Restaurants tap on AI-powered solutions to digitalize orders and payments, with personalized offline-to-online experience across delivery and dine-in.

foodpanda, Asia’s largest food and grocery delivery network outside of China, and TabSquare, a Singapore-based provider of AI-powered in-restaurant solutions, are jointly offering digital solutions for restaurants to streamline processes and elevate dining experiences.

Under parent company Delivery Hero, the two brands are working with restaurants in Asia – starting with Singapore, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Taiwan – to digitalize their ordering, payment, and customer engagement-related processes.

Using TabSquare, foodpanda’s restaurant partners can automate tedious tasks, enabling restaurant teams to be more time-efficient in the ordering process as customers can use digital menus to browse, order and pay at their pace and convenience. This ultimately results in a more seamless ordering and dining experience – accurate order placements, and reducing order delays in instances of resource constraints.

Seamless offline-to-online dining experiences will also help improve profitability for restaurants.

With foodpanda and TabSquare, restaurant partners can tap on the combined data and predictive technologies to improve how they engage and retain customers. Informed by customers’ purchasing history through data analytics, restaurants can improve their offerings, as well as identify trends in price sensitivity, volume, and menu preferences to personalize their customer’s subsequent experience. The restaurants can also use these insights to offer relevant promotions to attract and retain diners. 

From foodpanda and TabSquare’s data insights, restaurant partners that improve their customer experiences enjoy higher earnings. Restaurants using TabSquare are able to see up to 10% higher bill sizes, up to 50% reduction in staff costs and better customer satisfaction. At the same time, restaurants on foodpanda see an average of at least 10% uplift in business performance since joining the platform. 

Paradise Group

Edlan Chua, Chief Operating Officer, Paradise Group, commented: “As a group that prides itself on creating new dimensions of dining pleasure, we see the importance of adopting technology solutions that allow us to improve customers’ dining experience in a sustainable manner. We have worked with TabSquare for many years, and find TabSquare’s solutions highly customizable, allowing us to mix and match different features to suit various operational models.”

For example, The Group’s hotpot chain Beauty in The Pot uses TabSquare’s tablet menu solution, allowing customers to place multiple orders at any time during their meal, accommodating ordering behaviors of patrons at a hotpot restaurant. 

At its casual dining restaurant chains Le Shrimp Ramen and LeNu, TabSquare’s pre-ordering solution allows customers to place their orders while they are waiting for a table, enabling restaurant staff to manage crowds during peak periods for better customer experience.

“As one of the pioneer restaurants onboard foodpanda, we are happy to hear that foodpanda and TabSquare have joined forces, as we can now tap on their combined capabilities for better efficiency in restaurant operations while improving overall profitability,” said Chua. 

“At the same time, we can provide better service for our customers – both online and offline. We look forward to scaling our collaboration with them, and are excited to adopt newer technologies such as payments and customer engagement. In our journey to continuously enhance our customers’ experience, we are happy to have found the solutions to help us fulfil the ever-evolving customer appetites.”

Lai Lai Taiwan 

Wivina Seah, Marketing Director, Lai Lai Taiwan, realized that, as a single-outlet F&B establishment, it needed to have a strong digital presence for customer engagement. Onboarding foodpanda made sense, as the restaurant did not have to rely solely on dine-in customers. 

“We also need to make sure that customers who are dining at our restaurant have a great experience,” she said. “With staff becoming increasingly difficult to hire, we needed a solution that could help us do more with less resources, and TabSquare’s SmartQR solution has helped us automate the ordering process. Not only does this help free up our staff’s time so they can focus on more high-value tasks such as engaging with the customer, but it also lessens the chance for human error.” 

Seah concluded: “With this partnership, we are able to easily get the help we need to run both our delivery and in-restaurant operations – which we see as equally important. We are more confident of satisfying diners who want to order in or eat out, and see value in tapping on these tech innovations to strengthen our operations.” 

Technology for better customer experience

Jakob Angele, CEO, foodpanda, said: “Moving into QR ordering in restaurants was a very natural choice for us. It allows us to offer great benefits to our 500,000 restaurants, helping them with their profitability by serving their customers better. I am absolutely convinced that in five years from now, restaurants worldwide will be using QR code-based ordering and paper menus will be a memory of the past.”

Recognizing possible resistance to scanning QR codes due to cybersecurity concerns, as well as strained customer experience with PDF versions of large menus on their mobile phone screens, the two companies have also helped restaurants iron out the kinks with proper UI design and less intrusive personalization. 

Anshul Gupta, co-founder, TabSquare, said: “TabSquare has always tried to be at the forefront of innovation in the industry by bringing AI-powered solutions to boost restaurants’ revenue, streamline operations, and offer a better dining experience to their guests. With foodpanda, …[restaurants] will also be able to collect payments more efficiently across multiple payment methods. Together, we are making a collective attempt to move the restaurant industry further into the digital age, providing comprehensive and seamless online-to-offline solutions that will help restaurants become more efficient, improve profitability and drive better customer experience and engagement.”