Archive for the “Contactless Solutions” Category

This year, society embraced e-commerce like never before. When the COVID-19 pandemic forced people to stay home and made everyone hyper-aware of their susceptibility to germs and viruses, consumers turned to digital platforms not for convenience, but for comfort and safety. 

E-commerce options like contactless payments, online ordering and delivery and subscription programs saw an explosion of new adoption by consumers—and by brands trying to appeal to those consumers—because it was the safest option available. Moving forward, consumers will continue to use these digital channels, but they’ll have resumed looking for the ease of use and convenience that they demanded before the pandemic. 

There are three trends expected to make waves in the convenience store industry in 2021: 

1) Convenience store shoppers who temporarily prioritized safety over convenience will expect both. After a years-long focus on creating frictionless environments for customers, c-stores switched gears in 2020 and began focusing on touchless experiences instead. The shift was evident both in new offerings, like online ordering and curbside pickup, and in tone. Brands emphasized the safety of these offerings over the convenience by signaling that they were “touchless” options. 

Moving forward, customers will still expect that enhanced level of safety, but their patience for learning new platforms and using clunky workarounds will wane. C-stores will need to adopt technologies that both limit physical contact and minimize friction. 

2) The industry will continue to experiment with drive-thrus and curbside pickup. Drive-thrus were especially lucrative for restaurants this year: the drive-thru represented 42% of all restaurant visits in the second quarter and increased a further 13% in July, when many restaurants began to reopen.

Convenience stores—especially those with made-to-order food offerings—are looking to capitalize on this trend. Over this past summer, Wawa announced plans to build a drive-thru and curbside pickup-only store in Pennsylvania. Consumer preferences for options like these are likely to continue into 2021 and beyond. 

3) Recurring digital revenue streams will become a staple of the convenience industry. The accelerated shift toward e-commerce brought on by the pandemic means that consumers are developing a preference for omnichannel engagement with their favorite brands, where loyalty, payment and ordering all work together seamlessly. 

That preference also applies to recurring payments in the form of subscriptions. Customers are already accustomed to paying this way for everything from groceries to pet supplies, and now subscriptions are straddling the digital and physical realms, with programs like Cumberland Farms’ coffee subscription and RaceTrac’s fuel discount program. 

The convenience industry is about to see a boom in recurring digital revenues like these, thanks to new solutions coming on the market. These will make it faster and easier to prop up a subscription program that runs alongside existing loyalty programs, and will also provide novel ways for convenience retailers to differentiate their brands. 

To learn more about contactless solutions, online ordering and subscriptions, visit www.paytronix.com. 

With Covid cases rising across the US, it’s clear that many restaurants will face another round of dining room closures. During the summer months, restaurants found new ways to expand offerings, like outdoor seating and contactless dining; but colder weather will render outdoor seating impossible across much of the country. Even in warmer climates, on-premises dining may be prohibited as the nation weathers a second wave of infections. 

Since the pandemic truly took hold in March, our clients have been trying out new ideas and learning how to transform their businesses to handle the next wave. The restaurant industry has a huge impact on employment in the US. In New York City alone, the introduction of outdoor dining added as many as 83,000 jobs after the initial layoffs in April. The threat of these jobs going away again will have a huge impact on restaurants and employees in the near-term. 

Here are 5 things we learned about how to retain business during a slowdown in on-premises dining: 

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The seismic shift in consumer behavior brought on by the Covid-19 pandemic has changed Americans’ attitudes toward work, school and shopping; but their appetite for dining out remains.

In a survey conducted by PYMNTS, consumers listed restaurants as the second-most commonly cited reason they wanted to leave their homes. Restaurants were also ranked third in what those surveyed deemed the “most important” reason, just behind seeing family and friends and returning to work.

While consumers want to return to normal activities, they need to feel safe in doing so. Last week, Paytronix launched Contactless Dining, a new platform for engaging guests on-premise while maintaining a safe social distance.

The trend toward contactless dining options, while in its infancy, already has a strong foothold in the market: […]

McDonald’s sets the standard for technology in the restaurant industry. The list of innovations the company brought is long, and that innovative spirit is a big reason why McDonald’s remains the leader in the quick-serve world.

Even before the pandemic hit, McDonald’s had developed a strong mobile ordering process through its Order & Pay mobile app that acted as a great launching point as the company moved into a contactless future. Better than most companies, McDonald’s knows that a contactless dining experience is key to alleviating consumer fears of returning to restaurants.

The McDonald’s app leverages the brand’s existing drive-thru operations as well as mobile payment options to ensure guests feel safe about dining with McDonald’s. The restaurant trade publication Nation’s Restaurant News reports these findings from a recent survey from AlixPartners in an article “Off-premise: The rise of contactless ordering and curbside pickup amid COVID-19 offer keys to survival”:

• “43% of consumers said drive-thru is the most preferred method for ordering restaurant food during the pandemic.
• “Takeout and curbside pickup is preferred by 33%. Third-party delivery was the least popular, as most say they’d rather order directly from a chain.”

Available for download at the AppStore and GooglePay, McDonald’s Order & Pay provides customers with a contactless experience for both Drive-Thru and Curbside pickup. Once the Order & Pay App has been downloaded and the guest is registered with the program, the app uses geolocation technology to help identify a participating restaurant nearby. […]