Is unified commerce the future of restaurants?
Restaurant businesses and dining experiences have evolved more in the past twelve months than in the entire previous decade. The F&B industry now knows that the key to surviving and thriving is having technology that enables them to be where their customers are.
“Many restaurants have now realized that their legacy systems, which often consist of separate, loosely connected software solutions, can’t give them the agility they need to meet the radical shift in consumer habits,” says Waddah Laham, Vice President at software development firm LS Retail. “Restaurants worldwide are now rushing to replacing their outdated technology with unified software.”
“Unified commerce” is the name given to software platforms that bring together all the functionality restaurants need – from accounting, to the Point-of-Sale, to kitchen management, to analytics, to vendor and staff management – within just one software solution. Moving to a single platform can have an extraordinary impact on the business. IT costs are reduced to a fraction because there is no need to purchase, support and integrate different software solutions. Restaurants can access reliable, current business and guest information, because all data is collected in one central place. And when consumer habits change – for example, when people massively start ordering takeaway meals instead of dining in – a unified platform gives businesses the agility to move where their customers are, fast. “The ability to add rapidly online ordering, pick-up, and delivery functionality has enabled many of our customers to stay open and keep on delivering high-quality experiences, in person and at distance,” said Laham.
As the pandemic-related restrictions subside, the experiential dining trend is expected to pick up speed once again. Multiconcept restaurants that combine great culinary experiences with entertainment, retail, and activities, will be the winners in a world where consumers desire full-circle engagement. “Businesses that are using a unified platform will be much faster in adding retail, events, entertainment or other acrossindustry concepts to their restaurant offering,” Laham says. “Speed of action aside, businesses using unified software can also deliver better, more consistent experiences, as they can run all parts of their brand as one,” says Laham.
In a complex, quickly-changing environment like the F&B industry, perhaps the largest benefit restaurants can derive from a unified platform is access to relevant and actionable insights. By collecting information in a single database, restaurants can easily keep a single view of their guests, understand who is visiting and when, track what’s popular at specific times of day, see what items guests buy just once and never again. They can analyze the frequency of special requests and engineer their menu to maximize profit. They can create offers and promotions for each location, period, or guest, to increase visits and returns. “We keep hearing that consumers have the power in their hands. By enabling restaurants to connect the dots and understand what works and what needs to be tweaked, unified software brings power back into the business’s hands,” he concluded. ■