The 2021 Restaurant Readiness Index jointly launched by PYMNTS and Paytronix surveyed more than 500 fast-food restaurant (QSR) and full-service restaurant managers in the United States in the second quarter of 2021 to determine the mobile ordering trend (MOA) as the 2020 part of a larger survey of 25,000 consumers in the third quarter. This excerpt highlights the digital features being deployed in various types of restaurants and their impact on customer preferences, order sizes, sales, and more. To some extent, the restaurant owner’s expectations of the restaurant’s digital features are obvious. This is especially true when researchers ask about the factors that drive customer loyalty and spending.
According to the index, “compared to online ordering capabilities, an ordering function that can motivate more customers to increase spending is loyalty and restaurant rewards,” and pointed out that 16% of all restaurant customers are “willing to increase restaurant spending for loyalty. The program surpasses any other function and has the highest share. In comparison, Additionally, 13% and 7.4% of restaurant customers said that the ability to order online and pay online will persuade them to spend more on food orders.”
Although loyalty and rewards are standard issues for the restaurant game in 2021, the researchers learned more about the issues by analyzing data on how the best performers reached the top of the list. According to the 2021 version of the Restaurant Readiness Index, “The best-performing companies not only maintain their loyalty programs but also expand their digital ordering capabilities – especially in mobile app payments, thereby improving overall innovation readiness. Compared to 2020 In comparison, the best-performing companies are 4.5% more likely to provide digital ordering capabilities than in 2020, and are 7.1% more likely to provide mobile-app-enabled ordering options than last year. The combination of these factors helps the best-performing companies in 2021 Achieve an overall index score of 83.1, which is higher than 80.1 in 2020.”
A clear conclusion of the new findings is that as restaurant rewards, loyalty, and mobile pre-orders become more common, “restaurants must invest in other features to help strengthen relationships with customers to gain a competitive advantage.”
