Crowdsourcing is all the rage. And restaurants seem to have caught the fancy.
There is this guy who is spending a good time just getting real feedback before he decides what and where of his restaurant. A few restaurants have decided to skip the printed menu completely. Who wants to pay professional photographers when the customers can click the dishes with their smartphones and create a more powerful visual menu?
So let’s take the example of the first guy – are restaurants keen to know which dishes to keep in their menu? In most of the cases – Yes !
Does crowdsourcing help? Yes !
The data becomes more reliable with increasing volume.
But the challenge remains that if the customers are not repeat (as Groupon showed us) and if they are just looking for the next cullinary adventure, then crowdsourcing might not be too helpful at all.
Why? Because we may be using the knowledge of segment A to cook and serve a dish for segment B ! There is no positive reinforcement for the individuals who gave feedback. Do they go back and see their feedback implemented?
But take the case where a restaurant has a captive audience.
Let’s say you checked into a hotel. Chances are the breakfast is complimentary and most of the guests would end up eating at the in-house restaurant. And on most days, in a typical hotel, there would only be a small majority of non-guest walk-ins for breakfast.
So shouldn’t the hotel/restaurant try to understand what the guests would like for breakfast? Well I guess if I recommend this to a 5 star hotel, they would say “Sir, our breakfast spread has been carefully crafted after years of research on what our guests typically like. Thats also the reason you will see so many dishes and cuisines. We really care about what you want… Blah Blah Blah”
But consider this. There might be a Bollywood festival in town and suddenly there are more Indians who want Aloo Parathas.Or a Tamilian wedding with guests staying in the hotel, who would all love a dosa.
Well it need not be so drastic, but wouldn’t it be great if the restaurant could ask me what I would like to have. And then maybe come up with the dish over the next few days of my stay. If there are others who like it. Would it not make me thrilled, would it not make me feel special. My guess is it would.
It would also make the chef’s job so much more challenging and exciting.
And also allow the hotel to stay connected with the guests – guests are not just a room number or ID in their CRM systems.
What do you think?
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Image Credit : http://mashable.com/2014/03/19/dinner-lab-crowdsourced-restaurant
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