Meet Epicenter member, Future Ordering – a digital ordering platform working to disrupt the global restaurant industry. The Future Ordering platform is enabling restaurants to offer their customers an ordering experience directly through app, web, or self-service kiosks. The company is today powering some of the most profitable and innovative restaurant chains, are deployed across 10 countries, and are running millions of transactions per month. In their customer base you find companies such as Circle K, Egon, and Max Burgers.
‘’Our customers are restaurant chains, hotels, stadiums, and global franchise organizations, who all are in need of a scalable and flexible self-ordering solution. By seamlessly integrating their loyalty programs, marketing efforts, operations and point of sale we keep their revenue high and the total cost of ownership low,‘’ says Alexander Herbring, Head of Partnerships at Future Ordering.
Future Ordering’s customers can with the platform offer their guests drive-thru as well as quick curbside ordering. This means their customers can order from home, the office, or their car. Future Ordering also provides an Order Status Board that mirrors the product’s preparation status on a screen in the store or directly back to the device where the order was placed.
By offering restaurants to integrate the Future Ordering platform directly with different delivery companies, they also make sure the restaurants own the relationship with their guests instead of laying it out to a third party vendor. This means that the restaurants themselves can keep and store valuable data such as order size, preferences, and loyalty reckord.
“Restaurants need to win the battle with 3rd-party delivery apps in order to survive in the digital and physical hybrid that is expected in the post pandemic restaurant experience” explains Alexander.
From the very beginning of the pandemic, the online ordering experience became crucial for the survival of the restaurant industry. With the smooth platform solution of Future Ordering, restaurants got the opportunity to quickly perfect their management of online ordering and manage the changed demand of their customers.
‘’When the world was shifting almost overnight at the beginning of the pandemic, Future Ordering made it possible for local restaurants to remain open by quickly adapting to the new reality. This new way of working helped restaurants survive the pandemic but will also be key in order to thrive in the global restaurant industry even after the pandemic.’’
Today, restaurants and food retailers are entering a new phase of technological disruption where an interesting example is the self-service kiosks. These automated machines have seen remarkable success in grocery stores, and are now entering into the restaurant industry. One of the success factors behind self-serving kiosks is that when ordering for yourself, you tend to order more as well as order more of the right type of products.
“We see a clear trend that guests eat with their eyes and are more likely to accept a recommendation in a digital channel. The basket size average is about 20-30% higher when the guests order themselves than ordering face to face”.
While the first focus for Future Ordering is to develop with the use of technology, they do not rule out the possibility for future collaborations:
‘“Building and maintaining a digital platform is a tough job. Even if we today are in an extremely good position today, we need to focus on what we are really good at. Partners who can fill the gaps where we do not want to put our focus is always something we are looking for.’’
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