Do you want to implement contactless dining in your restaurant?
Contactless dining is a part of restaurant modernization that is driven by factors such as technological advancements, evolving consumer preferences, and the post-COVID-19 restaurant industry trend. The new concept has gained significant attention post-COVID, when people were bound to maintain social distancing. However, it is still trending in 2025, and more and more restaurants are trying to adopt it to fulfill their customer’ demands.
In this article, we provide a comprehensive guide to contactless dining, its benefits, and how to implement it in your restaurant. Before discussing the benefits and process, let us first introduce you to the concept.
What is contactless dining?
Contactless dining signifies the process that enables customers to have a full-fledged restaurant experience without any physical interaction with the restaurant staff, menus, and payment machines. It is a tech-driven approach that relies on tools like cloud-based platforms, mobile phones, QR codes, etc.
In simple words, in a contactless dining culture, diners do not need to get into any physical interaction with the restaurant staff. They can browse through menus, place orders, and initiate payments through online payment options.
This is not a completely new concept, as countries like China have already adopted the culture several years ago due to its benefits for both restaurants and diners.
How does the contactless dining work?
As mentioned above, the contactless dining approach depends on various digital tools that help run a restaurant. For example, introducing a QR-based menu helps customers scan and access the QR code and browse through your menu without asking the staff for it. Similarly, having an online ordering system means your customers can place their preferred food items from your restaurant and pay for them through online payment methods. All these steps fall under the category of contactless dining.
Today’s modern restaurants follow this restaurant technology trend to stay competitive, offering speed, comfort, and convenience to customers. If you have not adopted it yet, it is high time you consider the new approach to grow your restaurant and increase customer satisfaction.
Benefits of contactless dining
Besides being one of the most popular restaurant industry trends, contactless dining offers multiple benefits to restaurant owners and customers that include the following:
- Better safety and hygiene
Guests do not have to touch menu cards or interact directly with the staff, which reduces the transfer of germs. It also impresses customers who are conscious about cleanliness.
- Fast and convenient
No more waiting for the restaurant staff to bring the menu card, as customers can easily do it themselves by scanning the menu QR and browsing through the items. It reduces time and is convenient for customers as they do not need to speak directly with the restaurant employees.
- Higher order accuracy
While writing multiple food items mentioned by customers to order, a few might get missed by the staff. In fact, he or she could even write a different dish’s name mistakenly. The perfect solution to this issue is the adoption of an online ordering system. This gives customers the freedom to directly order food that they like to have.
- Reduce labor cost
Having a contactless dining facility in your restaurant helps reduce labor charges as restaurants do not need to hire people to take orders and do related work. The team remains small and the members get the time to focus on offering quality food, delivery services, and more.
- Real-time data and insights
As contactless dining is a tech-driven system where various tools are involved, it is easier for restaurant operators to track orders, deliveries, gain feedback and keep updating customers about the same. It offers them useful data that is crucial for marketing, improvements, and overall growth.
- Sustainability
Contactless dining helps you maintain sustainability in your restaurant, as no paperwork is involved here. it also allows restaurants to reduce food waste through inventory management software.
How to set up a contactless dining experience in your restaurant?
The first step that you need to take to set up a contactless dining system for your customers is to create a digital menu that can be accessed by your customers without the help of your restaurant staff. However, you need to make sure that your digital menu is responsive, contains proper food images, descriptions, and ingredient details.
Once you are done with the digital menu, generate a QR code to help customers smoothly browse through the menu using their scanners without being dependent on the restaurant. You can place the QR code in tables and the takeaway section.
3. Mobile ordering
As the name suggests, mobile ordering allows your customers to place their orders online through their mobile phones. Once they check your QR-based menu, select food items, and they can simply place the order through your online ordering system. All you need is an online ordering system for your customers to place orders.
4. Contactless payment
To accept orders online, you need to have a secure payment method for your customers. This eliminates the need of any physical contact during the payment process because no cash or cards are required.
5. Online table booking
Having an online table booking facility in your restaurant empowers your restaurant with a completely contactless dining system. Your customers can independently book their table before visiting the restaurant based on the table availability and setup you create for them.
6. Select a suitable POS system
To make the entire restaurant experience contactless for your restaurant and customers, you need to have a dedicated restaurant POS system like FoodMato. It helps automate the entire process without any coding expertise. The market is filled with POS systems, which may overwhelm you with options and make your decision difficult, but not all of them are suitable for your business. We recommend FoodMato because it is a versatile POS system with the essential features required for the digitization of your restaurant.
Discover all its features now!
Wrapping up
Introducing contactless dining is a modern way of running your restaurant business. It is fast, convenient, accurate, and accelerates your business growth. Most importantly, your customers love it. If you still do not have it, start considering the idea, and it is crucial to fulfill your customers’ demands and preferences to survive in the market. If lack of technical knowledge is pulling you back, let us tell you, FoodMato is the best option for you as our team handles all the technical aspects of your restaurant, and we also have a qualified support team who are always there to help when you need.
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