New Dine-In Restrictions: What Your F&B Restaurant Needs To Do

With the resurgence of local COVID-19 cases, the Singaporean government has implemented new safety measures that include ceasing dine-in orders at all F&B businesses, including food courts and hawkers centres. These measures have taken effect since May 16 and will be in place until June 13. What do new measures entail for F&B businesses and how can digitalisation help sustain revenue? Here are some pointers on what to expect and possible solutions to implement.

Photo taken from: Channel News Asia

Before measures were tightened, seating availability was already halved due to social distancing. With working from home being the norm, businesses will not only lose a reliable lunch crowd, but also a lack of general traffic to their stores. A spokesman for the Restaurant Association of Singapore (RAS), which has over 500 members representing over 800 brands and 5,000 outlets, has urged all F&B operators to "quickly pivot their focus to food delivery to make up for the shortfall in the dining in business". However, business owners still have to face an extreme decline in orders.

What can we learn from 2020?

Fortunately, 2020’s circuit breaker has taught us to be prepared. The importance of digitalisation has been highlighted as all sectors had to quickly adapt and turn towards technology. With the amount of technological solutions on the market, SME business owners are often spoilt for choice. However, it is important to keep their end goal of sustaining business in mind, and select the solutions that would work best for them. Value of having return customers

The value of customer loyalty is often neglected, but the lack of footfall to F&B businesses have placed customer loyalty in the spotlight. As research has shown, loyal customers spend 67 percent more at restaurants than new guests. Once you’ve established a good relationship with loyal customers, they are more likely to purchase items of larger ticket size or make more frequent visits.