How Innovation Can Create Lasting Change
Improved Ordering at Mother Road Market Will Transform Customer Experience
Recently, a vastly improved ordering system was introduced for Mother Road Market. This technology was something we wanted to implement since we opened, giving our customers the ability to order from their table, and to order from multiple restaurants on the same ticket. We call it a “super-order,” and it’s something our customers have asked for and we recently launched. It has been a learning experience, to be sure.
Almost everything I would consider myself good at today, is something that I have done poorly several times before. Brene Brown says,”There is no innovation and creativity without failure. Period.” This was our experience at MRM as we launched our first version of table-side ordering. It “worked” 95% of the time, but it wasn’t intuitive for customers, it wasn’t simple or beautiful, and it didn’t replicate the food hall experience. Most importantly, for that 5% of the time it didn’t perform well, customers were forming negative impressions about our merchants, and our wonderful food hall.
A company called Zion Zion did a survey of customer experience with online ordering and found that “Non-millennials experience significantly more frustration (61.2%) with these apps than millennials (46.9%). Of people experiencing problems, 51% of them say they are ‘very frustrated.’"
We knew people were already frustrated with the limitations imposed by the pandemic. Our collective ability to weather frustrations has taken a critical hit during this seemingly endless season of uncertainty and confusion. We couldn’t have our ordering app be “another thing” people were frustrated with, but in the interest of safety, we also couldn’t just open back up, even though there were many people insisting we should.
In May of 2020, this statistic was shared by Greenville Business Magazine: “37% of diners are extremely or very worried about getting sick from other customers if they eat a meal inside a restaurant.” More recently, CNN reported, “Adults who tested positive for Covid-19 were approximately twice as likely to have reported dining at a restaurant in the 14 days before becoming ill than those who tested negative, according to a new study from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.”
From all this, it’s clear that customer confidence isn’t high for dining at restaurants, and with good reason. To do our part to help mitigate the spread while supporting our incredible merchants, curbside and patio social distanced dining is the only sane choice right now.
Even with the best online ordering platform, being closed for dining inside really hurts our merchants’ sales. There has been a lot of disappointment and tears over the decline in sales, and some restaurants risked closing for good. It’s heartbreaking, and it feels antithetical to the values of the Lobeck Taylor Family Foundation, which exists to reduce barriers to success for entrepreneurs.
Fortunately, one of our other values is innovation. We used this valuable time to create such a revolutionary tool for our customers that when we do re-open, it will be a completely reimagined experience. Our team did weeks of research into various platforms, and we discovered Bbot.
Bbot allows us to check all the boxes of what our merchants and customers want from an ordering experience: simple, beautiful, reliable. This solution will also give us benefits that will transform the inside experience of Mother Road Market once it’s safe to reopen. Changes like being able to order a round of drinks or ice cream without getting up from your table, setting up a tab for multiple people to order from for groups and gatherings (when we can safely gather, that is) are just a few examples of what’s in store for our customers.
“It’s heartbreaking, and it feels antithetical to the values of the Lobeck Taylor Family Foundation, which exists to reduce barriers to success for entrepreneurs.”
Entrepreneurs and innovation are deeply intertwined, and I feel privileged to work for an organization that keeps those values front and center, driven by compassion and a genuine desire to see our merchants succeed. We’ve reduced yet another barrier to success for entrepreneurs, and that feels amazing.
Hungry? Order now: motherroadmarket.menu
Main image mural created by Sullystring and located on the south wall inside Mother Road Market.
Read more about our partnership with Bbot, and how some of our vendors experienced double digit sales growths in the 2 months following implementation: “Customer Spotlight: Mother Road Market”
