Optimizing QSR Curbside Pickups and Deliveries with the Right Technologies
Curbside pickups and home deliveries were a smaller portion of business for most quick service restaurant (QSR) before the COVID-19 pandemic, but things have changed dramatically over the past year.
Even just a few months into the pandemic, more than half of Americans had used one or more restaurant delivery options, and nearly half had ordered curbside service. Since then, these trends have grown even more. Accordingly, many QSRs are now looking for ways to optimize their curbside pickups and deliveries, so they can serve more customers more efficiently and with shorter wait times.
In this article, we’ll take a look at some ways QSRs are achieving these efficiencies by using the right point-of-sale software with mobile computers and tablets from Zebra.
By having the right point-of-sale software in place and being able to mobilize it with Zebra computing and data capture technologies, QSRs are able to serve customers through a number of different mobile channels and models. Moreover, they can receive, process, and manage orders more efficiently by using these solutions to automate and streamline processes and workflows to help their staff provide faster and more convenient service.
For example, many QSRs now use Zebra’s TC70 touch computer or ET5X tablet with a Zebra ZQ110 mobile printer to mobilize their point of sale and manage curbside orders, payments, and customer service.
This allows them to take customer orders through their mobile app or website, then easily deliver those orders and accept payments in the parking lot or at a designated walk-up window or canopied outdoor station. With Zebra mobile technologies, QSRs can also take orders and accept payments directly from the parking lot or drive-thru, providing a complete customer service experience on the spot—right down to a printed receipt.
Some QSRs are also using these solutions to build new service models, such as creating dedicated curbside pickup lanes in their drive-thru. For maximum impact, some QSRs are using these flexible solutions as multi-purpose devices for temporary drive-thru line busting and regular back-room inventory management in addition to curbside pickups.
Many QSRs have also been upgrading their point of sale and investing in Zebra mobile technologies to help them create their own direct delivery services to minimize fees from third-party delivery providers. By being able to deliver orders on their own and keep costs lower for themselves and their customers, QSRs can gain a distinct advantage over competitors while building more loyalty to their brand and their own apps and websites for ordering.
Ultimately, no matter how you choose to provide curbside pickup or delivery service, the key to maximizing speed, efficiency, and customer service quality is to have the right systems and solutions in place.
That’s one of the reasons why we partner with leading QSR technology providers to help restaurants design and deploy solutions that fit their unique processes, service models, and customer needs.
Depending on the use case, your point of sale will definitely need to be mobile-friendly and will need to support what you want to do today as well as how things might change and evolve tomorrow. Ideally, you want to have it all through one solution as well, from order processing and payments to scheduling and inventory management.
But once you have the right point of sale in place, the next key is to have the flexibility to access and use your software from virtually anywhere. And that’s why we strongly recommend Zebra’s complete portfolio of mobile QSR computing, data capture, and printing technologies.
Zebra’s portfolio of best-in-class hardware integrates easily with point-of-sale and other back-office systems and delivers the enterprise-grade durability, processing power, memory, and battery life to enable more automated and streamlined curbside pickups and deliveries for hours on end.
Zebra has flexible and adaptable solutions for virtually any workflow, and they’re powered by a highly secure enterprise version of the Android operating system. This makes your point-of-sale experience as well as order, inventory, and restaurant management as easy as tapping a button on a screen. It’s also great for onboarding new workers, minimizing training, and error-proofing your restaurant processes with automated cues, scanning, and guided workflows.
To learn more about Zebra hardware and our top recommended solutions to help you optimize your curbside pickup and delivery, contact us at Macro Integration Services. We’ll show you how some of our QSR customers are optimizing their operations, explore ideas and possibilities for your restaurants, and help you find the right technologies to make it all happen.
Call us at 336-931-0674 or visit our contact page to start a conversation.