Technology

Hands off! 7 contact-free ways to keep QSR customers close

Increasingly, as this pandemic continues, QSRs seeking to keep customers must also figure out how to keep those diners at arm's length. Here are six ways contactless technology helps QSRs keep their distance and their customers.

Photo: iStock

June 30, 2020 by Kiera Blessing — Content Specialist, Paytronix

Contactless technology offers some of the best ways for QSRs to help guests feel safer in a pandemic-wary world where any type of physical contact can be a threat to health. Today, many — if not most — diners simply don't want to touch anything that has potentially also been touched by someone else. Contactless tech answers that need.

Here are seven types of this technology QSRs should consider now:

• Contactless payments: These interfaces have been around for a while now. In fact, nearly half (47%) of American consumers expect to use contactless payments this year.

To do so, guests download an app like ApplePay or the Google Wallet, then by using near field communications or NFC, the diner simply taps that app to a card reader to transfer payment information. This eliminates the exchange of the card between consumer and QSR employee, as well as the need for the consumer to touch the card reader.

• QR or Quick Response codes: These are matrix barcodes that smartphones can read to quickly relay information — like that on a digital menu — to the device. Denny's is one casual brand that is using QR codes to eliminate the exchange of physical menus by providing QR codes that allow guests to access the menu on their own phones.

Many smartphones can automatically read QR codes through the camera, as well. Those phones that do not have this feature can read the codes through either a proprietary app from the restaurant or a free third-party QR code-reading app.

• Curbside pickup: Curbside pickup has been so popular with carryout guests that the world's largest pizza QSR, Domino's, this week, introduced a hybrid take on this service dubbed Carside Delivery. Like other forms of curbside pickup, the pizza giant's service eliminates the need for guests to come into the store, by instead having employees deliver orders to their cars.

The effectiveness and popularity of these types of programs through the pandemic thus far indicates they will likely continue at QSRs even when health threats no longer exists. In fact, some brands, like Panera Bread, are even taking it a step further, by rolling out versions of curbside pickup that use geofencing to alert store employees when a guest who ordered curbside pickup has arrived.

If that guest has opted in to the automatic notification system, they can place an order on the Panera app and enter the details of their vehicle into a special instructions field. Then, when that diner arrives at the Panera location, the store's wi-fi automatically detects their phone and alerts employees to their arrival.

• Subscriptions: Some limited-service brands — including the aforementioned Panera Bread — have launched subscription services that offer either a limited or limitless number of a specific menu item for a set fee monthly. This gives guests a reason to continue choosing the brand in question every time they want something like coffee or fries since they've already made that investment.

• Meal and DIY kits: These types of take- or make-at-home product have also gained popularity during the period when the pandemic shut most restaurants to any type of in-store traffic. The kits gave customers a way to get the brand's food, then partially or completely assemble it off-site.

Meal kits not only hold some degree of novelty, but they also minimize contact between the restaurant and the food, which affords guests who are concerned about virus transmission some reassurance, while still providing them with a low-effort meal.

• Reservations. Yes, QSR reservations: Reservations allow quick-service brands to control how many guests arrive at a specific time. That's especially important for QSRs that are juggling the challenges of less seating (due to social distancing mandates) and more cleaning, by giving staff more time to "flip" tables.

In Italy, for instance, a few Burger King locations are testing reservation requirements that allow guests to place online orders with table reservations before arriving on-site.
But restaurants that do allow diners to walk in would be wise to consider ways to keep guests safe until they reach their tables, like directing diners to wait in cars until tables are available and ready. This avoids crowding in waiting areas. Restaurants can text guests when their table is cleaned and available.

• Loyalty programs: These return-customer generators are easily made contactless and are quite popular, to boot. For instance, data collected by Paytronix from the earliest weeks of pandemic restaurant shutdowns, show diners who were enrolled in restaurant loyalty programs continued patronizing the brands at a much higher rate than customers at brands that did not offer such programs.

But in the current climate, guests might be wary of handing rewards card to cashiers. Similarly, diners might forego use of their rewards cars if paying with a mobile wallet. For these reasons, QSRs should consider technology that facilitates contactless loyalty transactions by enabling guests to pay and use loyalty cards with a single tap of their phones.

With public health top of mind, guests will seek out brands that help them to feel safe. For many, that means the aforementioned types of contactless exchanges with the QSRs they love.