Pandemic hit quick-service restaurants hard. ASMAC saved the day

Barring a few, a whopping majority of the QSRs saw dramatic sales declines during the pandemic. But QSRs that had invested in digital tools, especially ASMAC (AI, Social, Mobile, Analytics, and Cloud) were in a better position than others in riding the waves

- Soma Tah

When the pandemic shut down the world last year, it did hit the restaurant business quite hard. Quick Service Restaurants (QSR) either remained closed entirely or were operating at reduced capacity offering takeout, pickup, delivery, and drive-thru due to countrywide lockdowns, and stringent social distancing guidelines. The pandemic has upended consumer behavior, tastes and preferences also to a large extent. Preferences on brands, items, channels, peak times-all went out of the window as customers resorted to buying based on need, availability and convenience. Customers who were regulars for in-store dining moved to online ordering on the aggregator platforms. An increased Buy Online Pick-up in Store (BOPIS) tendency was also seen leading to many QSRs converting their existing outlets to drive-thru outlets.

The sudden shift to digital by customers was hard to scale up for many QSRs and the result was broken digital journeys leading to churn. The pandemic opened a plethora of challenges for the QSR industry forcing store closures as they were not prepared to cater to online ordering or drive-thru due to acute staff shortage causing service issues. Supply chain disruptions meant frequent out of stock scenarios leading to dissatisfied customers and revenue loss.

Many QSRs could not keep pace with the sudden shift to digital by customers. Broken digital journeys led to churn. Across the world, thousands of restaurants, including some QSRs, have folded up during the pandemic, as they were neither prepared to cater to online ordering nor drive-thru due to acute staff shortages causing service issues. Supply chain disruptions meant frequent out of stock scenarios leading to dissatisfied customers and revenue loss.