55% of Restaurants Say Digital Payments Are Key to Success

The 2021 Restaurant Readiness Index, a PYMNTS and Paytronix collaboration, surveyed more than 500 QSRs and full-service restaurant managers to get a sense of their respective digital shifts.

According to the results, the average restaurant garnered 67% of its sales through orders placed digitally or over the phone.  As many as 55% of these companies have said that digital payments are key to their future success.

And drilling down a bit, the ways restaurants are meeting their customers where they want to be met are mushrooming.  Digital and phone orders are gaining momentum, indicating that the “remote” options appeal to consumers. Those ways and means of placing orders outpace in-store options. In fact, in-store ordering represented 39% of orders for firms with table service and 24% of QSR orders.

The customers themselves are well in tune with the features restaurants can offer that would help individuals and families boost their spending. More than 16% said they would do so through loyalty or rewards programs more than any other feature; nearly 13% said the same thing about the ability to order online.

But there is a loyalty gap that must be addressed: 51% of all restaurant customers say they believe that loyalty and rewards programs will be critical to restaurants’ success going forward, but only 36% of restaurant managers say the same.