As COVID-19 has closed restaurants’ dining areas, restaurants are mostly relying on take-out, curbside pickup, and delivery options. Even though these ordering methods increase public safety, there is still risk involved: employees might not be safely distanced from customers when handing over their order. The answer to this pick-up problem? Food lockers. This new tech improves efficiency and eliminates unnecessary contact.
Food lockers are lockers with either a heating or cooling interior that hold a customer’s order. They alert the customer when the order is ready, and the customer uses a unique code to open the locker. There are different forms of the food locker, but the most relevant model during COVID-19 has two sides; the employees place the finished meal on one side and the customer picks up their meal on the other side through an alternate door at a later time.
Two-sided food lockers increase efficiency for both customers and employees. With typical pickup, customers and employees have unnecessary contact when the order is handed over. This can cause lines to form, forcing people to wait to receive their orders. Another pickup method is retrieving the order from a rack, such as Noodles and Company’s Quick Pickup option. While this method is fast, costumers could potentially pick up the wrong order, as all of the orders will be unprotected on the rack.
Food lockers are extremely efficient as the customer just arrives when they receive an alert and punches in their unique code. Employees simply have to put the food in the nearby lockers, which allows them to allocate their time to other responsibilities like prepping food, assisting coworkers, or helping out with other ordering methods.
There are a few companies that currently offer these beneficial two-sided food lockers; one company is Apex, and another one is GRUBBRR. Both lockers integrate with restaurants’ existing POS systems, and GRUBBRR’s food lockers are customizable to the restaurant’s needs. Ultimately, two-sided food lockers improve customers’ and employees’ experience, and should be implemented by businesses to better their workflow, even post-COVID.
