In this line of work, we talk to restaurant owners every day. And we’re hearing the same concerns from everybody we talk to. Times are tough. Food prices are up. Labor costs are through the roof. And still, while you’re over here struggling with shrinking margins, your diners are expecting more out of their customer experience all the time.
Put all of these things together, and it adds up to a lot of pressure for restaurant owners.
During a recent webinar co-hosted by Gordon Food Service, Back of House, and the Ohio Restaurant & Hospitality Alliance, we discussed a few ways to lower the pressure. Our own resident tech expert Rachel Morgan hosted a wide-ranging conversation with App8 CEO Elias Hage and GoTab VP of Growth Mateen Habib. (You can watch the full webinar here.)
Together, they shared tons of awesome insights for keeping your outlook positive and your restaurant profitable even during these challenging times. We wanted to highlight a few of our favorite bits of wisdom from the chat.
High Prices and High Anxiety
The main focus of our webinar was Additional Revenue Streams in Economic Uncertainty, and the discussion was loaded with useful tips on how to grow your business at a time when food prices and labor costs are both rising. But there was another theme tying the whole conversation together – the ever-growing importance of the customer experience.
It’s easy to understand why so many restaurant owners are anxious these days. Mateen acknowledges that “Obviously people are hurting right now.” But, he points out, “This is a very resilient industry.”
It’s true. When push comes to shove, people still want to go out for meals. People still want to get together at restaurants. People still want to order takeout. The real trick is understanding what today’s diner is really seeking out of this experience.
Customer Expectations Have Changed
The media serves up all kinds of doom-and-gloom headlines about rising food prices and labor costs. And the restaurant industry is facing some very real economic headwinds. But the real story is actually about the changing customer expectations and our ability to deliver on these experiences.
As Rachel points out, “Diners now expect speed, convenience, and personalization – not just great food.”
This challenge isn’t unique to restaurants. Today, leaders in every consumer industry are being forced to rethink the way they manage these rapidly changing customer expectations. “You can blame Amazon and Etsy for making a phenomenal experience for the purchaser,” Rachel observes, “because that has now filtered down to the restaurant industry.”
Still, there’s good news in all of this change. Obviously we have very little control over things like spiking beef prices, global supply chain disruptions, or local labor shortages. On the other hand, we have a lot of control over the customer experience. And this may just be the key to staying positive and profitable in hard times.
4 Key Takeaways
Let’s face it – there’s not a lot of wiggle room when it comes to things like staffing and food costs.
“Many operators are already doing more than ever,” says Rachel. “You're serving more guests per shift, managing tighter teams, and still feeling that squeeze.”
At the same time, Rachel notes, “Customers expect fast ordering, personalized experiences, and digital convenience from everyone. So how do you deliver on those high expectations without breaking your systems or your margins?”
Here are some of the answers we got out of our discussion with Elias and Mateen.
1. Embrace Experience Dining
Foot traffic is down across the industry. According to Commerce Department data, the first half of 2025 saw the slowest growth in the restaurant industry in a decade. At a time of economic uncertainty, consumers are becoming more cautious about how and where they spend their money. Your restaurant has to provide an experience that’s worth it.
“I've seen a big push in adding an experiential component to dining,” says Mateen. “Some form of entertainment, whether it's trivia, concerts, or if you have the space for it, golf sims or interactive gaming.”
The point is that you can provide a memorable experience for your customers and you don’t have to spend a ton to do it. Actually, says Mateen, “Events have great margins.” But, he continues, “Even just throwing board games out there, I've seen that be really successful. The goal is just to add some level of engagement.”
2. Find the Balance Between Convenience and Connection
Elias also sees an industry-wide trend toward experiential dining and social gathering. “People do want to have authentic human interactions,” he notes. But, he cautions, they don’t want these interactions at the expense of speed or convenience. Gen Z consumers have grown up with self-service, automation, and single-click transactions on digital devices.
“Because of how much of a digital world we live in,” says Elias, “people do crave authentic in-person interactions. That's not something that has disappeared. It's just that, for the day-to-day and for the transactional things, people want digital.”
Your customers want knowledgeable servers, friendly bartenders, and lively Quizzo hosts. But they also want to place orders, make reservations, and pay checks without talking to anybody or wasting precious minutes.
You can do a lot to enhance the customer experience, not to mention employee satisfaction, by using tech to handle the transactional stuff. This gives your team more time to connect with customers, upsell your specials, and enhance your events with stellar service.
3. Curate the Online Experience
Engagement isn’t just something that happens inside your restaurant. In fact, it usually begins when a customer finds you online. But “online” can mean a lot of things. Maybe they spotted you through a Google search, a page on TripAdvisor, or an Instagram post. Maybe they stumbled on your website through an advertisement or found your profile on TikTok.
Wherever it happens, that experience must be both seamless and consistent with your brick-and-mortar brand. Just like the on-premises experience, the online experience should be a balance between convenience and connection.
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That’s why, says Elias, “It’s important to look at online presence as something bigger than just your website or social media.” Elias calls it “a world of opportunity” and notes that “There are literal playbooks on how, as a restaurant or as a caterer, you can monetize it.”
“But,” adds Mateen, “online presence also means enabling online ordering and making that as seamless as possible….I can't emphasize enough how easy it is to go somewhere else when there's friction in that experience.”
This is one of the reasons that so many restaurant owners are turning to vendors like Localyser, a software provider that streamlines management of both online reputation and the customer experience on a single user-friendly dashboard.
4. Spend More Time on Growth, Less on Admin
You have big plans for your restaurant. Most of the time, though, running a restaurant is about doing a million small things every day. But is this really the best use of your time?
“If you find yourself getting bogged down taking phone calls or putting orders into the system,” says Elias, “that’s not sales and it's not growth. That is admin.”
Automating administrative tasks like inventory management, shift scheduling, or recipe management can add efficiency while giving you back hours of your time every week.
“You need to ask yourself,” says Elias, “what if you spent that time on growth activities, on marketing, on getting your message out there, your brand out there? People come in for you or for your brand and for your vision, not for punching orders in.”
Summing It All Up
Elias suggests that improving profitability during tough times can actually boil down to just three steps:
- Step 1: Audit your menu, your time, and your customer reviews.
- Step 2: Find out what makes customers love you.
- Step 3: Create space in your week to do less admin and more of what makes customers love you.
Step 4: Find the Right Technology
So how can you act on this advice? How do you audit your menu or find out what your customers are saying about you online? How can you automate more administrative tasks and improve the way you spend your time?
The answer depends on a lot of factors, including the size of your operation, your goals, and your current technology situation.
Reach out to one of our resident restaurant tech experts today and we’ll work together to figure out exactly what you need to keep your outlook positive and your operation profitable no matter what the economy throws at you!
