In the end, restaurants have gone digital: they might not always follow a careful marketing and implementation strategy, but they certainly have reacted to the pressures and requirements the pandemic has brought with it. The crisis has accelerated processes that were already taking place, ones that the restaurant industry was slow or even reluctant to introduce. After having at least partially saved many businesses (thanks to delivery or takeaway services and social marketing), in 2021 technology and innovation will certainly not take a back seat – quite the reverse in fact. But what will restaurants focus on in particular?

They will certainly continue to use the apps and other systems for online orders and deliveries, which they can hardly manage without any more. As well as the leading players in the sector, and given the fact that customers like to place their orders directly with the restaurant itself, many will be investing in integrated in-house systems that will help them to follow their customers remotely, analyse their data and understand their desires. Takeaway, which is more widely used than delivery, can be made more efficient by geo-locating the customer, so that the order is ready for them just as they arrive: not a moment sooner or later. Then there are the more hygienic contactless forms of payment, which according to Juniper Research will triple between now and 2024, and become standard practice. Like the placement of orders online. Anyone still without such tools needs to catch up quickly. Not just because customers expect it, but because they make it easier to manage staffing and to plan evenings with guest chefs: a format that looks set to grow in the post-pandemic future. Menus will be increasingly digital, as will order processing and the procurement of supplies, always with the reduction of waste in mind. Essentials for 2021, say Ehl Insights, include the now familiar, very efficient QR Code. Finally there will be more air purification systems featuring bipolar ionisation or UVC technologies to sanitise interiors and thus reassure the clientele, such as those seen at Viva in Milan and at Atelier Crenn in San Francisco.

In this new digitalised environment, which in 2020 saw a 25% rise in global online sales and thanks to which it is forecast that 17% goods will be purchased online in 2021, it should be remembered, as Euromonitor stresses, that the user base has become diversified now that it also includes more mature users who are less tech-savvy. Some have even taken steps to deal with this: the Instacart delivery platform, for example, has introduced a Senior Support Service that talks customers through the various steps in the online order placement process. Meanwhile, 42% of managers in the hotel industry believe that virtual and augmented reality that mimics actual physical hotel rooms will probably be the next big thing.

Juniper Research envisages a near future in which automated operations accelerated by artificial intelligence will be adopted, with the expansion of extended reality in electronic and e-mobile commerce and a more widespread use of chatbots, blockchains and so-called “intelligent resilience” solutions, for purposes of IOT security, a crucial aspect of the hospitality industry.