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As people get back into the busy post-summer swing of things and begin preparing for the holidays, it’s time to start thinking about how your kitchen will handle the increased demand for delivery and restaurant takeout. Whether courting sales from busy parents looking for relief from cooking weeknight meals or hungry college students who need quick meals on the go, now is the perfect opportunity to boost sales by preparing your restaurant for the onslaught of fall schedules.
How do you handle the added seasonal rush on top of the increased demand for takeout and delivery services that boomed during the pandemic? Self-service kiosks, warming shelves, and proofing shelves in various shapes, sizes, and price points are effective, easy-to-implement solutions.
This blog will explore additional strategies for restaurant owners struggling to create more front-of-house takeout offerings.
1. Reduce Wait Times and Congestion
It is essential to designate an easily accessible location for takeout drivers and customers. Ensuring restaurant takeout customers and delivery drivers have a separate waiting area from dine-in customers means shorter lines, decreased customer wait times, and diminished employee stress.
2. Perfect Your Processes
Kiosks and shelving emerged as one of the first solutions to reducing wait times for the exploding demand for carryout and delivery, but who hasn’t been annoyed to get home and realize you grabbed the wrong bag? Food Holding Cabinets or lockers with touch screens and QR readers, like Carter-Hoffman’s Slimline Automated Food Locker, ensure that customers and delivery drivers can only access the food they ordered, reducing theft or the likelihood of grabbing the wrong item.
Also read: True Go Self-service Kiosks: The Future of Unattended Retail
3. Raise Your Food Standards
The last thing any restaurant wants is a bad review because a takeout order cooled on the counter or the delivery driver got stuck in traffic. Food lockers, warming stations, and proofing cabinets like Metro C5 3 Series Insulation Armour Heated Holding and Proofing Cabinets provide an easy solution to prolong your food’s freshness, ensuring your carryout and delivery customers get the best version of your kitchen’s creations.
4. Lessen Clutter
The last thing kitchens need is more clutter. Moving to-go orders out of the kitchen and into the dining area means freeing up space for your kitchen staff and decluttering counters so your front-of-house team doesn’t mix to-go orders with food for dine-in customers. However, not all restaurants come in the same shape or size.
Some may be unable to accommodate a free-standing warming station, and some dining areas may not be large enough for free-standing self-service kiosks or food lockers. Hatco Glo-Ray 2-GO heated shelves come in many sizes that better suit your needs. Whatever your challenges, the customer service representatives at Russell Hendrix help you find the best solutions for your space.
5. In-house Delivery
If your establishment offers in-house deliveries, you must prioritize speed and preserving your food’s freshness. Russell Hendrix provides a variety of bags and delivery products that ensure you’re delivering the hottest, freshest food possible, including eco-friendly food containers and delivery bags, like the Rubbermaid PROSERVE Professional Pizza Delivery Bag.
Takeout options have rapidly become a necessity for all restaurants. Designing a system that enables your restaurant to provide exceptional service and deliver the highest-quality food possible is critical. The experts at Russell Hendrix have the experience needed to help you level up your takeout experience. Contact us to begin exploring your options today.
Tasty Indian Bistro is an innovator in fine dining in Indian Food. They built their core brand and concept inspired by their founder, who based their approach on cooking techniques and hospitality handed down through generations.
Tasty Indian Bistro experienced rapid growth in dine-in business, coinciding with a spike in take-out orders. The existing kitchen was at capacity, and they had the opportunity to expand into the space adjacent to the current restaurant. Chef Vikram contracted Russell Hendrix to work with Nadeem Gagji, Contractor, at N5 Builds, and Jennifer Kurtz, Interior Designer, to create a space that would allow take-out customers to experience the Tasty Indian culture and, at the same time, allow their patio customers to get a taste of traditional Indian cooking through the Tasty To Go Kitchen. See the transformation in the video below.