The Evolution of Hospitality Online Ordering in a Covid Era

Article written by Charlie Kim, Managing Director, BIXOLON Europe GmbH

Prior to 2020 hospitality was booming, however, due to recent events the industry has become one of the most hard-hit sectors of the Covid pandemic. Restaurants, cafes, pubs and any businesses that serve in-house food and drink have been hit hard by plummeting sales due to forced closure followed by a lack of customer confidence to return to their establishments since the easing of lockdown. This has led even the most traditional businesses to try and weather the storm by adapting to the shift in customer demand through contactless ordering and home delivery of their food and drink.

Technology is playing a key role in the change of hospitality operations with existing software and hardware being adapted to fit these new functions, paired with the requirement for new technology to meet the growing demand.

The changing face of Hospitality POS Systems

Traditionally, hospitality establishments used a centralised intelligent ordering system, linked between the front of house and the kitchen to feed orders for preparation, connecting tablet devices, hand-held terminals or a stand-alone POS terminal to the kitchen via wired or cloud network. However, with the inclusion of online ordering directly from guests in the front of house and takeaway options, businesses are looking at either costly updates to their current setups or to introduce additional ordering systems which can result in further hardware screens or printers in a kitchen. Many businesses are also looking into third party delivery platforms as a low cost way to increase a business’ customer base. However, with it comes additional pressure for the fast delivery of high quality food to maintain customer satisfaction in comparison to local competitors.

As kitchens become busier with the volume of traffic from internal front of house and external delivery drivers, it is more vital than ever that prepared food is labelled and documented for its safe transfer to the customer. Traditionally, this takeaway order information was either a hand written note or a printed receipt that was attached to the food contents packaging. However, this is not always accurate, as information could be incorrectly documented or unattached and even lost.

Businesses are looking to print sticky label alternatives for their orders to improve precision. Traditionally, label media comes as fixed label lengths, limiting the amount of content which can be added per label, often resulting in multiple labels to display information. Traditional labelling is also limited by the number of labels per roll due to the silicon backing paper it is attached to. However, recently there is a great growth in popularity of linerless labelling, a cost-effective and flexible temporary or permanent sticky adhesive labelling solution.

Linerless labelling is enabling food preparation and delivery

Characterised as pressure-sensitive labelling, with a special release coating applied on the face of the label without the need for a silicon liner, linerless labels are available in a range of adhesive strengths depending on the required application. Linerless labels also provide up to 40% more labels per roll than traditional label media by removing the requirement of silicon backing paper. This enables linerless printing of variable label lengths, which is ideal for the precise documentation of customer contact details and order information, to then be placed onto the product packaging for delivery.

Typically, requiring specialised printers for the media’s use, BIXOLON offers a portfolio of linerless labelling and receipting options from traditional desktop POS printers to mobile printers. Its SRP-S300 linerless label or receipt printer, which is ideal for high humidity kitchen environments, is the industry’s only desktop linerless printer to enable concise, accurate linerless printing over five different print widths onto both re-stick and permanent linerless label media, with the ability to peel and re-stick labels as required. Supported by connectivity at many levels, the game-changing SRP-S300 can be adapted to be used as a receipt printer when required to reduce the number of hardware devices found in busy kitchens.

To find out more about the BIXOLON SRP-S300 and why is quickly becoming the linerless label printer of choice for major hospitality brands across the UK, along with more information on BIXOLON’s portfolio of POS, Auto-ID and Mobile receipt and label printers, visit www.BixolonEU.com or call +49-211-68-78-54-0.