Commentary

Restaurants and kiosks in a post-Covid19 world: What's the 'new normal'?

Restaurant owners are going to have to think outside the box about things like decreased capacity at their restaurant to accommodate for social distancing. Kiosks and phone apps working together are a part of the "new normal"

Little Caesar's has incorporated the Pizza Portal and their phone application into being a touchless/cashierless solution. Photo courtesy of Little Caesar's.

April 27, 2020 by Ben Wheeler — President, KioskGUY.COM

Inside the minds of today's restaurant owners must be a very interesting, busy and maybe even a little scary place.

Scary because number one on the list of things must be short-term survival. How to attract customers to spend money now, when long-term survivability must be on both the owner's and the customer's minds. The dichotomy of the owner's survival versus the customer's survival is simple: buying take-out food versus buying groceries and supplies to make food at home for as much as six months, maybe a year.

Restaurants are busy brainstorming the "new normal." Photo courtesy of Ben Wheeler.

Busy because they have to be looking to find new ways to serve the customer, especially if they don't have a drive-thru. Or, what if they don't have a phone app ready to sell meals via the Internet for pick-up from newly designated parking spots or a make-shift drive-thru?

Interesting because the indomitable spirit of the American entrepreneur is going to figure out what the future is, and how they're going to meet it.

The long-term challenge is predicting what the "new normal" will be and setting a course to be there sooner than later.

The 'new normal'

Just like everything else in our Covid19 world right now, adjustments are being made in real-time. Examples of how things are going to work in the near term, in every aspect of our lives, are being bandied around on a daily if not hourly basis.

So, the new normal is what we make it, right? Or what we must overcome to define it, right?

A real world example

The NBA is looking at a sequestered second half of the season using facilities like Walt Disney World in Lake Buena Vista, Florida. Keith Smith, a former Walt Disney Company employee, suggested using the ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex and utilizing hotel rooms in The Art of Animation Resort which has nearly 2,000 hotel rooms, according to Yahoo Sports. Pop Century Resort has nearly 2,900 rooms, Smith said, so together that's almost 4,900 rooms in two resorts that are connected to each other to put up all the requisite players and personnel to make it happen.

Restaurant challenges

Similar to the NBA, restaurant owners are going to have to think outside the box about things like decreased capacity at their restaurant to accommodate for social distancing. Owners will have to find ways to permanently incorporate pull-up ordering into the mix unless they can tear out walls and put in a drive-thru. I can list several hundred issues they'll have to overcome over the next few years.

So, let's look at one example that already exists in the marketplace. Little Caesar's has incorporated the Pizza Portal and their phone application into being a touchless/cashierless solution, driving phone application buyers to a self-service kiosk that utilizes a code that unlocks the door to a completely touchless transaction.

Conclusion — kiosks and phone apps working together are a part of the "new normal"; the rest of the solution is to be determined and the kiosk professionals in the kiosk industry will help define the direction retailers and restaurateurs will want to go.

For an update on how the coronavirus pandemic affects the kiosk industry, click here.