3 keys to offering a personalized service in your restaurant

Information is power, nobody can doubt that. The question is how to use all the information that we collect and to which we can access.

We all have, or should collect information, it doesn’t matter if you sell tacos at a street stall in Mexico City, a tapas bar in Bilbao or a three-star restaurant in Madrid: all three know their customers and know what to offer them.

If you use this knowledge, you can make each person in your business feel as if they were the only one. Here are three tips to achieve it without much effort.

Personalization means many things in many contexts

Personalization has no set definition, and never will. In a restaurant, it means using technology to make a person feel like a regular customer, even when they are a new customer.

When it comes to grocery shopping, it can be getting a food prescription from a doctor, then getting help planning your weekly meals from a nutritionist at the store.

And when it comes to fighting or preventing chronic disease, personalization is about understanding the microbiome in your gut and using that information to make healthier food choices unique to you.

What kind of customization do you want to offer in your restaurant? You must be clear: this way you will know which technology to invest in and what to focus all your efforts on. You can’t customize everything, but you can customize something that sets you apart from your competition.

Information is key. But so are valuable customer experiences.

You don’t get personalization without data, and the key to creating more personalized products and services is getting users to separate their personal information.

Obtaining such information is not that difficult when it comes to restaurants, where customers happily share their names, addresses, and their hatred of cilantro in exchange for faster service and more accurate ordering.

When it comes to more sensitive information, for example health conditions, the idea of ​​personalization becomes a bit more controversial.

In an interview, Mintel Melanie Bartelme noted:

Customers will be more willing to share their data if the product, service or experience they get in return has real value to them.

That value could come in the form of actionable diet and cooking tips, food products that dramatically improve our health, or simply a faster, smoother experience with technology.

Provide that “Value transaction”As Bartelme called it, it’s what will separate the winners from the losers when it comes to customization.

Personalization must have empathy for the entire food system.

Personalization is the latest example of human-centered design, where making the customer happy is the driving force behind every step of the business and catering service development.

That may or may not be a good thing, depending on the context.

Sometimes this customer-centric approach can have a negative impact on other areas of the food system.

Food delivery is an excellent example. Customers crave speed and convenience, and restaurants allow for ordering at the touch of a button.

Those meals, however, come packaged in plastics and other non-biodegradable materials accompanied by disposable cutlery and other waste items that go directly to the landfill.

Comfort also has social impacts. The model for food delivery, be it restaurant meals or grocery orders, rarely takes into account the conditions of the couriers who bring food to customers’ doorsteps.

Successful personalization in the future must be “empathetic” to the entire food system.

Food-X’s Peter Bodenheimer has said that part of creating this empathy will (or should) fall on venture capitalists, who should invest in companies that prioritize social and environmental responsibility alongside restaurant growth and profitability.