Self-assess yourself before you wreck yourself.
Hint: Look inward.
There’s just no getting around it: digital ordering is the new standard in foodservice. Once favored primarily by younger customers, the ease of purchasing meals on-the-go has since spread to nearly every consumer base on the market.
These days, even older generations are getting in on the trend. (In the last year, a full half of retired seniors purchased food digitally!) What once was a nice-to-have feature of foodservice programs has now become an essential convenience your customers expect.
But delivering on this expectation isn’t as simple as buying a plug-and-play mobile ordering point solution or building out a new page on your website. Great mobile ordering needs the solid foundation of a mature foodservice program, one that fosters both an exceptional customer experience (CX) and an efficient operator experience (OX) behind the scenes.
So how do you go about maturing a foodservice operation in ordering? Before you spring into action, you’ll need to take a step back and get a clear look at where you are today.
Take the Ordering Maturity Model Quiz >
As you think about your ordering program’s maturity, it’s important to understand the two groups at the heart of your program: customers and staff. Understanding the quality of customer and operator experience is the key to knowing what level of maturity you’re starting from today, and, as you may have guessed, improving each of these experiences is how you’ll level up.
Customers’ experiences are defined by the emotions, opinions, and perceptions they have when they:
Traditionally, we’ve only thought seriously about managing customer experience when it’s happening inside dining locations. But the entire Food Buyer’s Journey is much broader than that! Mature operations are those that consider how they influence customers at every step of their journeys, from awareness (“I’m hungry!”) to post-meal reflection (“Would that be worth doing again?”).
The other important group, naturally, is your staff. Operators’ experiences are impacted by the ease, simplicity, and efficiency of their ability to deliver, scale, and maintain a great customer experience for guests. Good OX is rooted in tech that is:
Beyond providing a healthy work environment, prioritizing operator experience helps empower your teams to make improving CX—not putting out fires—their primary focus. After all, it’s important to take care of the people who take care of your customers!
With all these ideas swirling around—from investing in technology to mapping the Food Buyer’s Journey, not to mention the million things already on your to-do list—it can feel impossible to know where to start. But here’s a secret: the key is not trying to do everything at once.
If you jump headfirst into herculean digital ordering efforts without building a strong foundation, you’ll set your new programs up to fail before they’re even in place. For example, while a Level 3 foodservice operation should be building a relationship with a chosen ordering technology vendor, a Level 1 operation should start by auditing their current kitchen workflows to identify roadblocks standing in the way of a building functional ordering program.
By prioritizing the right improvements at the right times, you’ll ensure you work steadily toward your ordering oasis, without having to worry about taking two steps forward and three steps back.
Which questions do you need to ask in order to get an honest look at your operation? How will you know how you compare to your peers? Most importantly, how will you prioritize all the improvements you want to tackle?
Finding the answers to these questions isn’t easy. Luckily, you don’t have to go it alone.
Nutrislice has developed a quick-yet-comprehensive (and free!) self-evaluation to uncover your program’s maturity. Better yet, your quiz results come with detailed, level-specific guidance to help you take the next step.
Ready to level-up your ordering game? Take the self-assessment and get your personalized report.