Has COVID Ended the Restaurant Phone?

Long before anyone had heard of COVID-19, the restaurant industry was changing.

In the years before the pandemic began altering — among other things — the way people order food, some restaurants had begun using new digital tools to improve the customer experience, including solutions that let customers to access seamless ordering and payment options through their smartphone.

The pandemic accelerated that shift, especially as millennials now interact more frequently with restaurants through their cell phones without ever actually making a phone call.

Apps such as Grubhub, Uber Eats and DoorDash have seen skyrocketing use, while restaurants’ phones are not ringing as much as they used to. Some restaurants even have stopped answering the phone altogether, taking all of their orders via email or messaging apps tied to social media.

Restaurants have tended to see this change as generally for the better, as message-based communication makes it easier for customers to place order and frees up manpower. While not all customers are happy with the change, restaurants that have chosen to do away with phone ordering see the trade-off as worth the complaints.

And some restaurants are making the changes they instituted during the pandemic permanent to meet customer demand.

For example, there’s Shake Shack, which plans to open 45 to 50 new locations this year. The chain launched its mobile app in 2017 but its mobile ordering experience was in its infancy before COVID, with more than 85% of sales still carried out in person at the cash register.

Things were quite different by 2020, with the bulk of Shake Shack sales being made digitally. That digital shift has led to permanent implementation of some early pandemic measures, like multichannel delivery and enhanced digital preordering. In addition, features like pickup shelves and curbside pickup have become built-in fixtures at new Shake Shack locations.

To learn more about the steps restaurants have taken to adapt to COVID and meet customer demand, download the Order To Eat Tracker, a PYMNTS and Paytronix collaboration.