Mobile food ordering heats up as competition intensifies

Ordering from your mobile phone when dining out is gaining popularity and competition in the sector has just intensified with Fave’s acquisition of putting them in direct competition with one of the market leaders, Waitrr.

The service offered by these players is set to aid Singapore’s F&B businesses in their challenge to recruit and retain wait staff, with the manpower crunch hitting the industry following stricter regulations on foreign labour.

“Mobile ordering could become a savior in an industry with tight margins and rising costs of labour and food. The main players in the mobile ordering market offer merchant-friendly pricing, with no up-front costs and low fees per transaction, unlike other digital ordering solutions such as tablets and ordering kiosks, with price tags in the thousands of dollars.

“With mobile ordering, restaurant guests receive their meal after browsing restaurant menus on their phones, ordering & paying by scanning a QR code on the table. Once they finish eating, guests can leave without having to settle any bills. By removing transactional elements like order taking and payment processing, restaurant’s staff can solely focus on delivering food and clearing tables,” says a media release.

Restaurants can save up to 40% in manpower costs with mobile ordering and payment platforms according to research conducted by Waitrr, and they can collect additional customer data and advertise to past customers through multiple platforms such as email, SMS and in-app engagement.

According to Waitrr CEO, Tim Wekezer, “The growth of mobile ordering has only just begun. With more than 4 years experience in mobile ordering and payment space, I am excited to see adoption growing across the industry and I believe that this technology has the potential to save the restaurant industry from higher costs and stricter regulations by lowering the need for manpower and enabling F&B merchants to benefit from customer insights.”

While marketplace apps, like Waitrr and Fave, have acquired merchants and users, other F&B businesses are taking a different route by investing in white-label mobile ordering solutions.

Some examples of this are Commons, Burger King, KFC, and Itacho, that all have their own mobile applications from which customers can order. Whatever model restaurants choose to deploy, it’s clear that ordering & payment in restaurants is only going to get easier and more efficient as time goes by.