Sunday Offer a Better Guest Experience

The Ingredients in a PostPandemic Restaurant Scene

Tech solutions to service issues

Last year, COVID-19 swept across the nation, leaving the restaurant industry battered and forcing more than 100,000 food businesses to close their doors for good. Twenty-four months on, as Americans leave the comforts of home delivery in search of dine-in experiences, do restaurants have the necessary ingredients to meet guests’ post-pandemic expectations?

The businesses lucky enough to have survived the COVID-19 crisis are now faced with another challenge: having enough staff to cater to hungry and demanding diners. Staff shortages are rippling across the industry, driving up top-line costs and affecting service quality. Resilient as ever, restaurants are coming up with creative ways to attract talent, from offering hefty incentives for referrals to hiring on-demand workers. While these tactics have the merit of facilitating new hires, they do not address the underlying problem: retaining staff for the long term and preventing future shortages. Between the difficult hours and wage uncertainty from tips, in today’s world, restaurant staff need a good reason to come back and to stick around.

Earlier this year, Sunday launched across America with its pay-at-table solution, designed to reward restaurants, all while catering to the needs of today’s discerning customers. With QR codes on each table, diners can pay in as little as 10 seconds, have the flexibility to split the bill among friends and leave a tip with the touch of a button. Despite digitizing the payment process, restaurants using Sunday have seen huge improvements in service quality, as waiters have more time to spend alongside guests. This explains why signed-up restaurants include both fine dining and fast casual venues, and why those using Sunday are seeing tips increase by up to 30%. With quite a few mobile payment solutions on the market, Sunday's sophisticated interface, built by restaurateurs with both staff and the end user in mind, stands out.

The use of tech in the food space was no doubt accelerated by COVID-19, but its adoption and evolution are likely to continue in the post-pandemic era. After months of relying on mobile ordering, be it for groceries, clothing or food delivery, Americans will continue to expect the same level of convenience and control across other transactions. In fact, almost a third of diners now say they would choose a restaurant that offers mobile payment services over one that does not. And this is not just limited to payments. Paperless menus, ushered in to limit unnecessary contact, are likely to become a permanent feature along with the use of online reservation platforms. Patience is a virtue many of us no longer have, and waiting in line, even for the city’s best restaurant, is no longer a price worth paying.