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With consumers starting to dine out again, improving their dining experience through digital ordering and tableside payments solutions is becoming a pressing need for restaurants.
Texas Roadhouse has become the latest restaurant chain to take the digital plunge, implementing Ziosk’s Cloud Commerce Platform for digital tableside ordering and payments. The new service, which Texas Roadhouse has dubbed Roadhouse Pay, uses the Ziosk Mini terminal to enable pay-at-the-table technology, order entry, guest surveys, loyalty, and QR code technology. The Ziosk Mini, a smaller version of Ziosk’s tabletop tablet, occupies less space at the table. The Ziosk platform was developed by Dallas-based Tabletop Media LLC.
Texas Roadhouse is a chain of steakhouses with more than 580 locations in 49 states and 22 international locations in nine foreign countries.
During the initial rollout, 83% of guests dining at a Texas Roadhouse location paid their bill using Roadhouse Pay. In some locations, as many as 95% of customers pay using the service. Of all Roadhouse Pay transactions, 47% are NFC transactions, with guests using either tap-to-pay with a mobile wallet or an NFC-enabled credit card, according to Ziosk. The trend shows the importance of contactless payment options to consumers, the company adds. The addition of Roadhouse Pay also appears to have influence on customer satisfaction, with more than four out of five guests rating their overall dining experience at Texas Roadhouse as excellent.
“We believe that Roadhouse Pay enhances our [service] through a more efficient payment process for our guests,” says Texas Roadhouse chief executive Jerry Morgan, in a prepared statement.
The need for tableside ordering and payment has grown considerably since the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic. Since the start of the pandemic, consumer adoption of tableside payment and ordering solutions has increased 21%, according to Ziosk.
At the same time, the tableside ordering and payment space has become a competitive and crowded battleground among payment solutions providers. Companies such as Toast Inc., Shift4 Payments Inc., Block Inc., and TouchBistro Inc. are all battling for market share.
“As the restaurant industry continues to see an increase in on-premise dining, a resurgence of innovative technology will be critical, both in providing a better experience for the guest and to improve operational efficiency,” Ziosk co-founder Raymond Howard says in a prepared statement.
In January, an Australia-based payments provider called Till Payments acquired Ziosk’s transaction-processing unit as part of an effort to expand into the U.S. market.
