Would an Omnichannel Restaurant Strategy Suit You?

Is an omnichannel restaurant strategy right for you?

What is an omnichannel restaurant strategy?

An omnichannel strategy creates a seamless, unified experience across all of your customer touchpoints and marketing channels. It creates a more consistent and convenient user experience, providing more avenues for customers to interact, book and engage with your business.

Restaurants and bars will often have multiple channels for customer engagement, such as a website, various social media profiles, through delivery and partner channels and of course, in your venue. An omnichannel strategy enables you to deliver a consistent message and experience across all those channels to help you generate more bookings and visits.

How does an omnichannel restaurant strategy work?

An omnichannel restaurant will often (but not always) start building a relationship with a potential customer through its social media presence (or online in general).

The impression created in the omnichannel digital environment should be consistent with the experience the customer will have when they visit the restaurant.

This interconnected system will allow customers to book a table through a variety of channels, such as:

Over the phone
In Person
In-app
On your website
Through your social media accounts
Through Google
Via a virtual assistant like Amazon Echo or Google Home (50% of consumers now own one)

This is all made possible when each different source connects to the same, central restaurant booking system. This data is then shared throughout your other systems, allowing you to make the customer’s time with you as enjoyable as possible.

But that’s not the end of it. Omnichannel restaurants will also allow similar approaches for ordering food. Whether it’s for delivery or to eat in, and whether the order has been taken by wait staff or through your website, you can have it all come through on your kitchen display system, which will allow you to keep things organised and prioritise orders.

The omnichannel restaurant experience continues even after your guests have been seated. With their data now in your system, including their contact details and food choices, you can keep in touch with them via email to collect reviews, highlight promotions, send personalised offers that encourage return visits, or invite them to join a loyalty program.

Pros and cons of an omnichannel restaurant strategy

Of course, an omnichannel approach isn’t necessarily the right strategy for every business and if you’re going to consider implementing one, you’ll want to understand if it’s right for yours.

A successful omnichannel restaurant experience can offer many benefits while keeping your growing customer base happy by delivering a simple user experience. But it’s important to weigh the potential benefits against the investment you’ll need to make in terms of time and money.

So, let’s consider the pros and cons of taking this sort of approach to the marketing and management of your operation.

PRO: Greater reach

By connecting your various channels and partnering with third-party services such as JustEat, Uber Eats or Deliveroo, you’re increasing your brand’s visibility and creating a variety of new avenues for potential customers to find you.

Whereas years ago, you might have had to rely on foot traffic and word of mouth, digital technology has extended the reach of businesses and started the customer journey before guests have even walked through the door.

CON: More work

However, with more channels and partners comes more work. Every new way for a customer to connect with you also represents another channel that you have to monitor and keep consistent with the rest of your brand.

Each new arm of your omnichannel strategy also requires setup and for the best results, you’ll need dedicated teams to keep everything running and put out new social content. Without these sales, marketing and IT professionals in place, your system could very quickly become unmanageable and disjointed.

PRO: Improved customer experience

A restaurant’s success is no longer defined just by how good its food is. Modern consumers want an experience.

They want:

Convenience
To be treated well
Quick service
To feel important

By connecting your various channels and using your accumulated customer data to improve your service, you can check off all of these things. An interconnected system means fewer sign-ups and roadblocks between the customer and what they want. Pre-orders and booking systems allow for quicker service. Customer outreach creates a bond that fosters a sense of importance. Targeted upselling and promotions give a personalised experience that they could perceive as good value for money.

CON: Greater expenses

For large-scale businesses, there are marked benefits that could bring in extra revenue, but the high price of investment in the software and partnerships necessary to enact a successful omnichannel strategy will likely be too costly for many independent venues.

Collating all of this software to integrate into your system, and having people monitor it all costs money, from one-off fees to tech subscriptions, partnership deals and staff salaries.

PRO: Smoother operations

An omnichannel strategy - anchored by an efficient, cloud-based restaurant EPoS - can revolutionise restaurant operations. Your EPoS can streamline processes by bringing all your orders from various channels into one place, minimising errors and saving valuable time during busy periods. With more precise order management and by automating tasks you can help to free up your team's time so they can focus on delivering exceptional service and creating a positive atmosphere. Additionally, with real-time insights from across the business you can make agile decisions, optimising inventory management and reducing food waste, while a smoother, faster dining experience enhances customer satisfaction, loyalty and profitability.

Steps to adopting an omnichannel strategy in your restaurant

If you’ve decided that an omnichannel restaurant is for you, there are multiple steps you’ll need to take to get things off the ground.

1. Bolster your online ordering systems

Building an omnichannel restaurant can take a while. So it’s best to start with the basics, such as multiple obvious ways to get in touch with you, to make a reservation or book a meal.

There are a number of ways you can go about this. You’ll likely already have a clean, appealing website that (hopefully) speaks to the experience they will have at your restaurant. But could it be supplemented by having a presence on an ordering system like JustEat or Deliveroo, allowing for a quick and convenient way for people to place their orders? You could even consider creating your own app, if you haven’t already.

A restaurant online ordering system will allow you to collect data from multiple sources and have it all sent to one system for you to review with ease.

2. Modify your social media strategy

You may well already be executing a solid social media strategy with an established customer base and following. As you transition into your new omnichannel strategy, you need to adapt your social media to work in conjunction with everything else.

Integrate your social media with your website and booking systems to provide an even smoother experience for your customers.

Your tone of voice and messaging should be consistent across all the other channels of your brand to create a unified digital presence.

3. Cement your place on Google

Alongside social media, it’s important to cement your presence on Google. You need to make sure that all of your content is optimised for search engines and invest in local SEO. After all, there’s so much competition in the customer service industry, and you won’t have much luck if a prospective customer searches for you and you’re buried five pages back.

Take the time to properly establish yourself on Google, and continue to integrate your systems - Google gives customers yet another way to order food and make reservations. A Google Business Profile will allow you to stay in control of the key information people will see about your brand when searching for you, from opening times to contact information. Highlighting unique selling points on your Business Account can also help you stand out from your competitors.

4. Connect everything

We’ve said it multiple times, but it’s the whole crux of an omnichannel restaurant strategy. With your website, social media and Google position sorted, connect everything together.

You want to do this both in the back end and through the content you put out. You want to keep your message consistent and your customer journey smooth.

The best way to do this is to make use of the wide variety of software available. When integrated with other systems, software such as a hospitality CRM collects and organises data from across your various channels. This can give you a complete view of your customer’s interactions with your brand, allowing you to tailor advertisements and communications to specific customers based on their past interactions with you.

But that’s not all. CRMs like Access’ Acteol also have a range of functions, such as the ability to:

Collect feedback and create surveys
Post to and collect analytics data from social media channels
Manage loyalty programs for customers
Create voucher codes (both unique and generic) to incentivise further spending
Collect further leads for your sales team to pursue

Integrating other software, such as the aforementioned restaurant online ordering system and kitchen display system can help you centralise orders no matter where they come from, keep organised and improve the speed of service.

Pair that with the data collection and communication from your CRM, and you’ll quickly see a drastic increase in both your performance and your customer’s satisfaction.

Take the next steps for your omnichannel strategy

In this article, we’ve looked at all the pros and cons of adopting an omnichannel strategy so you can decide whether this is the right strategy for you.

An omnichannel restaurant strategy can do wonders for a business. It can convert dormant leads into restaurant bookings, project a consistent brand and message across all of your channels, and make the practice of running a restaurant simpler for both you and your staff, allowing you to get on with what really matters.

If you’re interested in taking the next step in adopting an omnichannel approach, you can talk to a member of our team to assess your current software and how it integrates to deliver a consistent experience across all channels. Our team can help you decide which software could help you develop your omnichannel offering.

Additionally, download our free and comprehensive guide to discover how to harness the power of your sales data for increased efficiency and profitability.