Cornell Study Reveals Innate Benefits of iPad Menu2 min read
According to researchers at the Center for Hospitality Research at the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration, technology-based service innovations, like the iPad menu, can provide measurable benefits to both restaurants and their customers.
The iPad menu benefits customers by increasing customer control and improving customer convenience by reducing ordering, payment, and overall waiting time. Consumers who use innovative technologies like the iPad restaurant menu, “have been shown to be more satisfied and less price sensitive, have higher intentions to repeat their purchase, and provide more positive word of mouth.”
The iPad menu benefits restaurants by increasing service speed, volume and revenue, reducing processing cost, and improving service quality and consistency. New technologies, such as the iPad restaurant Menu, “have been shown to increase market share and improve customer satisfaction and retention.”
In the (July/August 2011) edition of Restaurant Briefing, the 40-year-old restaurant business newsletter published by American Express, reports that, according to Eric Giandelone, Director of Foodservice Research at market research/intelligence firm, Mintel Foodservice, “Advances in restaurants’ use of technology” such as the iPad restaurant Menu, “have moved to the table – in part because of the pressure to create better margins and in part because putting some functions in customers’ hands can help [restaurant] operators provide better service.”
The industry newsletter also reports that, according to Paul Motenko, co-founder of STACKED: food well built, the new fast-casual-plus chain, which opened its first store in California this past May, the iPad restaurant menu gives customers control: “Our guests order exactly what they want, when they want it, and pay when and how they want as well…Not dealing with ordering and payment…lets our staff focus 100% on hospitality and satisfying our guests’ needs.”
It also facilitates STACKED’s fast-casual-plus concept. Motenko told Lisa Jennings of Nation’s Restaurant News earlier this year that the iPad restaurant menu allows STACKED to provide guests with a full-service dining experience, while keeping labor costs and prices in line with the fast-casual segment. Or, as Motenko wrote to freelance restaurant critic Merrill Shindler, the iPad restaurant menu “is a way to facilitate a better experience for our guests at a lower price than they would expect based upon the quality of that experience.”
