5 Ways Contactless Ordering is Transforming the Dining Experience

Let’s face it: running a chain or multi-location restaurant has never been more complex. Your customers demand consistency in convenience, speed, and interactive experience—whether dining in, picking up, or ordering a food delivery. 

As restaurant technology advances, digital solutions such as contactless ordering, table-side systems, and self-serving kiosks are crucial to meeting these demands. The global interactive kiosk market is forecast to reach 45.32 billion U.S. dollars in 2028, underscoring the growing importance of self-ordering kiosks for restaurants.

Imagine a dining experience where customers can easily view menus across all your chain restaurants, personalize orders, and pay—all from their smartphones. There would be no waving down busy servers or waiting for checks.

But the million-dollar question is, how crucial is it that your chain restaurant implement contactless ordering? 

Read on to learn more.

Why Multi-location Restaurants are Adopting Contactless Ordering

The pandemic changed the hospitality industry, profoundly affecting how we travel and dine. During this period, we witnessed a growing demand for safe and more convenient dining experiences that sought to minimize human contact and encouraged social distancing.

But even post-pandemic, the demand for these dining experiences hasn’t reduced. More restaurants are now adopting digital solutions like contactless ordering, contactless payments, and self-service options, putting more dining experience into the customer’s hands.

There’s so much to benefit from contactless ordering if you’re running multi-location restaurant operations. According to the Restaurant Technology Landscape Report 2024, most customers would prefer to place a contactless order or make a contactless payment from their dining table. 

With a QR code menu, your customers are now only required to scan it to access the electronic menu across all your restaurants on their smartphones. They can then navigate the ordering page, view the menu items and prices, and decide what they want.

This technology helps improve your restaurant’s efficiency while adapting to customers’ changing needs, ensuring service consistency and safety.

We’ve listed some critical benefits of contactless ordering to explain why more multi-location and chain restaurants are adopting it.

1. Convenience and Personalization: The Biggest Gains from Contactless Ordering

When you think about the dining experience, the first thing that comes to mind for most customers is convenience. Customers today expect a frictionless process from the moment they step into your restaurant (or open your app) to the moment they leave. Contactless ordering delivers precisely on that expectation.

Customers no longer have to wait for a server to take their order. Contactless ordering ensures they can quickly pay and order directly from the table using their smartphones or contactless cards. This happens at the customer’s pace from the moment they walk in.

But the benefits go beyond convenience. Contactless ordering also opens the door to personalization. Your customers can easily customize their orders without involving your restaurant employees—whether that’s changing ingredients or adding extra toppings. 

You can also use this opportunity to offer personalized menus based on customers’ previous orders. It gets even better if the technology has a menu management feature that lets you easily update menus across restaurant platforms in just a few clicks, saving time and keeping your customers happy.

There are also opportunities to upsell and provide more dining options to your customers. For example, if a customer usually orders a side of fries, why not suggest they upgrade to sweet potato fries or add a drink to the mix? 

The result is a better customer experience tailored to individual preferences. As we know, tailoring experiences to individual customer preferences will turn your one-time customers into returning customers.

2. Faster Service: How Contactless Ordering Reduces Wait Times

Delivery speed, reduced wait times, and the overall quality of the service rank among the most valued elements that a customer would consider when evaluating your restaurant. Slow speeds and longer wait times after placing an order can significantly impact a restaurant’s reputation.

Statistics show that over 40% of restaurant operators want to invest in technology to increase productivity. Opting for contactless ordering can reduce wait times, resulting in faster table turnover, better dining experiences, and enhanced restaurant productivity.

When customers place orders using their smartphones at the restaurant’s premises, the order is efficiently transmitted to the kitchen. This happens without any delays or interruptions caused by a crowded dining area or the need to notice an empty table ready to place an order. 

This will speed up service and maximize food delivery efficiency during high-demand periods, and it will also mean you can serve more customers during busy periods. Higher table turnover rates equal more guests served, which, of course, means higher revenue.

3. Enhancing Safety: The Role of Contactless Ordering in Hygiene Management

Even though we’ve moved beyond the height of the pandemic, customers still expect better restaurant hygiene, cleanliness, and minimal physical contact. That’s why, as a chain restaurant decision-maker, you should prioritize safety over providing quality service to new customers and building the loyalty of existing ones.

Adopting contactless ordering in your restaurant operations helps you shine on this front. By allowing customers to browse menus, place an order, and make payments via their mobile devices, you can reduce the number of touchpoints throughout the dining experience. 

Fewer physical interactions between guests and staff reduce the risk of spreading germs, making customers and employees feel safer.

For multi-location restaurants, adopting contactless ordering helps meet these heightened expectations of safety and cleanliness that are now a new normal in the restaurant industry.

4. Increasing Accuracy: How Contactless Ordering Minimizes Human Error

Many customers have restaurant experiences where they place an order only to find out it’s not exactly what they requested. Human error happens, especially in busy environments where few servers juggle multiple tables. 

The best solution businesses can turn to is contactless ordering. Implementing this technology has one significant advantage: real-time order monitoring. Customers can quickly place and monitor their orders throughout the process, ensuring they reach the kitchen accurately.

When customers input their orders directly into the system, there’s less room for miscommunication. What they see is what they get—literally. This leads to fewer incorrect orders and, in turn, fewer customer complaints. 

Contactless ordering ensures that each order is processed correctly, regardless of location. This level of accuracy improves customer satisfaction while reducing food waste caused by incorrect orders.

5. Streamlining Operations: Integrating Contactless Ordering with POS Systems

One of the biggest advantages of contactless ordering is its integration with POS systems. This creates a direct and frictionless line of communication from the customer’s order to the kitchen, resulting in faster and more accurate orders.

For instance, restaurant solutions like Deliverect Restaurants provide POS integrations that can simplify the process further. Once a customer orders through your contactless solution, the order is immediately sent to your POS and then to the kitchen. There are no lag times or errors—everything runs smoothly.

POS integration into your contactless ordering solutions is a turning point in restaurant technology. Like never before, you can now organize and manage orders from different locations throughout their processing.

Ready to Transform Your Business with Contactless Ordering?

The future of dining is digital, and contactless ordering is the way to go. Adopting this technology allows you to enhance your customers’ experiences, optimize operational efficiencies, and cater to the increasing need for safety and convenience.

If you’re a multi-location operator or chain executive, now’s the time to embrace contactless ordering to help streamline your operations. Not only will it help you keep up with customer demands, but it will also future-proof your business for long-term growth and success.