Digital Menu, Self-Service: Dining Out Amid COVID-19

How will restaurants be redesigned to ensure hygiene and social distancing? Here’s a look.

(Illustration: Arnica Kala/The Quint)

What is the new normal for dining amid the threat of coronavirus? How will restaurants be redesigned to ensure hygiene and social distancing in the post-COVID world?

The Quint spoke with restaurateurs who are looking at a new model of contactless dining to remove non-essential human interaction and continue safeguarding both diners’ and staff interests and address their concerns.

Overview of how your dining experience at restaurants will look like.

Temperature Checks, Gaps Between Tables: The New Look of Restaurants

Speciality restaurants like Mainland China have reopened their dining spaces as per guidelines from the government that ensures social distancing, regular temperature checks of staff and customers, gaps between tables etc. Debashish Ghosh, General Manager of the Mainland China group, said, “There is no layout of plates or cutlery on the tables. Everything is sanitised in front of the guests including chairs and tables. Mainland China has always had touch-less menu ie separate electronic tablets are provided to the guests to choose their food from. We are continuing with that.”

Gaps between tables are ensured in restaurants.

He added, “We are moving to self-service method where the food is placed on the table and the customers are serving themselves. The buffet system has also been stopped for now and there is a sit-down buffet only where a fixed menu is served to the customer at their respective tables.”

‘Music & Mountains’, a cafe in Delhi’s Greater Kailash Market, has also moved to contact-less dining experience with digital menu and self-servicing.

“About a month and a half ago, we had an informative session with FSSAI (Food Safety and Standards Authority of India) where we were briefed about which chemical to use to remove infectants from the air and the general guidelines. We have procured required chemicals to sanitise the furnitures every 2 hours regardless of usage and of course after a guest enters or leaves. The same sanitisation process is followed in washrooms too.

Amit Rekhi, Owner of Music & Mountains Cafe

To maintain social distancing flower vases are placed on certain tables at the cafe

Sanitizers kept at the entrance of the cafe.

Rekhi added that the bar section of the cafe has now been converted to a living quarter for the staff. “We are anyway working with minimal staff and now since bars have not yet been allowed to reopen, we have made arrangements for our staff to live on the premises to reduce the risk of infection.”

“We also have pedal stations at the entry of the cafe where guests can sanitise themselves before entering. A server, who is himself health-checked every morning along with other staff, takes the temperature of the customer before they enter the cafe,” said Rekhi.

For local restaurants, however, the pandemic has dealt a heavier blow. Vinayak Minocha who owns a fast-food restaurant in Rajasthan’s Sikar said, “Although we regularly check the temperature and ensure sanitisation of our staff, the number of which has been significantly reduced, guests do not like it when they are asked for temperature checks. They would do that at big restaurants but want it easier at local joints.”

He added, “We have not yet reopened our seating fully so we have designated one particular place from where customers can pick up their takeaways.”

How is Technology Aiding in Contactless Dining?

Technology solution providers told The Quint that in order to counter the fear, restaurants need to build trust and habits that reassure anxious diners.

There are a multitude of touchpoints with a diner that restaurateurs are looking to modify and facilitate with the introduction of technology. These can be simple actions like booking a table, pre-ordering meals, takeaway, digital ordering, digital payment, etc.

QR Codes, Apps Help in Shift to Digital Menu

The menu is a prime example of an item that changes hands most frequently. At a time when the coronavirus can survive on surfaces for 5-6 hours, it is not possible to sanitise a paper menu the way you can sanitise other surfaces like tables, say industry veterans.

Restaurants are shifting to digital menu to avoid risks of multiple touch points.

Restaurants and technology providers are now looking at menus on the app as a way forward, something that is already in use in food delivery apps like Swiggy, Zomato and Uber Eats.

The Quint spoke with Ankit Mehrotra, founder and CEO, Dineout, who has recently unveiled the country’s first end-to-end ‘contactless dining suite’ to help restaurants operate in a post-COVID-19 world. It leverages the user’s phone to ensure a contactless experience.

“We looked at research in countries like China, Taiwan, Korea etc. The restaurant industry has been the fastest industry to bounce back, especially dining out. The main reason is people are not traveling for leisure anytime soon. Similarly, people do not want to go to the movies because of the seating, confined space and AC.”

Speaking on the adoption of contactless menus and food orders, Ankit Mehrotra said, “If we look at China, 3-4 years back they underwent a complete revolution in mobile technology where now if you go to even a small cafe or hawker in China, you scan a QR code, you open the menu and place your order.”

“In pre-COVID India our expectation was that the adoption of this technology is going to be slow. However, what we are seeing based on early traction from restaurants and consumers that people will adopt this for safety. If it was only about convenience, it would’ve taken time to catch on,” Ankit Mehrotra told The Quint.

Restaurateur Zorawar kalra’s Instagram post on aQR Code menu order system in Bengaluru.

Cost & Service Efficiency For Restaurants

While the pandemic spelt heavy loss in business and revenues for three months, a new model looks to convert it into an opportunity for greater efficiency in managing inventory, customers and pricing.

1. Cut down on menu size: At a big restaurant an average menu has 400 dishes. This means ingredients for 400 dishes need to be stocked. “We know that 20 percent of the dishes would be ordered 80 percent of the times. Many food items were getting spoilt or going unutilised and that was a loss. What digital menus does is help restaurants manage their menus better,” explained Mehrotra.
   
2. Dynamic Pricing: It exists in every other hospitality sector like hotels, flights and even movies. A bar, on a Friday evening and Tuesday, are selling beer for the same price. Unlike flights, hotels, and movies, restaurants could never change their prices because of fixed menus. Now restaurants can charge varied prices based on demand-supply data in real time.
   
3. Quicker Serving of Food: A digital menu allows customers to pre-order. The advantage is that once the patron is seated, the food will arrive within 5 minutes. From entering to actually getting the first dish out is 20 to 25 minutes. “ Because of this, a time of 1 hour 15 minutes will come down to 45 minutes. The 30 mins that a restaurant saves will be massive because instead of 3 turns, the restaurant will able to seat 4 turns of people,” Mehrotra told The Quint.

Managing Visitors in Restaurants

A prototype for managing visitors while maintaining safety protocols. 

The advent of the pandemic has raised another core concern – managing the number of individuals in an establishment. The need to ensure social distancing in large spaces like malls, office buildings, hotels and restaurants means the number of people have to be efficiently managed, especially during peak hours.

VAMS Global, which provides visitor management systems and works primarily with corporate offices, has come up with an upgraded product that can scan body temperature and record it, read faces with mask compliance.

Nikhil Kothari, CEO, VAMS Global says that the embedded face and palm recognition sensors provides hands free user authentication, which uses AI to allow entry of employees as well as visitors, who are complying to all COVID protection measures.

“We took our platform which earlier told you how many were within an establishment. Now, what has happened you are able to set a limit and set it at 50 peoples so the moment it touched 50, it sends an alert and does not process the 51st visitor,” Kothari told The Quint.

In a post COVID-19 world, visitors pre-registering for entry into restaurants and fixing slots is expected to be the new normal.

A temperature and mask compliant visitor management system.

“We have added the ability to scan temperatures and mask compliance over and above the existing visitor management product. It has become a tool to manage the entrance control in the new normal,” he added.