4-minute read ---
With the massive increase of off-premises dining services, many restaurants have established loyal relationships with customers that order off-site. These customers purchase food and drinks from the restaurant to enjoy throughout the week at their home or office, receiving meals via takeout, pick-up, and delivery services. Customer-centric services that were once “nice to have” are now generating business-sustaining revenue for restaurants year round.
But with more time spent at home, customers are also spending more time cooking their own meals and hosting at-home events for family and friends. At first glance, this may seem to contradict a restaurant’s success since more customers are shopping at grocery stores and nearby markets rather than eating at local restaurants.
However, restaurants are finding a happy “middle ground” and engaging these customers by selling condiments, seasonings, fresh baked goods, desserts, and other retail-ready items that customers can use to enhance their at-home meals. By doing so, business owners extend their brand into customers’ homes, generate repeat purchases, and keep their business in front-of-mind when customers plan and prepare their weekly meals. Customers that purchase items from their favorite restaurant tend to covet these purchases and utilize them for every day use and for special occasions.
In addition, restaurants promote and enhance these items by including recipes as a fresh form of engagement. This not only orients retail-type items as customer-centric, but encourages customers to make repetitive at-home meals more exciting by incorporating flavors from their favorite local restaurant.
But with more time spent at home, customers are also spending more time cooking their own meals and hosting at-home events for family and friends. At first glance, this may seem to contradict a restaurant’s success since more customers are shopping at grocery stores and nearby markets rather than eating at local restaurants.
However, restaurants are finding a happy “middle ground” and engaging these customers by selling condiments, seasonings, fresh baked goods, desserts, and other retail-ready items that customers can use to enhance their at-home meals. By doing so, business owners extend their brand into customers’ homes, generate repeat purchases, and keep their business in front-of-mind when customers plan and prepare their weekly meals. Customers that purchase items from their favorite restaurant tend to covet these purchases and utilize them for every day use and for special occasions.
In addition, restaurants promote and enhance these items by including recipes as a fresh form of engagement. This not only orients retail-type items as customer-centric, but encourages customers to make repetitive at-home meals more exciting by incorporating flavors from their favorite local restaurant.
Businesses extend their brand into customers’ homes, generate repeat purchases, and keep their business in front-of-mind when customers plan and prepare weekly meals
Some restaurants are even de-constructing their dishes to sell as individual items, including high end meats, pasta sauces, salad dressings, and in-house seasonings. Similar to creating take-home “meal kits” for customers to make unique dishes at home, restaurants that compliment packaged ingredients with specialty recipes encourage customers to get creative with their purchases and return to the store to discover more ideas.
One approach restaurants are taking as a precursor to creating these items is starting with complimentary samples of specific items and including these in customer orders as a way to determine future demand.
As a result, these businesses strengthen, diversify, and differentiate their offerings from competitors as they engage niche customer demographics in their local community. This is a key area where independent restaurants can differentiate and offer more value than major chains.
Restaurant owners that use Aldelo Express Cloud POS have access to multiple point of sale modules and features that support “retail” items in their restaurant. For example, restaurants that wish to prepare extra menu items to package and sell based on customer demand create a retail category for these items in Aldelo Express to seamlessly integrate item sales and inventory data into their business’s cloud back-office environment.
Learn more by contacting an Aldelo representative today at [email protected] and 877-639-8767
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Restaurants that use ultra-competitive Aldelo Pay or Aldelo Partner Merchant Services obtain access to a Centralized Multi-Store Restaurant Technology Platform that includes Masa+ Online Ordering, Unlimited Software Releases, Unlimited Software Upgrades, and 24/7 Technical Support! *** Please contact an Aldelo representative today for more details, including a free Aldelo Express POS demo trial [email protected] | 877-639-8767 | [email protected] |
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