Amazon appears to be trying out new ways to insert its technology into the restaurant ordering experience — part of the eCommerce giant’s bid for digital dominance across all aspects of consumers’ day-to-day routines.
In India, the company is reportedly rolling out Amazon Pay for on-premises dining at a limited number of restaurants, according to TechCrunch, enabling consumers to pay via the Amazon app, and offering discounts for now to incentivize adoption, with no word yet on whether the eCommerce giant is.
Amazon India did not immediately respond to PYMNTS’ request for comment.
The news comes shortly after Amazon announced multiple integrations earlier this spring with fast-casual bakery-café chain Panera Bread, partnering with the restaurant both on in-store payments via the palm-scanning Amazon One system as well as on order-ahead purchases, enabling the chain’s loyalty program members to order by voice via Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant.
According to Amazon Pay’s website, the company also enables certain restaurants using technology provider Clover’s point of sale (POS) system to accept order-ahead purchases that consumers place via the Amazon app. In these cases, the restaurants’ menus appear in the app, and consumers make their purchases via Amazon Pay.
That said, Amazon’s largest foray into the restaurant space so far proved ill-fated: its Amazon Restaurants one-hour delivery offering for Prime members launched back in 2015 did not make it. The program folded in 2019, possibly because of the unforgiving economics of the on-demand delivery business and the competition from existing restaurant aggregators.
“It was a friction-filled experience for a platform that had built its reputation on choice, eliminating friction when ordering online and fast and reliable delivery,” PYMNTS’ Karen Webster observed.
Notably, Amazon’s restaurant delivery service in India, Amazon Food, continued to operate until as recently as last year, suggesting that the eCommerce giant may have more familiarity with the restaurant industry in that country than in the United States.
Overall, restaurants are representing a larger share of consumers’ total meals than in years prior, with consumers having added more takeout occasions to their existing on-premise dining routines, making the industry more appealing to enter than ever for a tech giant such as Amazon.
“When we look across our base, we see dine-in, on average, making as much money as it made pre-pandemic,” Tony Smith, co-founder and CEO at restaurant management software company Restaurant365, told Webster in a recent interview. “But then, we also see … new channels … like online ordering, curbside delivery, or some of them even extended their outdoor patio, and those things are now making more money. … Why can their sales be 20% higher? Well, they’ve learned how to sell even more food out of the same square feet.”
This increased demand for restaurant meals and the consequent need for eateries to boost efficiency creates an opportunity for Amazon and other technology providers. In fact, three-quarters of restaurant operators plan to adopt technology this year to address their labor and cost challenges, according to data cited in “Inflation Makes Technology Table Stakes for Restaurants,” the March edition of PYMNTS’ “Money Mobility Tracker®,” created in collaboration with Ingo Money.
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