How Technology Has Helped the F&B Industry in Tackling the New Normal?
The demand for food has been always on the rise due to the increasing population across the world. Even when the world got hit by the pandemic COVID-19, the F&B industry paved its way to reach its customers in an efficient way. Of course, when many countries imposed lockdown, the restaurants, food joints, and other similar outlets also were completely shut down due to which they had to face immense losses. But as soon as the world started returning back on track with the new normal rules, the F&B Industry also adapted to the new changes with the help of the latest technologies and strategies.
Increased Food Delivery:
The demand for home deliveries has already seen a rise over the last few years. But when things started getting back to normal after the removal of lockdown, a tremendous increase is noticed for home delivery orders. Though due to rapid vaccination drive and other strategies, there has been noticed a good control over the virus, people are still not sure whether they should go out of their houses or not. Thus, a visible drop has been noticed in the number of people who would visit restaurants to dine in. These guests rather feel more comfortable now ordering food and getting it delivered at home to consume it within the comfort of their homes.-
The Problem:
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The Solution:
Enhanced Hygiene:
One of the most essential points that we cannot ignore during this pandemic time is that of enhanced hygiene. Apart from the rules of social distancing and wearing a mask, another most essential point is to take extreme care about hygiene. Food can get contaminated quite easily and so it is essential to maintain extra cleanliness while handling food. F&B Industry has introduced several regulations now to maintain the hygiene factor so that food can be served and delivered without any risk of contamination. Some of the regulations that the hotels, restaurants, and other places maintain in this new normal are:- Sanitizing the kitchen and dining area at regular intervals,
- Handling food by wearing gloves, masks, and hair caps,
- Maintaining social distancing at work as well as from the customers.
Enhanced Digitalization:
As social distancing became the prime solution to cut down the spread of the virus, digitalization became quite popular now. Customers now prefer to make payments through different digital forms so that they do not have to get in contact with the other person in terms of exchanging currencies. There are two major ways that have allowed the spread of digitalization in between the relationship of a customer and the F&B industry.- When customers order online, they prefer to pay online at the application or at the website directly before the food is delivered.
- When the customer is at the restaurant for dine-in, they usually pay online through different money transfer applications available now in place of paying in cash.
Is This Change Good for the Long Run?
While many of the restaurants and small food joints may find the introduction of these changes a bit messy and expensive at the initial stage, but definitely this is going to pay off in the long run. Here are some of the eminent ways how the use of technology is a help in the long run.- The use of technology such as restaurant management systems makes your operations much smoother and accelerates the quality and speed of work.
- The ERP system does not offer a faster and safer mode of payment but also helps in keeping track of your monetary elements such as comparing sales of different months to check your growth
- There are also restaurant management systems that include inventory management that also helps you in handling your inventory well so that you can control food wastage or even shortage on time.
- Systems welcoming customer feedback helps you in understanding what you need to change so that you can get ready to serve the customers in an even better way.
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