Restaurant Table Side Tech: How OneDine Solving Chargeback Issue for Restaurants

In the good old days, when you wanted to grab a bite to eat, you walked into a restaurant, swiped your credit card and bon apetite. Or you made your order by phone, then paid when you pick it up. Smooth process from start to finish.

Today, money is going mobile. Customers are paying for everything from bills, services, products, even food delivery via their phone. According to Business Insider, in-store mobile payments will reach $503 billion by 2020 and 56% of the US consumer population will use mobile payments as their preferred payment method.

Let's look at Starbucks as a great example. Their mobile app is nothing short of impressive. On this app, customers can pre-order their coffee of choice and then pick it up at the nearest Starbucks. Simple and seamless.

According to former Starbucks Chief Digital Officer, Adam Brotman, the impressive results on their mobile app are due to its intuitive nature and easy customer experience throughout the entire purchase cycle. Great customer experience in the app leads to high customer engagement, which leads to increase customer loyalty, which leads to more business.

Clearly the digital experience offers restaurants many opportunities. It increases customer brand affiliation, provides a data rich environment ideal for customer retention, frictionless customization, and the ability to reduce churn rate.

While the upside for restuantants moving to mobile payments is clear, the digital payment scene also poses the industry with new challenges.

Is the Customer Always Right? Digital Challenges for Restaurants

Automation and digitalization of the consumer process may seem like an opportunity but automation ignores the human aspect of restaurant experience. Mobile apps puts the customer in the center of liability since the process is completely automated. For restaurants, the lower in-person experience translates to less 'upsell' opportunities. Misunderstandings are usually an opportunity for restaurants but with automation these errors are creating a breeding ground for chargebacks.

Chargebacks are the customers way of reversing their purchase without having to notify the business. Credit card companies rely on the customer insight and ignore the merhcant side of the conversation. For restaurants, chargebacks have become an increasing problem, especially regarding sales attributed to card-not-present.

Diners Dash

What caused the drastic change? Isn't digital payment meant to simplify the whole process? Why is the shift in technology impacting the restaurant industry more than others?

One of the primary reasons that the restaurant industry are so hurt is because card-not-present is a very simple excuse. With no verification process in place when picking up a mobile order, EMV chip or PIN code, restaurants are at the mercy of the consumer, who may be getting away with a free lunch. In the olden days, chargebacks were a way to protecht the consumer, now it's a tool for fraudsters with no recourse for the restaurant.

What's the Solution?

With so much at stake, how do restaurants reduce the underground fraudulent chargeback scheme plaguing the industry?

Enter OneDine. Backed by a new round of funding, OneDine is disrupting the restaurant tech space by introducing the most comprehensive and cost-effective solution for the industry. Their solution hits the precise paint point where restaurant owners, franchises and franchisees have struggled. It offers a comprehensive and affordable all-in-one table side solution for ordering, secure payment, and guest intelligence.

Without any extra tech involved, onboarding is a breeze since it syncs effortlessly with existing restaurant POS systems. Rom Kupp, CEO of OneDine says that "we are telling restaurants: Keep your current POS. Keep your current credit card processing server. You can still offer tableside ordering and payment, do surveys, empower your servers...the full tech-suite WHILE keeping your existing infrastructure. That's what OneDine allows." 

At the same time it allows restaurant owners to quickly survey customers, gain data and real-time insights on operational improvement, menu modification and provide a rich customer experience throughout. Finally, for customers, it gives them the upper hand since they can immediately order and pay for their food.

Simple integration for restaurants, immediate tableside ordering and payment (eliminating chargebacks), essentially creating a win-win-win scenrio of waiters, managers and customers.

Experience Tastes Good

It's one thing to create a solution for restaurants, it's another to have the experience, knowledge, and insights to build the product designed specifically for the industry. That's exactly why Rom Kupp, CEO of OneDine, offers a unique advantage. He's been in the restaurant tech space for 22 years and founded the award-winning company and product Marketing Vitals in 2013. His deep understanding of the industry enabled him to create this solution that offers a 360-solution for guests, servers, and management.

Rom Kupp says that OneDine is "solving very real problems for restaurants and the hospitality industry in general. We've had hotels reach out to us, casinos, airports...all these groups are facing similar challenges. Labor costs are rising, guest satisfaction standards are higher than ever, and fraudulent chargebacks are costing the industry two billion dollars every year. Everyday I am talking to brands and investors who want to partner with us because they see OneDine as the solution."


Tech, Data and Food

Ultimately, the goal of using technology in the restaurant industry is to improve how the business operates with the goal of improving profitability. 

Once considered a low-tech industry, technology has quickly infiltrated the food and restaurant industry. While some of the advances will serve to improve the experience — both for the industry and for the customer- with every new advance comes a new challenge. At the pace that restaurant technology is moving, many of these challenges may seem insurmountable. As an industry, it's time to embrace these advances, along with the challenges, and integrate solutions that are geared to provide the most value for all- restaurant, owner, customer.