5-minute read ---

​This year, Father’s Day is on June 19th. Each year, businesses compete to be the go-to restaurant for a Father’s Day meal or dessert. For new or independent businesses, this often makes it difficult for their promotions to stand out from the crowd. But with extended or week-long Father’s Day campaigns, local restaurants improve customer traffic and earn additional revenue while increasing brand exposure to the community.

By promoting Father’s Day reservations, buffets, and specials one to two weeks in advance, restaurants provide a convenient way for customers to plan ahead or find them for last-minute gift decisions.

4-minute read ---

​For many business owners, switching to a new point of sale system is an expensive, but necessary, investment. Learning a new restaurant technology and management system brings a learning curve for both managers and employees. Generally the losses and delays associated with implementing a new POS system are justified with enhanced operational efficiency and overall system cost-effectiveness.

Owners/operators that make the switch to Aldelo Express Cloud POS, on the other hand, deploy a complete restaurant technology solution in minutes, and receive unparalleled POS value over the life of the system. Plus, with familiar user interfaces (UIs) across all devices, restaurant staff transition to using the iPad- and Android-based system in just days, not weeks, saving the business time and money.

3-minute read ---

​Labor is one of the most controllable costs business owners have. With the right visibility, managers know when to prepare for an influx of orders, and conversely, when to reduce purchases and related inventory levels. Having proper insights into the operation allows managers to properly staff and control labor costs.

​In addition to these reporting features, modern restaurant point of sale technology provides a means to nimbly manage expenses based on the current needs of the business. By implementing digital services that include ordering, payments, and digital receipts, businesses become less reliant on physical labor. Additionally, these businesses reduce costs related to managing guest services such as printable receipts, legacy gift card, loyalty, and coupon programs. By going digital, restaurant information becomes readily available to operators in order to make important business decisions that protect the bottom line.

3-minute read ---

​People enjoy resorts because they are exciting getaways from ordinary work and daily routines. The best resorts and parks have great food (that guests don’t have to prepare), great hospitality (that make guests feel like celebrities), and great entertainment for guests to enjoy.

In these types of environments, people are constantly moving around and making purchases as they go. There is an expectation of VIP service and luxury experiences throughout, so the faster and more convenient transactions are, the more satisfied customers will be as they roam from poolside bars to restaurant dining rooms, multi-level clubs, seaside bars and snack shack bungalows. Being able to serve in fluid, mobile environments means shorter lines and less congestion for customers getting and other services, providing overall enhanced customer experiences and providing more physical space.

3-minute read ---
​
While the coronavirus pandemic accelerated the adoption of digital restaurant solutions, customer-facing point of sale technology had already been making its way into the industry, beginning with online ordering for in-store pickup and delivery services. To accommodate today’s digital market, 91% of restaurants want online ordering solutions, 66% want table side QR code-based ordering, and 74% want curbside pickup capabilities. Aldelo referral partners exceed these merchant expectations with natively integrated remote POS solutions, providing essential customer digital services at no additional cost to merchants, saving them hundreds of dollars per month.*

4-minute read ---

​Many food trucks are a brand in and of themselves, and like their favorite music groups, customers will follow food trucks from one location to the next. This provides a vibrant atmosphere for others to recognize and gravitate towards. Loyalty and rewards programs not only reward that loyalty, but allows these businesses to pick up new fans at every stop.

4-minute read ---

​Running multiple restaurant locations can be a thrilling yet daunting task. To run more than one operation, owners must either delegate to additional store leaders or engage in high-level multitasking as they work to release new services or manage day-to-day changes in the operation. With multiple layers of responsibilities that come with operating multiple storefronts, multi-store restaurant owners and managers can quickly become drained from running between tasks. As a result, their own staff are likely to feel the impact, risking the readiness, efficiency, and enthusiasm of their employees, and even the satisfaction of their customers.

Multi-Store Management Solution

But there is a way for restaurant owners to find peace of mind while they manage multiple businesses. Aldelo Express Cloud POS offers a multi-store management solution built into its back-office environment. With automatic syncs and back-office access from any web-enabled device, restaurant owners experience newfound peace of mind and freedom to manage their business anytime, anywhere.
​
Restaurants using an Aldelo Express back-office have the ability to manage one or many stores and selectively make changes across all stores, specific stores, or a single store.

3-minute read ---

​​Successful restaurants continually anticipate and respond to customer expectations. While many restaurants rely on third-party review sites such as Yelp and Google review for customer feedback, receiving this feedback first-hand allows owners and operators to gain a different perspective from customers that have recently visited their establishment. These first-hand reviews then either validate reviews from third-party sites or provide additional contextual information that allows owners to improve overall customer satisfaction and positively impact external online ratings.

By using customer “comment cards” to identify and understand customers’ pleasure and pain points, these restaurants are able to provide customer-centric services that influence guests to return and create more enjoyable dining experiences.

4-minute read ---

​Among the many opportunities a restaurant has to engage its local community, community centers and summer camps offer businesses high-volume public settings that attract both locals and visitors, thus providing consistent exposure to multiple demographics in lively settings. By engaging leadership and administrators in these areas, restaurants are able to understand ways in which they can support groups and activities that enhance participant experiences. Through these relationships, restaurants immediately increase brand exposure and expand their customer base into local and visiting communities, making their business a go-to spot for guests who live nearby or are passing through.

3-minute read ---

​Known as “the most important meal of the day,” breakfast dishes are a staple menu category in the restaurant industry, garnering billions of sales dollars each year and steadily growing over the last decade.

In 2019, 55%* of diners said they would order breakfast menu items any time of the day if they were made available on restaurant menus. For restaurants that can add breakfast items or offer breakfast all day, growing demand for breakfast menu items means an opportunity to reach a whole new customer demographic in their community and differentiate from competitors.

4-minute read ---
​
Known for music, green beer, and Irish dancing, Saint Patrick’s Day is an international celebration of Irish culture, history, and legacy. The day began in honor of St. Patrick, Christian patron to the country of Ireland, and has been celebrated since the 17th century. Today, and especially in the U.S., St. Patrick’s Day is frequently celebrated with parades, live music, dancing, green beer, traditional food, wearing green clothes, and recalling leprechauns from Irish folklore.

Restaurants that use this holiday to promote their restaurant create an opportunity to spotlight their loyalty and gift card programs through valuable incentives. Examples include offering double loyalty points on purchases from a specific St. Patrick’s Day menu, discounting gift card purchases, and rewarding first time loyalty program users. By remembering holidays with festive customer engagements, owners and operators emphasize their business’ loyalty and gift card programs and increase customer traffic during an otherwise slow period.

3-minute read ---
​
As the season moves from winter into spring and summer, service-based organizations are recruiting members and fundraising for upcoming projects. Restaurants looking for increased brand exposure are supporting their community and their business by providing food, drinks, supplies, and their establishment as a venue for meetings, outreach, and fundraising initiatives. By building organic relationships with local organizations, especially with small and parent-run groups, these restaurants are called upon later to cater and host future events, providing their business greater local awareness to multiple demographics.

Restaurants with family-friendly spaces are ideal venues for hosting youth and young adult scouting troops and recurring in-person meetings, including expositions and award ceremonies. Such services not only promote the business as community-centric, but increase the number of people regularly eating the restaurant’s food and drinks. These businesses are also contacted when community groups are in need of catering or food services for off-site gatherings.

3-minute read ---

​To close the men’s college basketball season, top teams in the NCAA Division I league participate in a nation-wide tournament known as “March Madness.” Though 68 teams are selected to play, after 3 weeks of competitions only 2 are left for the national championship game and winning title. This year, the final game will be held on April 4 in New Orleans, but once again millions of viewers are expected to watch March Madness on television or via online live streams.
​
For large corporations, nation-wide viewership means paying millions of dollars for commercials and strategic ad placements. But for local small businesses, customers excited to watch March Madness means another opportunity to engage new and existing guests with specialty menus, themed menu items, and loyalty campaigns to drive customer traffic and provide increased revenue in otherwise slower periods. Here are a few campaign ideas to get your restaurant involved in this year’s March Madness.

5-minute read ---
​
For many, the month of March marks anticipation of Spring, St. Patrick’s Day festivals, and watching the annual “March Madness” college basketball tournament with family and friends. With these activities and more, there are many ways restaurants can tailor their March marketing to hungry customers.

3-minute read ---

​Loyalty programs are a restaurant’s best marketing tool, offering owners and operators the opportunity to promote their brand, differentiate from competitors, and most importantly the ability to create sustained revenue uplift. Customers that are rewarded for visiting a restaurant are likely to visit more frequently and purchase additional food and drink items to achieve reward thresholds. Depending on the value and frequency of rewards earned, good loyalty programs can even influence a customer’s choice of one restaurant over another.

As more small to medium-sized businesses adopt loyalty programs, owners and operators are challenged to get creative with campaign types and associated rewards. One way restaurants can differentiate their loyalty programs is by providing different campaigns for different customer interests. Examples may be a simple campaign that rewards customers with free items based on a minimum number of items purchased. This is an ideal gateway campaign for motivating entry-level loyalty customers to migrate to other campaigns that enable frequent guests to earn their way up to VIP-level benefits so they can enjoy top-tier loyalty perks.

6-minute-read ---

​Largely ignored in the US for years, QR codes are proving daily how much of a productive and trusted asset they are to restaurant owners in today’s unpredictable market climate. In a new era of increased contactless ordering and services, QR code adoption and usage has increased across food and beverage, hospitality, and retail, becoming the new norm. Now that many brands are using QR codes to enable contactless experiences, these little square matrix barcodes are appearing everywhere.

QR codes are quickly becoming the go-to link between our physical and digital worlds. With eight out of ten people carrying a smartphone camera in their pockets, consumer demand for touch-free experiences is skyrocketing. Customers are utilizing QR codes because they use their own smartphone to self-manage a variety of experiences and services: digital menus, place orders, scan-and-pay at the POS, web-based payments, leave cashless tips, receive electronic receipts, gain loyalty points, trigger curbside pick-up, and more.

2-minute read ---
​
Accelerate in-store transactions with the new QR Code Fast Pay feature from Aldelo. With the new Masa+ digital payment feature, staff and customers skip the tap, dip, or swipe process and complete customer payments in seconds using a unique customer QR code that applies multiple tenders to a single ticket.

With QR Code Fast Pay, customers are always ready to pay for their orders whether at the counter or at their table. Once customers are logged into their Masa+ online account, to initiate QR Code Fast Pay customers simply present their unique QR code to restaurant staff by tapping the “ $ ” icon in the top right corner of the Masa+ screen. Restaurant staff then accept mobile tenders by scanning the customer’s unique QR code with cameras built into Aldelo Express iPad devices, completing payments in seconds using a single POS device.

3-minute read ---

​Bridge the gap between physical receipts and digital payments with Aldelo’s new QR Code Scan & Pay feature. This new feature allows customers to quickly and seamlessly complete secure digital payments from their personal smartphone in sit-down, takeout, and event settings.

QR Code Scan & Pay is ideal for streamlining payments whenever and wherever a physical receipt is presented to a guest. Restaurants present customers with a printed receipt after their orders are completed. Customers then scan the single-use QR code, selecting their method of payment to complete transactions without physical gift, loyalty, or credit cards changing hands. This feature allows customers the flexibility and freedom to pay without staff assistance, as well as enhanced security benefits since the expirable QR code identifier is never associated with underlying payment data.

3-minute read ---

More and more restaurant owners and operators are looking for ways to benefit customers and their business by serving food and receiving payments in a timely and convenient manner. As customer demand for digital self-services grows, Aldelo is helping restaurant owners save time and money, supporting speedier transactions and streamlining ordering and payment processes with three new QR code payment features.

​Utilizing QR codes help launch and guide customers in-store and off-premises using the native Masa+ online ordering and payments platform and Aldelo Express POS, offering restaurants and their customers greater reliability, security, and convenience during the transaction process. These include:

4-minute read ---

​Except for Thanksgiving Day, Americans eat more on Super Bowl Sunday than any other day of the year, spending an average of $74 per person on food and drinks.* For restaurants, this provides an ideal opportunity to attract new customers looking for quality appetizers, entrees, drinks, and desserts to pick up and serve at their own parties, or to enjoy in an energetic restaurant setting while they watch the big game with family and friends. 

​Traditionally, Super Bowl “Game Day” food includes pizza, chicken wings, chips, dip, and creative, casual appetizers. But with delivery and off-premises dining services now available at almost every restaurant, customer choices are endless, opening the door for restaurants of all types to engage in the American tradition.

Whether your restaurant offers Super Bowl promotions every year, or it’s your first time getting involved, here are a few Game Day marketing opportunities to attract and retain local customers.

4-minute read ---

As soon as New Year’s Day has passed, pink, red, and white sweets and treats deck store aisles. Restaurants, grocery stores, movie theaters, shopping malls, and local businesses everywhere begin the year’s first big marketing campaign to help customers celebrate Valentine’s Day, grossing over $19 billion in the U.S. each year.* But in addition to promoting limited-time offers and special menu items to mark February 14, here are other fun events restaurants can participate in to promote their menu and services and differentiate their business from others in the community during the month of February.

With eight out of ten people carrying a personal mobile device in their pockets, consumer demand for contactless experiences is skyrocketing. Customers are utilizing personal devices to self-manage a wide variety of engagements and services that lead directly to payments.

The overall contactless payment market is expected to surpass $4.6 trillion by 2027, with North America poised to be the leading market. *
​
With the growing number of customers preferring to order and pay for food and drinks online, restaurants must offer secure and convenient methods for efficiently managing payment transactions. Today, customers expect flexible and frictionless solutions that streamline online and in store payment transactions with minimal or no interaction with restaurant staff.

​Loyalty and rewards programs have been around for centuries. In the 1700s, retail shops in the United States would hand out copper tokens with each purchase that customers could trade in with future purchases for a free item. Eventually retailers moved from tokens to stamps and, decades down the line, to personal cards and online credit for airlines, retailers, coffee shops, hotels, and restaurants.

​​In the last two to three years, restaurant owners began moving their menus and food and drink transactions to online platforms. For operators, it provided them with an opportunity to broaden brand exposure, offer modern convenience, streamline operations, and expand their customer base. Going digital enables restaurant owners to communicate more effectively with customers. Restaurants that take a grass-roots community driven approach with loyalty and rewards programs see immediate and long-term results.

All Aldelo Express Cloud POS restaurant owners have FREE access to the platform’s native Masa+ multi-store digital Loyalty and Rewards Program available on the Aldelo Marketplace. Any restaurant can utilize the flexible loyalty and rewards solution for one or more stores that allows operators to directly cater to the needs of their business and influence customer behaviors.
​
A restaurant can implement different types of loyalty programs for customers based on accumulated points, dollars spent, or items purchased. Customer rewards can include free items, discounts, or dollar rewards. Loyalty programs can disperse rewards instantly, over a specific period, or indefinitely.