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Refine Your Restaurant Tech Stack

With so much flux in hospitality, it’s rare to get a chance to scan the environment and assess where to focus. It’s a complicated balancing act:

  • contactless technology versus the human touch
  • tackling labor shortages while maintaining service levels
  • investing in online ordering and digital marketing versus the tried and true

Our recent webinar: This is an Intervention: It’s Time to Refine Your Tech Stack”, tackles these important questions, while giving operators a chance to learn from experts in hospitality operations and digital business strategy. A recording is available.

Guest Panelists

View the Recording

Webinar Highlights

What Does it Mean to be a Digital Restaurant?

Meredith defined the digital restaurant as a restaurant that operates wherever a consumer wants to be. For an entire generation of people, starting with Gen Z (including many millennials), if they have to talk to a human, they consider that interaction a failure; i.e., something has gone wrong with the process. They’d much rather interact with their phone or a kiosk. If they have to stand in line, they’re annoyed. And while many believe we’re so early in this change in restaurants, it doesn’t apply to hospitality. Restaurants that don’t make an effort to respond to this inevitable shift in consumer expectations will be left behind.

What’s Most Important When it Comes to Digital Marketing for Restaurants?

According to Terrence, showing up is the most important part. And that means all of the different silos of digital - search engines, review sites, etc. Sometimes you have to pay, but sometimes it’s about taking advantage of free options. The good news is that because digital marketing is so transparent, you can easily put KPIs in place to make sure you’re maximizing your impact.

Superior Operations More Important Than Ever

From Michael’s standpoint, even though so much is changing with digital, it all comes back to restaurant 101 and having superior operations. It has become so easy, maybe even easier, to share experiences with the public rather than the restaurant itself, when something goes wrong.The statistic is 1 out of 25 unhappy customers will complain to your face. The amount of reviews are actually going up. There are technologies now that allow you to intervene with the guest before they have the opportunity to get to that next place online, you can prevent some of the negative from getting worse.

What is the Definition of Hospitality Today?

Rolf Gehrung explained the digital restaurant can seem overwhelming because there’s change associated with it. The fundamentals should still be the driving factor for how you operate. Those things you learn early on that you operationalize. Hospitality today is really about the guest experience. Giving them the option to communicate and interact the way they want to. That’s the nice thing about technology is there are so many options to provide a guest. The operators that are going to be successful are the ones who embrace that. We see a lot of operators who say, “this is how we do it, we don’t want to enable guests to order off their phone or off a kiosk”. But there’s a whole generation that has an entirely different definition of what guest experience is all about.

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Situated “in the heart of it all, yet tranquil enough to make you feel away from it all too,” The Limelight Hotel Snowmass offers 99 hotel rooms and 11 residences, as well as footsteps-to-gondola access in winter and summer — right in the middle of Snowmass Base Village.

The Situation

Especially over the last few years, the Limelight Hotels IT team had witnessed a significant shift to contactless technology in the hospitality industry. After evaluating friction points in the guest journey, aligning with modern technology platforms in their restaurant was determined to be an effective way to offer elevated contactless dining experiences to their guests while also evolving their technology platforms to continue to support long-term company goals. Limelight Hotel partnered with GoTab to provide an enhanced on-demand dining experience on par with the brand’s reputation for exceptional guest service.

The Solution

Reducing Staff Touch Points Without Sacrificing Guest Experience

Guests are now able to begin a tab from their room or the property’s restaurant by scanning a QR code, texting a link to friends or family members on the ski slope to add in their orders, then meeting up together at the patio or lodge to enjoy their meal and après ski festivities without interruption. By streamlining tasks like inputting orders and processing payments, this eliminates friction for hotel staff and allows them to focus on delivering renowned guest service for a memorable experience. Since partnering with GoTab, Limelight Snowmass has consistently seen higher check averages and sales.

“We found the Point of Sale platforms we were looking at offered the guest and staff limited opportunities to further reduce touch points or improve the traditional restaurant experience. The GoTab platform enabled the guest to take an active role over the flow of their experience while simultaneously reducing touch points and further streamlining restaurant operations.”Nick Giglio, Manager of Hotel IT Operations, The Little Nell Hotel Group

According to the Limelight Hotels team, some of the other platforms that were evaluated were either missing some of the pieces they were looking for, had weak customer support models, or had little willingness to develop integrations to existing hotel platforms already in place. To that end, GoTab integrated with cloud-based platform, Infor. Together, GoTab and Infor are providing dynamic solutions to support central, efficient service across hotel amenities and deliver exceptional guest experiences.

“Previously, guests would call down to the restaurant to begin an order from their room or while they were out enjoying the ski slopes. Using GoTab, guests can now place orders from anywhere on the resort, giving them the on-demand service they want without interrupting their day. GoTab empowers us to give control to the guest, reducing touch points and streamlining overall restaurant operations, making Limelight Hotel the resort of choice for Snowmass.”Nick Giglio, Manager of Hotel IT Operations, The Little Nell Hotel Group

Since introducing GoTab, The Limelight Hotel has seen a consistent level of upsells and items sold per check resulting in additional revenue capture. They have been able to maintain service levels in their restaurants during periods when there was reduced staffing available without significantly diminishing the guest experience.

The Benefits

Eliminate Phone Orders – Take Orders from the Slopes. Guests can start a tab from their room or on the mountain without interrupting the flow of their day.

Future-Proofed Technologies – Delivering elevated contactless ordering via integration with the Infor hotel management platform.

Eliminating Friction in the Guest Journey – Maintaining service levels during periods of reduced staff without diminishing the guest experience.

  • Eliminating Friction in the Guest Journey – Maintaining service levels during periods of reduced staff without diminishing the guest experience.
  • Eliminating Friction in the Guest Journey – Maintaining service levels during periods of reduced staff without diminishing the guest experience.
  • Eliminating Friction in the Guest Journey – Maintaining service levels during periods of reduced staff without diminishing the guest experience.
  • Eliminating Friction in the Guest Journey – Maintaining service levels during periods of reduced staff without diminishing the guest experience.

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