Evoke has long been recognised as one of the pioneers of self-serve technology in
the QSR space, supporting McDonald’s with their Experience of the Future back in
2015.
With an ever-growing footprint in the QSR space, where the use case for self-service
kiosks is well established, we’re now working with retail and hospitality brands
outside of the typical QSR format to help them realise the queue-busting, order-
boosting and experience-enhancing benefits.
Last month’s Casual Dining Show gave us the perfect opportunity to find out more
about the challenges and opportunities facing the wider sector, from pub co’s to
coffee shops, casual dining venues to experiential leisure destinations, and more …
These were our main takeouts:
- The keynote from Peter Martin at Peach set valuable context around sector
performance, the changing consumer and competitor landscape and the myriad
opportunities presented by technology and better comms and marketing.
- In the face of rising labour costs, recruiting and retaining good people is vital.
One of the benefits of self-serve kiosks has always been the ability to divert team
members to higher value customer interactions, while also increasing order
processing times
- As the show took place the day after Ken Murphy’s keynote at FT’s Future of
Retail conference there was a lot of focus on the role of technology and specifically
AI and its use in supply chain and workforce management. Again, the message
was that a successful hospitality business depends on people but consider and
apply the available tech and tools to make life easier.
- David Campbell of Rare Restaurants mentioned an adaptation of Moore’s Law –
every six months everything (technologically) will change three times over. With
such a dizzying pace, effective customer engagement and considered change
management is key to any successful implementation.
Speaking with a number of non-QSR operators at the event, self-serve kiosks as an
ordering channel has been considered (sometimes on multiple occasions) but
ensuring successful operational and CX implementation has proved something of a
headscratcher so attention has moved to other priorities.
And it’s those ‘art of the possible / what might successful implementation look like for
my business’ conversations that are keeping us busy at the moment. We support our
clients with a consultancy wrapper to make sure that any trial/POC considers the
wider organisational impact and is created with the best chance of operational
success and clear KPIs.
If you’d like to have a chat with us about what the optimum self-serve implementation
looks like for your business, then do get in touch.