Introduction to the article: Companies that traditionally specialize in a la carte software development do have something to learn from in terms of technology and understanding of the industry, but they lack a full understanding of the mobile Internet. Personally, I think that in the era of mobile Internet, how to organically combine Internet technology with the characteristics and needs of traditional industries and how to use mobile Internet technology to solve traditional industry problems and achieve breakthrough and healthy development are the key.
<
With the advent of the mobile Internet era, the catering industry is highly sought after as a necessary part of life services. So far, various catering mobile applications have been launched, including platform ones and catering chain own brands. The author boldly imagines whether ordering can be built into WeChat. The huge user base based on WeChat is presented in the form of a public account, which can not only manage members, but also realize the docking mode with the restaurant's front and back kitchens, so that it can achieve perfect ordering with light coverage. The author's assumptions are as follows
Advantages of WeChat for catering
WeChat public accounts have extremely powerful functions and effects for members of corporate merchants in WeChat marketing. Industry applications based on the WeChat public platform are also constantly being born. Among the four major service economies of food, clothing, housing and transportation, clothing has already been sold online in full swing. Business promotion networks such as Ctrip and Dragonite have also solved people's housing and transportation problems. However, food still seems deserted and lonely. The localization and personalization of catering determines that it is difficult to use Internet technology to give full play to it. At present, only reviews and group-buying Internet applications guide short-term traffic to restaurants. In fact, the core issue of a restaurant's success is the loyalty of its guests. For example, what kind of dishes a guest wants to eat will first think of this restaurant instead of other restaurants. If you are wandering around Dianping.com and group buying websites, then this restaurant will be successful. Many restaurants have implemented various loyalty point programs before. However, due to the data attributes of the membership management system, it is necessary to open up online and offline links before effective management and marketing can be truly carried out. As a result, many loyalty programs have failed to play their role. effect. The WeChat public platform provides a good user volume and user experience for this purpose, allowing merchants and members to easily establish online and offline communication channels and data channels, making member marketing possible.
Companies that traditionally specialize in a la carte software development do have something to learn from in terms of technology and understanding of the industry, but they lack a full understanding of the mobile Internet. Personally, I think that in the era of mobile Internet, how to organically combine Internet technology with the characteristics and needs of traditional industries and how to use mobile Internet technology to solve traditional industry problems and achieve breakthrough and healthy development are the key. This problem includes marketing as well as internal management. Products that can solve problems, break development bottlenecks, and bring long-term profits and cost savings to merchants are truly revolutionary products. The mobile Internet era should be a comprehensive reflection of cross-industry and cross-technology.
What functions should the WeChat ordering system have
First, determine the design from the perspective of the restaurant dining scene. The system operation should be set according to the actual dining habits to get a good experience without changing the user's habits. It's said to be down-to-earth.
Secondly, it can realize a variety of functions such as takeout, table reservation, remote ordering, on-site ordering, mobile payment, membership marketing, etc. These functions should become an organic whole that integrates with each other. Let consumers experience the improvement in various service details according to their own consumption habits. From a consumer's perspective, mobile Internet technology can be used to realize remote pre-ordering functions that were previously impossible to shorten the waiting time for dining. On-site self-service WeChat ordering and mobile payment can make ordering and paying more convenient without waiting for busy waiters. The membership points program allows various coupons from various restaurants to be collected and used simply and uniformly. At the same time, for restaurant operators, it can greatly save the workload of waiters and establish a complete member management and marketing system. The realization of these functions means that the original technology cannot be realized or the labor productivity is greatly improved, which can be called revolutionary.
One of the core issues is how to effectively prevent malicious online orders from interfering with and damaging on-site ordering and other security issues after the ordering system is opened to the Internet from the current LAN ordering treasure method. Solving this problem or solving it under the premise of good customer experience and saving the restaurant's human and financial costs has become the core of the success or failure of the system.
Regarding mobile payment, you can design new payment methods according to your own product needs or directly connect to the WeChat payment system.
In fact, mobile Internet is not too difficult at the technical level. The technology used by WeChat public platform has been very mature for a long time. The biggest difficulty now is that there is still a long way to go in cultivating user habits. Today's users are quick to accept new things, but it may take more time to change users' habits to accept a new thing. How to bring convenience to users while at least changing user habits may be the basis for competition among mobile Internet products. Of course, there are many factors for WeChat's success, but it has made a good breakthrough in firmly grasping user needs while at least changing users' usage habits, which can greatly accelerate its promotion. Of course, this is not something that one product or one function can change. We need to work together to expand the market and allow users to gradually change their usage habits through the convenience brought by use.
Attached below are some exchanges made by Pintu.com on the topic of WeChat ordering when it interviewed the relevant person in charge of the research and development of the Jinbao WeChat ordering system. I hope you can gain some understanding of WeChat ordering.
How does your ordering system make money? Software usage fees? Or are there other ways to make money?
At Jinbao, our plan is to install and debug for free (server space rental fees and travel expenses will be charged depending on the situation) according to the system order Very low fees for volume. In addition, in the future, there will be room for profit from advertising expenses and platform promotion and marketing.
How do you specifically cooperate with restaurants? Do you exist in the form of public accounts? How does this system serve restaurants? Is the system installed in the backend of the catering company's public account? Or does the catering merchant settle in your system? We are Jinbao To create an independent platform for each store is to apply for a WeChat official account for each store and then configure the system according to the characteristics and marketing strategies of each restaurant. It is equivalent to replacing the restaurant's existing Diancaibao LAN ordering system with our ordering system. We don’t want to create a homogeneous platform and hope that each restaurant will have its own characteristics. For example, each restaurant has different promotional feedback ratios and different characteristics, so we hope to build their own WeChat ordering platform for each restaurant based on our basic system.
We never want to steal the restaurant’s customer resources and use them as our platform resources to make profit, so we will not consider building a platform similar to attracting traffic.
Tencent has WeChat Life and also provides reservation and ordering services. There will be competition in some aspects. Do you have any concerns on the same platform? For example, will Tencent suppress third-party software and their internal products in some form? Business competition, etc.
Jinbao Tencent’s Micro Life has indeed made progress in this regard, but so far they have not launched a truly closed-loop ordering system that can be commercially operated. According to our estimation, even if Micro Life launches an ordering system in the future, it will be fundamentally different from our system in terms of design concept. I believe our customer experience is more in line with the existing habits of consumers and restaurant users.
I have recently been advocating to re-understand the mobile Internet with the Internet spirit of openness, equality, collaboration, and sharing. Ma Huateng has stated on many public occasions that WeChat official accounts are open and fair. He even used micro-life as an example to illustrate his attitude towards openness. I believe that Tencent is a company that truly has Internet genes, rather than some companies that use Internet technology but completely deviate from the spirit of the Internet. So we are willing to combine our system with WeChat public accounts.
Of course, the essence of our system is a mobile Internet light application. Even if Tencent wants to suppress it, our system can immediately cooperate with any other implementation that requires user login without modifying the system. Just like if I can use a website using a browser, if it is suppressed, it will work just as well if I switch to Firefox and Google Chrome.
Should your ordering system be used by users when they go to the restaurant, or can it be used on the road or at home? If you use it only when you arrive at the restaurant, you must first consider whether the restaurant has one. If you don’t order directly with a paper menu, it may be more convenient. Secondly, the user is accustomed to it. Pay the bill after the meal. If I order food on the road or order food at home, can the payment be refunded if something unexpected happens and I cancel the meal?
The ordering scenario of our system at Jinbao is divided into two parts: remote ordering and on-site ordering. This is also designed to truly fit customers' usage habits. Nowadays, customers reserve a seat in a restaurant by phone or online, and ordering can only be done through the waiter after arriving on site. After using our system, customers can not only reserve a seat through the Internet but also order food at the same time. Restaurants can receive orders in advance to serve as a reference for purchasing materials on the day and prepare dishes for customers in advance to save customers waiting time. Of course, after you sit down at the restaurant, you can more conveniently use our system to order without the need for a waiter.
The payment process is designed according to the customer's existing consumption habits. After the customer's order is submitted to the kitchen, they wait for the food to be served in the restaurant. Just complete the payment before leaving the store. This is consistent with the existing booking process and there will be no refunds.
At present, we recommend that restaurants use our system to cover it. When designing the page, consider how to save more traffic so that customers can quickly learn about the dishes. With the issuance of licenses, I believe that issues regarding Internet speed will not be a problem in the future.
The mobile screen of WeChat ordering itself is very small. Finding a dish is not much better than directly flipping through the paper menu. How to solve the problem if some dishes are not evaluated? Manual back-end operation? Does the kitchen need a chef to watch WeChat or someone to keep an eye on WeChat? The restaurant owner may feel that someone needs to keep an eye on WeChat or teach everyone how to use WeChat and lay it out. Do you think this is a cost?
The screen display of Jinbao mobile phone is indeed not as full as the paper menu display, but we have designed a part where you can clearly understand the pictures and introduction of the dishes after clicking to enter. Both methods have their own pros and cons, but the design of our system can already achieve the purpose of easy understanding for customers. Our Jinbao a la carte is a system product that integrates various functions to achieve the purpose of customer convenience. So in the future, as customers' usage habits mature, I believe that small mobile phone screens will not be a problem.
Our system sets up the restaurant management backend to make every reservation, order, and payment of a customer in a simple operation by one person in the backend. The operation process is equivalent to the existing Diancai Bao operation process. If a restaurant has already used the Diancai Bao system, it will be easy to accept our system operation method.
Our menus are all electronic, so if some dishes are clearly estimated, they will not be displayed on the mobile phone after simple operations in the background. This is also an aspect of our system that is better than paper menu ordering.
If a restaurant that has already used Diancai Bao to order dishes uses our system, its hardware cost investment will only need to increase the laying of the network, and then we will provide simple training for the back-end operators and waiters. The cost of laying out the network is a drop in the bucket compared to the system's savings on waiter workload and increased sales for restaurants.
What kind of form does this system take in the restaurant? A big screen? Or does it require the staff to look at their mobile phones? If you look at your mobile phone for fast food, you may not have time to check WeChat because there are so many people, noisy and busy.
At present, our system in Jinbao only supports ordinary restaurants that need to order food, which can be operated by the waiter through the computer in the background. It is impossible for one system to solve the problems of all catering formats. This is also the personalized feature of mobile Internet. Our philosophy is to develop exclusive WeChat solutions for various business formats. At present, we have begun to develop solutions for different types of catering companies such as fast food buffets based on the existing ordering system. At the same time, service modules such as queuing module, game module, review module, etc. will be continuously added.
WhatsApp
