How Has Guest Behavior Evolved?

Many things shifted in the restaurant industry during the pandemic. A lot of restaurants were forced to change and change quickly to keep up with ever-evolving regulations. Many restaurants transitioned to online, pick-up, and delivery models, which will most likely stick around.

On this episode of The Main Course, Host Barbara Castiglia talked with Alex Canter, CEO of Ordermark, which helps restaurants increase efficiency and grow profits by aggregating mobile orders across all of the major online-ordering services into a single dashboard and printer.

The duo talked about what’s next for the restaurant industry post-pandemic, technology in restaurants, and Ordermark/Nextbite.

“This last year has been absolutely devastating for our industry,” Canter said. “We’ve seen over 100,000 restaurants permanently shut their doors, which is really just a difficult number to digest.”

For the restaurants that made it through to the other side, it is a much different world. General managers, owners, chefs, and front-of-house must now rely more heavily on digital tools in the restaurant. The shift was expected to happen over the next ten years, but COVID-19 accelerated that shift in just a few short months.

“Pretty much every restaurant from fine dining to fast-casual to QSR has figured out a digital strategy, a delivery strategy, and has had to get really creative to make it to this point,” Canter said. “I’m really impressed with the way restaurants have adapted. It’s always been who we are as restaurant owners, people who are resilient.”