GoTab Rolls Out Contactless Ordering & Payment at Food Halls
Making its debut at Union Market in D.C.
A versatile cloud-based solution, restaurant commerce platform GoTab is putting its contactless ordering and payment technology to use at food halls, starting at Washington, DC’s premier cultural destination Union Market that features local, regional and international vendors. Visitors can now skip the lines and order ahead of their visit to Union Market (for dine-in or takeout), or scan QR codes at the on-site tables to choose dishes at the various food counters within the venue. Union Market businesses such as Fava Pot and Ramen by UZU have adopted Go Tab to easily customize the platform and adapt to their fast-paced operations.
Easy and Fast Setup for A Fast-Paced Environment
With an easy and seamless virtual deployment, operators are able to quickly access GoTab’s features. Given the small footprint of food counters and the fast-paced environment of food halls, a cloud-based solution like GoTab can be set up in less than 2 days, without the need for bulky hardware or costly add-ons to the operators’ current POS system. For Fava Pot, the team was up and running in less than 48 hours, and didn’t even have to be on-site for everything to be set up by the GoTab team.
"We really like how straightforward and easy to navigate the GoTab system is. We use tablets and printers here at our Union Market stall, and our GoTab customer service team is available at all times and always very responsive. We can text them when we run into an issue and it’s typically resolved in no time."
Stephen Samuels, Area Manager at Fava Pot
Real-Time Menu Management
Since the launch of contactless ordering in 2018, GoTab has set a new standard in contactless menu management for operators, allowing them to actively edit menus in real-time. With GoTab, operators can 86 ingredients on the menu, which automatically updates all of the published menu items that contain that ingredient. Dishes that are no longer available on the menu can be 86’d as well, and the menu resets the next day so staff doesn’t have to keep updating the menu every day on the back end. “It’s such a smart system for us and so helpful, especially during the lunch rush or on super busy weeknights or weekends,” he added.
Highly Customizable Menu
GoTab allows operators to update menus in real time and offer customization options. The platform’s intuitive design lets guests easily and seamlessly adjust and customize their orders from their phones, adding or removing ingredients or creating custom dishes such as personalized ramen from Ramen by UZU. “The contactless ordering process is very user-friendly, and works well with our Kitchen Display System,” said Donovan Pham, Manager of Ramen by UZU at Union Market. “We have found that guests who come back again order more and order faster since they know how the system works. They really love having the ability to customize their orders.”
"We’ve always had great visuals and amazing photos of our food, and found that multimedia assets are a great way to boost interest and orders. It’s also one of the reasons we’ve been able to garner such a strong following within the community of food enthusiasts in D.C. GoTab really makes it easy to make those photos the centerpiece of the menu browsing experience. They can be added to the menu in just a few minutes and really entice our customers to order from our food stall at Union Market."
Donovan Pham, Manager of Ramen by UZU
Visually-Driven Food Ordering
With QR-based contactless menus, the visual game has profoundly changed. With GoTab, it’s easy for operators to leverage multimedia to make their menus pop. Uploading and updating menu imagery is fast and seamless, and GoTab also integrates with video streaming platforms for those who want to up their visual menu game even more. For Ramen by UZU, the team heavily relied on photography, particularly on social media, to promote menu offerings, especially when they pivoted to takeout ramen kits.
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