This development is part of a broader trend in the restaurant industry towards providing seamless digital experiences. Restaurants, including Panera, are adopting various technologies like in-car ordering via vehicle dashboards and voice-assistant ordering through smart home devices. Additionally, there's a surge in the creation of mobile drive-thru lanes and designated pickup locations for digital customers.
(Image Source)
GLOResponding to the growing demand for swift and convenient digital ordering and payment, Panera Bread has introduced a feature allowing customers to make restaurant purchases with a single swipe.
The fast-casual chain, with over 2,100 locations in the U.S. and Canada, unveiled “Crunch Time Ordering” on September 20th. This feature enables customers to pre-load their preferred orders in the Panera app and schedule specific times for quick access. They can then easily place these orders with a single swipe within the app when they arrive at the restaurant.
Meenakshi Nagarajan, Panera’s Senior Vice President and Chief Digital Officer, expressed enthusiasm about the new feature, stating, “We are thrilled to introduce Crunch Time Ordering as the ultimate one-swipe ordering option on the Panera app. Our guests lead busy lives and need convenience more than ever.”
Nagarajan highlighted that this technology allows for faster ordering during crunch times in customers’ lives, such as “between meetings, practices or recitals, or other moments of crunch time.”
This development is part of a broader trend in the restaurant industry towards providing seamless digital experiences. Restaurants, including Panera, are adopting various technologies like in-car ordering via vehicle dashboards and voice-assistant ordering through smart home devices. Additionally, there’s a surge in the creation of mobile drive-thru lanes and designated pickup locations for digital customers.
A significant number of consumers opt for specific ordering channels to gain greater control over their time. According to a survey by PYMNTS Intelligence, 45% of those who choose restaurant pickup over delivery do so because it allows them to dictate when their food is ready. Furthermore, 17% of delivery customers see the same advantage in delivery over pickup.
In general, consumers prefer using restaurants’ direct channels when seeking convenience. Additional data from a census-balanced survey indicates that 14.3% of nearly 2,000 U.S. consumers placed their most recent orders online through a restaurant’s app or website. This is more than three times the 4.7% who used a third-party aggregator.
Panera is actively working on enhancing the overall digital experience, both in response to the increased adoption of digital channels and as a means to boost customer engagement. George Hanson, the restaurant’s former Senior Vice President and Chief Digital Officer, emphasized the brand’s commitment to integrating digital technologies wherever they enhance the customer journey, stating, “We’re leveraging what the guests have told us and what they continue to show us, which is that they’ve increased their digital adoption. They expect their phone to be a part of every interaction at every access point. We’re looking at all the areas that traditionally have been offline and adding value to the experience, leveraging our digital capabilities, and the guest is responding very favorably.”
Source: PYMNTS
read full article here
