Tablets For Restaurants: Using Tableside Tablets To Increase Sales And Decrease Costs
Benefits of Using Tableside Tablets
While using tablets is fun and impresses guests, tableside tablets are much more than a gimmick. Tablets can be used effectively in several ways: Some restaurants integrate the technology to their POS system to allow tableside ordering while others use the tablets as a replacement menu.Here are some of the key benefits:
Increase in Food Upsales
While waiters are trained to upsell, not all staff actually ask for the dessert, side or drink sell. When using a tablet for electronic ordering, you can configure the tablet to automatically prompt customers for additional items based on their selections, making waiters’ jobs easier and helping the restaurant earn more money, as well.
Elimination of Printed Menu Costs
When using tablets for either the menu or ordering, you completely eliminate your menu costs. You do not have to replace damaged menus, print inserts for nightly specials or print new menus for each season.
Better Operational Management
Restaurants can often reduce waste by increasing sales on overstocked items. Because you control the menu design and placement with tablet menus, you can promote the 50 extra steaks that are in the freezer to increase sales. You can also feature nightly specials prominently to reduce waste and encourage sales of surplus.
Although it’s not a traditional benefit, many guest use the tablet as a talking point and tend to bond more over dinner. We often see people use the information in the tablet menu about the wines or food preparation as a talking point. It steers conversation away from small talk about the weather to the experience of their meal.
Effective Strategies for Deploying Tableside Tablets
Successfully using tablets for restaurants is relatively simple, and you can increase the effectiveness with some planning and strategy.You first want to think about your clientele and the benefits you want from using the tablet before you begin. This will help you determine the best strategy.
Tips for using tablets at the table:
Determine if you will put the entire menu on the tablet or just the drink menu. One size doesn’t fit all when it comes to tablets for restaurants. Consider your specific customer as well as your restaurant’s goals.
Determine how many and what type of tablets to purchase. We recommends one tablet for every four guests. We offers a variety of restaurant ordering tablets in several different screen sizes to help meet the specific needs of your restaurant and customer.
Presenting menus on tableside tablets is already helping restaurants enhance the guest experience while generating a positive impact on the bottom line. But the many other potential benefits of this evolving technology are still being discovered.
