructure

In the past, owning a restaurant solution would often mean also having a server on-site and employing a full-time team of tech specialists to ensure your system was running smoothly. However, with the advent of cloud-based F&B solutions, such implementation costs and infastructure is no longer necessary. 

By opting to use cloud tech to power your restaurant solution, all you need is compatible hardware (an iPad, for example) and that’s it. Your POS, Kitchen Display System, Photo Menus, eSignage, and a whole range of other restaurant-related tech are all apps that just need to be downloaded. It doesn’t get simpler than that, especially since all your data and settings no longer require on-site servers and hardware. Everything is stored in the cloud to give you peace of mind. 

If anything, modern F&B solutions save restaurants money. “86% of restaurant owners claim that the digital devices have cut service times and boosted throughput.”

Cloud F&B solutions also bring together all the disparate parts of a restaurant by allowing each tech module and device to work together and share information. What does this mean for you? A reduction in redundant tasks, less human error and fewer staff required to keep your restaurant running and managed smoother than ever before!

Cost and Difficulty of Service and Repair

With legacy F&B systems, this would certainly be a huge hurdle to overcome. Having to keep track of how your hardware and software are functioning is a difficult and costly task, especially since one small hiccup could mean that your whole restaurant system is rendered useless. 

Cloud-based F&B solutions suffer no such drawbacks. Your restaurant solution software is ‘repaired’ through simple over the air updates that take no more than a few seconds. If your hardware breaks, simply download your F&B module app on another piece of hardware and log into your account. Unlike legacy systems, your accounts are not bound to specific hardware, meaning you have access to what matters to you anywhere, anytime, even if your original hardware has failed. 

Customer Reaction

There’s no real need to fear that customers will be confused by new tech, especially if it offers them useful features and value. Of restauranteurs that took the plunge and offered customer-facing technologies “93% said they’re convinced the capabilities have favorably affected guests, bolstering loyalty and repeat business.”

With F&B solutions growing in capability rapidly, your restaurant has a variety of tech options that could help give the customer a better overall experience. Just a few of these include Self-Serve Kiosks, Queue Ticket Kiosks, BYOD technologies, Online Web Ordering (takeaway/delivery) and User Apps.

Possibly the most important part of F&B tech that will guarantee your customers react positively is the use of customer relationship management (CRM) and loyalty programs. Baked right into modern F&B solutions, CRM allows you to keep track of important metrics like spend amount, popular dishes and what times are popular for your customers to eat at your restaurant. This data can help your business make great decisions that positively impact customers. Furthermore, adding a loyalty program will invest customers in the business as they will feel a sense of belonging and brand loyalty. Offering freebies or discounts is a great way to create perceived value for the customer, and having a tiered loyalty program encourages higher spend amounts and recommendations to friends and family.  

Training Costs

Training your staff to use outdated restaurant solutions is an exercise in frustration and wasted time. Oftentimes, you’ll be running multiple unrelated systems on different pieces of hardware, all utilizing very different software. This sort of experience is often chaotic, time-consuming and impossible to master. 

Fortunately, modern-day F&B systems, especially could-based ones, offer a totally different experience. Staff will already be familiar with the UI of iPads or other tablets, which is what runs the various restaurant modules you opt to use. A single interface governs each module, meaning that once your staff is used to the interface of one module, for example the POS, they can easily adapt to others, like an mPOS or Customer Facing Display.

Opting to use an F&B solution with many useful modules and features that all run under one system, means that staff only need to be trained once. Since all relevant information and data is sent to the various modules in your business, staff don’t need to worry about performing small, redundant tasks as the system can take care of it all on its own. This further reduces staff training time and adds value to any restaurant business.

Keeping Up With New Tech

If you do your research right and pick a versatile F&B solution that is constantly evolving and adding new features, your business won’t need to worry about keeping up. With legacy systems, you get what you buy, and your system can quickly become redundant as the market adds must-have functionality that you’re not getting. However, with cloud-based systems, new features and third-party integrations can be added all the time, meaning that you can actually get more than what you pay for over time. 

Best of all, adding new tech is simple with a cloud-based system. Simply download a new app if you are adding a new restaurant module or tap the ‘update’ button within existing apps to take advantage of the latest tech features. There’s no better way to have a competitive edge over the market while also knowing that your business is utilizing the best available tech to make management simpler.

Tech Doesn’t Mean Trouble

It’s understandable that some restauranteurs may be wary about adding new tech to their businesses, but modern technology has come a long way. It’s easier than ever to make technology an integral component to your business, and by doing so, you will be able to unlock tons of new functionality and money-making benefits.