3 key ingredients to freshen up your foodservice profits

Everyone in the convenience industry seems to be talking about foodservice. Yes, foodservice has become a profitable venture for most retailers. And a growing reliance on foodservice can be a smart move when you need to make up for lower fuel sales and profit margins.

However, foodservice won’t automatically cure all your profitability concerns. Just like other aspects of your business, you have to be strategic about what you do, when you do it, and how you do it when it comes to foodservice. The good news is that foodservice done correctly can be a fast way to increase store profitability.

Today’s consumers are seeking both the familiar comfort foods they crave as well as fresher and healthier options. To meet those dynamic appetites, you need to take your foodservice offerings to the next level. Here are three key ingredients to help you deliver a compelling foodservice experience.

Increase your back-office efficiency

When budgets are tight and you face economic uncertainty, make sure your enterprise back-office operations are as efficient as possible. Deploying an enterprise productivity system that integrates foodservice capabilities can help you increase productivity, reduce costs, and eliminate waste.

Imagine having an integrated back office and head office with built-in inventory management and recipe management capabilities including full recipe yield. You could also benefit from a centralized pricebook to send prices from a single location to all your stores.

Modern technology is the key to delivering a variety of tasty food items that your customers will devour. Especially with the current industry-wide labor shortage, this type of digital transformation plays a vital role in foodservice success.

For instance, your IT systems are critical if you want to ensure the right amount of premade food and avoid waste with your fresh food offerings. Access to real-time data can help you forecast when to expect foot traffic and be prepared for it. Doing so requires a “single version of the truth” — and an integrated technology platform with built-in foodservice capabilities.

Train your team to engage and upsell

Once your back-office operations are running smoothly, it’s time to focus on the frontline employees who will be preparing, serving, and selling your foodservice offerings. With increased IT efficiency, you can move more employees out of the back office and into customer engagement roles.

A knowledgeable staff that actively engages with your customers can create a more memorable in-store experience and help streamline your path to profitability. By giving your team more opportunities to grow, or perhaps introducing an employee loyalty rewards program, you can incentivize them to stay with you longer.

Training your team can also pay dividends in areas such as:

Adhering to corporate standards for cleanliness and food safety practices (using your back-office system to set checklists and reminders for employees at your stores)
Using your POS system to prompt employees to ask whether a customer would like a sparkling water with their salad or a croissant with their coffee, for example

Entice your customers with compelling offers and rewards

Your operations can be incredibly efficient, and your staff can be extremely helpful. But if you don’t know what your customers want, your foodservice operation will lack the “secret sauce” for success.

For instance, should you be ordering pre-packaged “ready-to-go” items, packaging your own items to sell in your stores, or making custom on-demand food items in each store?

The best way to know what options your customers prefer is to accurately predict their behavior through in-depth analysis — right down to basket-level data. The more you know about your customers, the more you can entice and reward them with meaningful offers personalized to their particular tastes.

Communicating the right offer to the right person at the right time — on their preferred medium (such as email, text, or push-notification) — can help you combine foodservice with an impactful loyalty-based offer. For instance, could you incentivize EV drivers to charge up at your station by pairing a foodservice reward with that charge-up?

With active customer participation in a loyalty program a strong predictor of foodservice success, you should focus on building long-lasting relationships rather than point-in-time transactions. Implementing an all-in-one loyalty platform can help you achieve that goal much faster. The right loyalty solution should provide the rich data analytics, actionable insights, and compelling offers to help you retain loyal customers and quickly attract new ones.

Connecting it all together

To maximize your foodservice profitability:

Modernize your technology to increase productivity, reduce waste, and save money
Turn your employees into willing brand ambassadors who promote and upsell your offerings
Ensure you have the right data and insights to personalize offers for your unique customer base

When you’re ready to elevate your foodservice offerings, start with an experienced vendor that can help you with everything from your inventory management software to your POS system and loyalty programs. PDI delivers the proven technology to help you become — and stay — profitable with foodservice offerings your customers will love.

Learn more at pditechnologies.com.