Say this about the pandemic, people sure were on their phones a lot. Digital sales for restaurants shot up. But once things normalized, they came back down. PAR Technology noticed. And it’s out with a new offering to get engagement rolling again.
Joe Yetter, general manager, engagement cloud, PAR.
“We’ve seen sales decelerate in both third-party and first-party channels, particularly in first party, post-Covid,” said Joe Yetter, general manager, engagement cloud, in an interview. “We believe there needs to be a new wage of innovation and tools to help re-accelerate growth.”
It is launching PAR Engagement, which it touts as a next-gen portfolio of engagement products to help operators convert guests and simplify operations.
Existing clients can start with current products and build from there, or design a unified tech stack from scratch. The suite of tools deploys AI to gather and analyze insights.
Yetter offers a scenario that he knows frustrates operators.
“Operators can see when customers come to their website or mobile app and start an order but not finish it,” he said. “How do you convert those guests?”
With a four-layer cake. That’s how Yetter describes the products inside PAR Engagement: PAR Ordering, Punchh Loyalty, Guest Data, and Marketing & Offers.
“These make up the core ecosystem of what a digital marketer would use on a day-to-day business,” he said.
The icing and cherry on top are what’s new: PAR Accelerate, a growing suite of tools to increase check size, repeat visits, and campaign ROI; and Digital Experience, which enhances the guest experience from mobile apps to digital wallets.
Another scenario. “Say I want to create an offer and want advice on specific types of guests. Our tool will create an offer based off of the right price-elasticity product channels. It will create an offer for you using AI to target those specific customers,” he said.
Yetter is excited to be riding with the cavalry during a time when brands need the help.
“We have internal data in our system that shows transaction counts is down, as is same-store sales, for many brands,” he said, noting that the same narrative can be found in public earnings. “And while digital sales are still growing, they’re not growing enough to allow businesses to expand in those footprints. Brands are still seeing a significant growth in digital sales but not at a level where it becomes a major growth driver for them. Digital sales is growing at a much lower rate than it was in the past.”
