BENEFITS OF TOUCHLESS MENUS FOR YOUR RESTAURANT

OCTOBER 2, 2020| SpeedPro Silver Spring

We live in a digital world that is increasingly using technology to make life more convenient and, lately, more hands off. Touchless technology has found its way into everything from hotel security systems to grocery store checkout counters, and now into restaurants with touchless menus. If you’re looking for a way to update your restaurant, consider all the reasons why a touchless menu is a great idea.

WHAT ARE TOUCHLESS MENUS?

Touchless menus are a form of smart signage. Some of these signs include quick response (QR) codes that customers can scan using their phone’s camera.

A more advanced version is signs that contain near-field communication (NFC) chips. When a customer holds their smartphone up near the sign, the chip will prompt the phone to pull up a certain webpage — in this case, your restaurant’s menu. This technology has been around long enough that every iPhone since the iPhone 6 and every Android phone running on Android 4.0 or later is equipped with NFC tech.

All you need to provide an NFC restaurant menu for your customers is a smart sign, such as the InfoLnkX touchless signage SpeedPro offers, and a website online to link to from your NFC tag.

WHY SHOULD YOU USE TOUCHLESS MENUS IN YOUR RESTAURANT?

There are several great reasons to consider adding a touchless menu to your restaurant. They’re convenient for both staff and customers, and they open up new possibilities for how customers interact with your menu. Let’s look more specifically at six benefits of touchless menus.

1. THEY MAKE YOUR RESTAURANT APPEAR MORE MODERN

Restaurant owners should regularly be on the lookout for ways to modernize their restaurants. Maybe it’s time to update outdated dining furniture or décor, for example, or jump on food trends with new menu items. One of the best ways to add modern appeal to your restaurant is with a touchless menu.

Especially when it comes to younger populations, your customers are used to using technology in nearly every aspect of their lives, so a tech-free restaurant can seem old-fashioned. A touchless menu automatically elevates your restaurant and makes it appear more high-tech and modern to customers.

2. THEY MAKE WAITSTAFF’S JOB EASIER

When you have a touchless menu for customers to view on their phones, your waitstaff can spend less time dealing with menus. Handing a customer a menu may not take long, but this doesn’t account for the work that menus require behind the scenes. Especially in our current health climate, sanitizing menus is an ongoing task that can take up waitstaff’s time.

Every time you update your menu, staff members have to take the time to change out menu pages or laminate the new menus. When menus are damaged, staff members need to remove these damaged menus and keep track of the need for replacement menus. All of these tasks take time, which you can save with touchless menus.

3. THEY ALLOW YOU TO UPDATE YOUR MENU IN REAL TIME

At the very least, restaurants should update their menus once per year to adjust pricing as needed. Many restaurants update their menus multiple times throughout the year so they can offer seasonal dishes or simply try out new specials. When you have printed menus, updating your menu means printing new menus or manually marking up the ones you have. The first option can get expensive, and the second option looks unprofessional.

With a touchless menu using NFC technology, all you have to do is update your menu online, and every customer who scans the menu sign will get the latest, most accurate version of your menu. Unlike with static QR codes, you can keep the same NFC chip, and update the landing page as often as you need to. You can even set it to automatically pull up the correct menu for the time of day if you have separate breakfast, lunch and dinner menus.

4. THEY CAN BE INTERACTIVE AND ACCESSIBLE

A major difference between an online menu and a paper menu is that online menus can be interactive. Rather than looking at a static list of dishes, customers could click through options, view pictures of dishes they’re interested in, read nutritional info and see options for customizing a dish – all in the palm of their hand.

An online menu should also allow users to zoom in as needed to view the text comfortably. This is a helpful feature for those who are vision-impaired and may need a magnifying glass or some help from a friend to read your paper menu. People are used to using their phones in a way that works for them, so why not deliver your menu in this user-friendly context?

5. THEY’RE MORE SANITARY

One of the biggest reasons touchless menus have started to gain more popularity is because of the hygienic solution they offer to what can otherwise be a germy situation. Studies have found that a restaurant menu can hold onto a whopping 185,000 microbes per square centimeter. This can include pathogens that could spread illness from one diner to the next.

The only solutions besides touchless menus are to obsessively clean and sanitize menus or to use disposable menus for all customers. Using touchless menus completely eliminates the risk of passing along germs since people use their own phones to view your menu. They don’t even need to touch the sign to pull up the menu — they just have to be nearby.

6. THEY ARE ECO-FRIENDLY

Because of the health concerns with reusable menus, many restaurants have resorted to printing off stacks of disposable menus. This is not a very sustainable approach, however – especially since you can’t recycle paper that is dirty from food or drinks, a likely fate for a used menu. Even with reusable menus, you can waste a lot of paper if you update your menu regularly.

As the world finds new ways to go paperless, the restaurant industry shouldn’t fall behind. Touchless menus are an excellent way to share your menu digitally. You can still print some menus for customers who don’t have a smartphone or prefer a traditional menu, but you can greatly reduce the number of menus you have to print.

CREATE A TOUCHLESS MENU WITH SMART SIGNAGE FROM SPEEDPRO

If you want to elevate your restaurant and your customer experience with a touchless menu, SpeedPro can help. Our high-tech smart signage will give you all you need for customers to connect to your online menu instantly. We can help you create these and other signs for your restaurant to be functional, attractive and customized to fit your branding. Find a SpeedPro studio near you to get started.