The Food & Drink Federation states that the food and drink industry contributes a massive £28.8 billion to the economy, with the UK’s food and drink exports worth more than £22bn in 2017.
Considering the large figures, you may be surprised to hear that 97% of the 7,000 food and drink manufacturing businesses in the U.K. are small or medium sized!
Whether you work out of a van at festivals, have just set up your first café, are running a popular pub or have fingers in numerous pies, technology will be important to how you plan to grow.
Customers know what they want – with increasingly ‘digital’ expectations.
For example, The Waitrose Food and Drink Report 17 – 18 found that contactless payments have already jumped from 5% to 38%. But ‘digital’ isn’t just a growing trend in how customers pay.
Now customers want to book online, view the menu on your website, share reviews on TripAdvisor, post about their visit on social media and get email updates and offers – and that’s not even considering how you manage staff, stock turnover and generally running a business.
This blog covers simple online tools you can use to save time, streamline sales and booking processes, attract more customers and improve the quality of your performance.
In short, these tools can help make your work life a whole lot easier!
Electronic Point of Sales system
EPoS systems are great for giving customers options for how they pay.
Whether they choose to pay by card or via smart phone, you won’t miss out on passing trade or customers who don’t carry physical cash on them. But that’s not all!
EPoS systems can make a measureable difference on your bottom line by helping you manage stock levels and keep track of customer information.
Treorchy-based Wonderstuff has boosted sales by 33% and reduced stock management time by 20% since using an EPoS system. Find out more here.
Online booking solutions
Managing bookings on a digital platform is a great way to automate how you store customer information, take transactions and integrate your payment systems.
Save time the time spent on making reservations whilst also securing those customers who want instant, online confirmation rather than booking by phone.
Learn about online booking solutions designed for SMEs in the free Superfast Business Wales Software Directory.
Make the most of social media
Social media is an easy, cost-effective way to promote a food and drink business.
You can share photos of delicious items on Instagram, post offer updates on Twitter or ask customers to leave reviews on Facebook. You may even try doing targeted social media advertising to reach your local area and drive more customers in.
Social media is a great way to spread ‘Word of Mouth’ and positive customer reviews to drum up more interest in your business. Bang On Brewery successfully used social media to drive demand, meaning they had to grow production by 33% after just 6 months!
Find out how you can use social media scheduling tools to save time on managing your social accounts whilst still reaching out to your customers.
Useful, engaging website
Your website is the place to share useful information about your business such as what you offer, where customers can find you and how to contact you.
Provide details to help customers make a decision, such as: seasonal menus, booking forms, telephone numbers, where your products are sold and festivals you’re attending.
Not only will this help bring customers to you, but it will improve how search engines rank you – especially if you work in a localised area. Find out more about how to boost your ranking, reach more local customers and stand out above competition with our local SEO blog.
You may also consider sharing updates, news and interesting posts in the form of a blog. This could be a short weekly or fortnightly post including recipes or top tips.
Judith Bond Cakes has increased sales by 30% thanks to her new marketing campaign focusing on the website’s blog and social media. Learn more about Judith’s strategy!
These tips are just 4 of the easy ways you might look to make your food and drink business more ‘digital friendly’.