Two of the key challenges affecting operators as they become more omnichannel-orientated is the pressure it puts on staff, as well as the additional complexity it adds around customer interaction and ownership, delegates at MCA’s Restaurant Conference were told.
Speaking on an omnichannel panel, Ganan Kanagathurai, chief executive at Itsu, said that while becoming more omnichannel orientated helped in the short term in terms of cashflow, “as you do better via an omnichannel approach, you need more staff,” he said, citing issues around labour shortages “becoming a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
Referencing delivery, Kanagathurai said, “it’s an easy one for us to operate.” He pointed out that pre-pandemic it accounted for 8% of sales, 20% during the pandemic and was currently around 15 to 17% of sales. “Growth has been real and very sticky,” he said.
“As footfall has increased following the ending of lockdown, our delivery sales have actually increased also. This is evidence to prove that they are a different customer. It isn’t the same people shopping the brand in and outside of the restaurants.”
While this allows for incremental sales and greater frequency of purchase, he said, it raises the question of customer ownership, and the need to “co-own the customer.”
“My customer now has to transact my brand on a different platform. We have influence on how that looks, [our delivery partners] then hand that over to us in the restaurant and we make sure the food quality is good. We then hand that to the [delivery] driver.”
Jo Fleet, brand director at Hawksmoor, talked about Hawksmoor’s at home range of steaks, and built on Kanagathurai’s point by saying: “It is important to manage partners. Do you both have the same brand standards?”
Fleet pointed out that for the Hawksmoor customer, “they are spending a lot of money on the box, so it’s really important how it arrives when it is delivered. It is important to manage partners and make sure they care about the delivery to the customer.”
Fleet mentioned that the opportunity to offer a premium product to Hawksmoor customers went from initial idea to viable business with its own revenue stream within six months. “It went from a few hundred boxes, to thousands of boxes by Mother’s Day,” she said.
The risk of diluting the brand proposition is something that Hawksmoor takes “very seriously,” she added. “We have cook along videos and we have clear cooking instructions. I don’t think it will dilute the brand. It would dilute the brand if we were offering further products within Hawksmoor at home, other than steaks.”
Kanagathurai said that the adoption of technology was still relatively new within hospitality, but he believed that using technology to allow customers “to customise based on their own preferences – flavour, allergens, health, portion size – while keeping the integrity of our operating model and our economic model is the next real challenge.
“That’s where we think there is some big growth and a big advantage.”
