Digital Menu Ordering: Best Practices to Sell More Food Daily

Are you ready to go digital and replace your physical menus with a QR code menu for on-premise ordering? Here's how you can do that in minutes! Plus, we provide digital menu ordering best practices that will make this transition a resounding success.

What Is Digital Menu Ordering?

Digital menu ordering is the practice of enabling customers to place orders at the table without having to interact with a server. Typically, that is done by scanning a QR code on their smartphones.

The QR code opens the online menu, which customers can browse at their leisure, add their favorite items to the cart, pay, and place an order.

Why You Should Enable Digital Menu Ordering at Your Restaurant

Before we get into the digital menu ordering best practices we've prepared for you, let's look at some of the main benefits of replacing your physical menus with digital ones:

• Slash wait times: The back and forth between the server and the customer can slow down the entire dining process. This causes long waits, which can lead to disgruntled customers. A digital restaurant table menu sends the orders directly to the kitchen, allowing your serves to focus on the guest experience.
• Serve more customers daily: Eliminating back and forth also means customers will spend less time at the table, which will leave room for other customers to visit your restaurant. Thus, you will increase the table turnover rate.
• Reduce order errors: A crowded, bustling restaurant where servers are distracted and overwhelmed can cause misunderstandings and order errors, which in turn can lead to negative reviews. You can prevent that by enabling a restaurant digital ordering system where customers order the dishes themselves.
• Cut menu printing costs: Physical menus are costly and limiting because you need to reprint them every time you make a change, such as updating menu prices, daily specials, or removing a menu item. With a digital menu, you can make unlimited daily changes that will reflect in your restaurant menu in seconds.
• Improve staff efficiency: The restaurant industry is a notorious high-stress environment to work in. For that reason, you should do what you can to keep employees happy and more productive. With the burden of order-taking off their shoulders, your servers can now focus on serving the food and ensuring customers have a great time at your restaurant.

7 Digital Menu Ordering Best Practices

1. Choose an easy-to-use digital food ordering system

If you've always relied on physical menus and in-person order-taking, it can seem overwhelming to digitize your restaurant overnight.

Luckily, there are digital menu creators out there that you can learn how to use in minutes, with no previous tech know-how.

The on-premise dining service from GloriaFood can help you accept dine-in orders by generating a personalized QR code for every table:

Follow these steps to set up digital menu ordering for free:

P.S.: You can use this on-premise ordering system for any business where you sell food, from hotels to stadiums, pools, food trucks, and more.

2. Create an appealing dine-in menu with food photos and descriptions

As opposed to a physical menu where you don't typically have food photos, a digital menu enables you to showcase your mouth-watering dishes with high-quality food photography.

Ensure you add a photo to each menu item to show customers what to expect from each dish and make their mouths water.

The same goes for food descriptions. Use that real estate as a way to induce hunger using adjectives that underline the dish's taste, appearance, texture, and cooking method.

Read more: 8 Menu Writing Rules That Will Make Customers Order More

3. Enable online payments for digital food ordering

Digital ordering restaurants should also provide customers with multiple ways to pay for their food. Keep options like cash or card at the table, but also allow your clients to pay for the food when they place the order.

That way, they won't have to wait for the check at the end if they're in a hurry, and all there's left for them to do is enjoy the food.

Here's how you can enable online payments in a few simple steps:

4. Train your staff to use the new digital menu

One of the most important digital menu ordering best practices is training your employees in using on-premise ordering. Every person on the staff should be aware of this, in case they ever need to manage it.

Luckily, the GloriaFood on-premise ordering feature is so easy to use that the training will be short and simple.

Everything your employees need to accept incoming orders is a smartphone or tablet with the order-taking app for iOS or Android downloaded.

Related video tutorial: How to accept online food orders for your restaurant

5. Let customers know they can now order at the table

To ensure every customer who steps through your door knows how to use your digital menu ordering system, we recommend posting more than just a QR code on each table.

Instead, post a QR code flyer that also includes handy instructions for your customers:

Next, post about your newest service online:

• On your restaurant website
• On social media

6. Keep your menu updated every day

Since a server won't be there to tell customers if something has changed on the list of daily specials or an item became unavailable because you've run out of an ingredient, it's important to keep your digital menu updated.

You might also like: How Changing the Menu at Your Restaurant Often Will Boost Profitability

Add your daily specials at the beginning of the day and make sure to make items or ingredients as out-of-stock as you run out.

You can do that in your restaurant dashboard but also directly from the order-taking app:

This is how the out-of-stock items will show up on the menu:

7. Increase the average check value with add-ons and restaurant promotions

Finally, after you've properly set up on-premise ordering, you need to think of ways to boost sales and increase the cart value.

A digital menu allows you to easily do that by upselling and cross-selling using choices and add-ons. This stimulates spending and tempts customers to add one more thing to their cart.

Another technique that can help you boost sales is offering restaurant promotions, discounts, and special offers regularly.

For example, offering a percentage discount on a minimum order value might encourage customers to spend more than anticipated so they can enjoy the discount.

Learn how to set up a variety of attractive promotions using our promo module:

Final Thoughts

Enabling on-premise ordering at your restaurant can help you serve more customers, boost sales, and improve the customer experience. Remember these digital menu ordering best practices to ensure the transition is smooth, your employees are prepared, and customers are ready to enjoy the new feature.