Post COVID-19, 77 per cent people want to dine out, and 23 per cent prefer continuing with delivery/takeaway, reveals a survey by restaurant tech solutions platform, Dineout.
Favouring contactless dining, 84 per cent people preferred offering digital feedback over physical feedback collection and over 96 per cent demanded better waitlist management. People from 20 cities participated in the survey, which also revealed that online payment will be the most preferred option with 60 per cent votes.
Co-founder and CEO Ankit Mehrotra says, "We had sent the questionnaire to our entire user base, approximately 15 million, in April. We got responses from over one million in 10 days. We noticed two important aspects. Nearly 97 percent people said they would book tables in advance as they don’t want to stand in a queue. 80 per cent people said they will not touch the menus and would order from digital menus on their phones, because menus are the highest carrier of the virus."
Contrary to popular belief, Delhiites picked vegetarian over non-vegetarian food with Big Chill, Barbeque Nation and Social emerging as the favourite places that diners are waiting to visit. Most of the India has been craving pizza since the lockdown has been implemented, while biryani was the choice of cities like Chennai, Hyderabad and Kolkata.
Contactless dining suite
Following this, Dineout has unveiled an end-to-end ‘contactless dining suite’ to help restaurants survive and thrive in the post-COVID-19 world. The brand will also provide PPE Safety Kits to restaurants to ensure hygiene and will facilitate COVID-free certification for restaurants through a licensed lab to ensure all microbiological tests are in place before restaurants restart.
Mehrotra says, "We are just waiting for the restaurant industry to reopen. Nearly, 2,000 restaurants have taken the technology from us. The onus of gaining consumers’ confidence while going forward in the post Covid era is on the restaurants. And the only way to achieve is through the use of technology. We are also working on an aspect, where customers will be able to see what’s happening inside the kitchen, which usually is a black box. In partnership with restaurants, we will live-stream the kitchen footage on the Dineout app."
Post-COVID guidelines
"We also proposed a white paper on the post-Covid guidelines for the restaurants. The Ministry of Tourism accepted it, incorporated some recommendations and released it this week," he says.
The guidelines for staff include washing of hands with soap every hour and temperature checks. A call for better space management with at least two-metre distance between tables. Sick staff members should be given paid leave and advised to stay at home. And no material should be brought in the kitchen without being sanitised.
"These are just guidelines, which cannot be made mandatory. However, on the Dineout platform, we will let the customers know which restaurants are following them and which are not. The idea is to let the customer know it is safe to visit a particular restaurant because they are following the norms."
Compulsory sanitisers at tables, UV sanitised utensils, and sanitisation of tables and chairs after every use, will become the new norms.