Casual Dining Show 2021 Review - how coronavirus digitally transformed the hospitality sector
At this year's Casual Dining Show, Peter Martin, of Peach 20/20, opened the show stating ‘digitising your business is how it survives’.
In light of Martin’s introductory insights, the NPD Market Research Group explained how 2021 has seen a 77% increase in downloading hospitality applications. 57% of consumers now work from home, and 42% expect to continue using digital services as a result of the pandemic.
At Yapster, we believe that this turning point in how we integrate technology into our businesses is irreversible.
Our friends over at Gusto Italian feel the same way. Head of Marketing, Susie Clark, commented that ‘the last eighteen months has seen new social media channels making huge viral waves’ and in a way, during a crisis ‘social media has been the saviour of digital marketing’. She recommends that ‘all brands have to start doing’ social media marketing as ‘it is only going to grow’.
Stephen Phillips, Operations Director for Marugame Udon echoed this perspective. He explained how Marugame is one of the ‘largest unknown restaurants’, with 1700 sites internationally, and only one in the UK.
For this reason, when Marugame opened their doors on Liverpool Street, they needed everyone to know it was happening. How did they do so? Technology.
Pushing major social media campaigns and digital deals, Marugame opened with a bang. For the first few weeks there were two hour queues stretching throughout Spitalfields. Stephen explained how embracing technology was a necessity for their business as ‘young people drive their engagement’.
It is clear that their success lies in adaptability: listening to how customers communicate and discover new hospitality concepts - and then reaching them in those digital communities.
From a Yapster perspective, now that the best operators market, deliver and take payment for products online, it’s just a small step to leading teams online too. After all, are many of the industry’s employees not the very demographic we also target as customers?
Thankfully, the Casual Dining Show also featured many great industry leaders happy to share their digital innovations from an internal comms perspective too. Check out, for instance, The Yummy Pub Co’s Anthony Pender’s story here.
Take the lead with Yapster and book a demo today here: https://www.yapster.info/book-a-demo
