Restaurants’ Tech Investments Drive 11% YoY Increase in Digital Engagement

Restaurants are doing everything they can to attract digital customers. Their investments are paying off.

The Context

In recent years, eateries have been working hard to make their offerings more digitally accessible, expanding pickup and delivery access.

Quick-service restaurant (QSR) giant McDonald’s, for its part, is tapping geofencing to reduce wait times in an effort to boost pickup adoption. The restaurant brand is updating its mobile order and pay capabilities to inform back-of-house staff when mobile order-ahead customers are near the store, such that the kitchen can prepare the order to be warm and ready just as the diner arrives, in an effort to both boost efficiency and improve the customer experience.

“We’re committed to consistently delivering a fast and more seamless experience for fans using the McDonald’s app,” McDonald’s USA stated in an email. “We’ve rolled out app updates that will improve the mobile-order experience making it fast and convenient for those ordering ahead through the McDonald’s app for curbside, table service or in-store pickup.”

Meanwhile, casual dining chain Hooters has been adding virtual brands to reach a new, digital customer base.

“The data that we got says about 75% of the people that are ordering from the virtuals have never ordered from the core Hooters brand, and that number shocked me from the very beginning,” Marc Butler, Hooters senior vice president of strategic planning/off-premises, explained in an interview with PYMNTS. “I was really expecting a little bit more overlap. But it seems that still, even to this day, three, four years later, we’re still attracting a new customer with it.”

By the Numbers

Overall, these kinds of efforts have been effective. Research from the latest edition of PYMNTS’ ConnectedEconomy series, “ConnectedEconomy Monthly Report: The Evolving Digital Daily Edition,” which draws from a February survey of a census-balanced panel of more than 4,000 U.S. consumers, finds that digital restaurant engagement has increased 11% in the last year, a share that amounts to 14 million more consumers ordering food online.