As restaurants pivot and adapt to the changing landscape of what restaurant dining may look like in the months and years to come, TFI Canada shares a few tips to better equip yourself and take your service to the next level.
Dash and Dine, at Home
The changing landscape of in-house dining has more and more restaurants looking at changes they can implement in-house to help them thrive. Accommodating a walk-up window in the dining room will allow customers to place their take out orders quickly and safely. Outdoor menu boards can serve up daily offerings and specials, while one or more drive-thru lanes will help alleviate traffic and congestion. Designated curbside pickup spots and contact-less delivery options are all small changes that can make a huge difference to your success. At the same time, all these changes will minimize the time customers spend at the restaurant and their contact with staff or other patrons.
Would You Like an App With That?
To help make their off-the-premise dining experience seamless, implement the use of mobile ordering, online menus and contact-less payment options to help customers navigate the ordering process. Bring your delivery services in-house. By doing this, you're able to better control the costs and quality of the food being delivered. Choose a slower period of ordering and offer customers a discount on pick up orders or a discount code for their next meal.
Tailor Your Menu for Larger Orders
With everyone at home, many customers are placing orders for food for the entire family, or extra, so they don't have to cook the next day's meals. Gone are the days of grabbing something on the way or a quick bite on the run. If you don’t already have it, consider adding a family-style meal option to your menu to capture these larger family meals, or even include some kid-friendly options. Family meals are comfort meals, so stick to or include comfort foods like cheeseburgers and French fries, pasta and meatballs, and chicken and mashed potatoes.
It's Not Clean Unless it's Covid-Clean
Ensuring your restaurant is going above and beyond the highest levels of cleanliness of the old restaurant standards can help alleviate concerns customers may be experiencing during this uncertain time. Sparkling windows and floors, deeply-sanitized kitchens, masks worn correctly by all employees, plexiglass barriers/dividers where needed, tables seated at least six feet apart and touch-less hand sanitizer stations — this is covid-clean.
