Restaurants were laser focused on expenses when COVID-19 hit, cutting back on menu options, reducing staffing and striving to survive with new curbside pickup and delivery strategies.

But the ingrained customer behavior likely won’t go away, as the pandemic accelerated nascent trends in how restaurants interact with customers. Restaurants can take some of the lessons they learned during the crisis — especially accelerated digital processes — and focus on growth as they face a return to renewed competition in the industry.

Restaurants must now focus on customer loyalty and increasing revenue through the smart use of technology. That means finding digital solutions from the front of the business to the back.

In an article for Modern Restaurant Management, A&M’s Jonathan Sharp, Kevin Smilie, Jonathan Tibus detail the steps restaurant owners can take to anticipate customer needs, automate processes, and improve technology throughout the organization to boost margins, sales and customer loyalty.

A few of the ideas they discuss include:

• Digitizing the ordering function
• Enhancing restaurant presence online
• Improving order size by day-parting screens and digital menus
• Predicting customer behavior through artificial intelligence
• Tying the front-of-house to the back-of-house with technology
• Tracking food and beverage stocks more effectively with software
   

The article was first published by Modern Restaurant Management and can be read here.