It is not uncommon today for restaurants in Singapore to offer QR-code menus.
While some diners are in favour of it, others might still prefer traditional, paper menus. The latter might be due to bad user experience, such as a digital menu that is not optimised for mobile or does not offer a mobile ordering option, says Anshul Gupta, co-founder of TabSquare, during yesterday’s media event in Singapore.
To help restaurants overcome that, TabSquare provides in-restaurant solutions powered by artificial intelligence to digitise the ordering, payment and customer engagement-related processes. With TabSquare, diners can use digital menus to browse, order and pay at their pace and convenience, resulting in more accurate orders and reduced order delays when the restaurant is short-staffed.
Besides that, restaurant partners can analyse their customers’ purchasing history to identify trends in price sensitivity, volume, and menu preferences to personalise a customer’s subsequent experience. They can also use those insights to offer relevant promotions to attract and retain diners.
Since data privacy is an increasing concern, Gupta shares that TabSquare collects only the necessary data. The collected data is used to create a food profile — which just shows a customer's food preferences — instead of an individual customer profile showing demographics and more.
According to TabSquare, restaurants that use its solutions see up to 10% higher bill sizes, up to 50% reduction in staff costs and better customer experience. TabSquare's restaurant partners include Pizza Hut, KFC, Minor Food Group, Sushi Tei, Paradise Food Group, Japan Foods Holding, Zingrill Holdings, The Coffee Club, Old Town White Coffee, Secret Recipe, and many more.
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“We have worked with TabSquare for many years and find TabSquare’s solutions highly customisable, allowing us to mix and match different features to suit various operational models," says Edlan Chua, chief operating officer of Paradise Group.
He adds: "For example, our famed hotpot chain Beauty in The Pot uses TabSquare’s tablet menu solution, allowing customers to place multiple orders at any time of their meal, which accommodates ordering behaviours of patrons at a hotpot restaurant. At our casual dining restaurant chains Le Shrimp Ramen and LeNu, TabSquare’s pre-ordering solution allows our customers to place their orders while they are waiting for a table, enabling us to manage crowds during peak periods and for our customers to be able to enjoy their meals more quickly."
Enhancing the dine-in and delivery experience
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To help accelerate digital transformation in the F&B industry, TabSquare and foodpanda are jointly delivering digital delivery and dine-in solutions to restaurants in Singapore, Malaysia, Taiwan and the Philippines. TabSquare and foodpanda are subsidiaries of Delivery Hero.
However, Gupta clarifies that TabSquare's and foodpanda's solutions work independently, which means customer data between the two platforms are not integrated even if both are used by the same restaurant partner. When a customer dines in at a restaurant partner, he will be shown offers or dishes only based on his dine-in order history on TabSquare, even if he frequently orders food delivery via foodpanda from the same restaurant.
"With foodpanda, we will be bringing many new innovative features to the industry. For example, restaurants working with TabSquare can now promote themselves to foodpanda's large customer base and attract new customers. They will also be able to collect payments more efficiently across multiple payment methods. Together, we are making a collective attempt to move the restaurant industry further into the digital age, providing comprehensive and seamless online to offline solutions that will help restaurants become more efficient, improve profitability and drive better customer experience and engagement," claims Gupta.
Wivina Seah, director marketing of Lai Lai Taiwan, a restaurant partner of foodpanda and TabSquare, says: "With [the joint offerings], we are able to easily get the help we need to run both our delivery and in-restaurant operations — which we see as equally important. We are more confident of satisfying diners who want to order in or eat out, and see value in tapping on these tech innovations to strengthen our operations.”
Besides delivery and pick-up services, foodpanda offers dine-in features to its restaurant partners.
Over 8,000 restaurants across eight countries have started offering dine-in deals via foodpanda since 2022, offering customers discounts ranging from 15% to 25%. These discounts have led to more than 100,000 pandapro users and foodpanda customers dining at restaurants they have previously not been to.
“foodpanda stands for all things food; with our technology, we want to play a part in as many of our customers’ 120 monthly food interactions as possible. Moving into QR ordering in restaurants was, therefore, a very natural choice for us. It allows us to offer great benefits to our 500,000 restaurants, helping them with their profitability by serving their customers better. I am absolutely convinced that in five years from now, restaurants worldwide will be using QR code-based ordering and paper menus will be a memory of the past," says Jakob Angele, foodpanda's CEO.
