Mobile Ordering Pads Mean Big Business for Restaurants
Increasingly, we hear about how businesses are offering mobile payment and even mobile ordering options for patrons, and generally, this is well-received. It makes an experience flow more smoothly with less waiting for order taking and check handling.
CAKE, meanwhile, recently supplied us with the results of a study showing just what kind of benefit such operations can mean for restaurants.
The centerpiece of the CAKE study is that revenue for restaurants that adopted mobile ordering pads—a good option when patrons don’t have their own smartphones—was up almost 365 percent in some cases, comparing July 2016 and October 2016 as a base. Likewise, the average number of transactions was up nearly 222 percent, which shows clear increases in orders and revenue.
One of the biggest reasons behind these gains was a significant uptick in operations in the busiest time of day. The lunch window featured a jump of just over 21 percent, while merchants who didn’t use ordering pads saw only a seven percent gain.
Transaction numbers were also up, as mobile ordering users saw over 32 percent increases while those without saw rises of just over 11 percent. There was a rising tide, but the better boat for that tide was clearly mobile. The dinner hour saw likewise if smaller gains.
Even the slow hours of the day saw increases. Mobile ordering users saw an increase of just over 33 percent in revenue and 50 percent in transactions for the slowest hour of the day. There were general rises here, but much smaller; transactions were up 12 percent for non-mobile retailers, and revenue was up a meager three percent.
While everyone saw some degree of gains, the differences between using and not using was almost night and day. When a business can handle more transactions in the same amount of time, revenue will generally increase accordingly, and without a lot of big changes that might drain that. We’ve long known that mobile payments can speed up the process at restaurants, and mobile ordering can do likewise.
Restaurants now have a clear mandate, complete with numbers to support it. Mobile payments, and mobile ordering, can mean big bucks for restaurants. Those who fail to learn from this may fall behind those who don’t fail here.