Springfield Business Journal_2020-09-28

We’ve provided millions of meals since the pandemic began, but we still need your support to help food-insecure families. Every dollar donated helps provide $10 worth of groceries. You can make your donation go further with NAP Tax Credits. © Ozarks Food Harvest 2020 ozarksfoodharvest.org Visit SpringfieldsBest.com for all current members. Contact Executive Director Regan O’Rourke at 417.868.0290 Hiland Dairy is a household name in the Springfield area...a farmer-owned co-op that has been in business since 1938. They supply a complete line of milk, dairy products, juices, drinks, ice cream mixes, frozen ice cream, and ice cream novelty items to most of Missouri and Arkansas, plus all of Oklahoma and Kansas. In addition, we offer our products to limited areas of Texas and Colorado. Hiland has six processing plants and 24 distribution centers throughout that geography. Our customers consist of grocery stores, restaurants, nursing homes, hospitals, vending companies, convenience stores, “soft- serve”-type fast food restaurants and custard shops. www.hilanddairy.com Hiland Dairy Company pandemic and considering a reopening plan. “We wanted to keep our guests safe, so we wanted to use disposable menus. But there’s a lot of waste there, obviously,” he said. “How can I reduce the amount of waste we’re going to have from that?” The product has adhesive pads that allow it to be adhered to a flat surface. It also can be cleaned and sanitized along with tables and bar counters, Rauhoff said. Since its launch, Touchless Menu has been deployed to roughly 15 bars and restau- rants, with 13 of those in the Springfield area, Rauhoff said. Scaling on a national level is part of future plans. He said the technology was developed in-house. Menus accessible through mobile de- vices aren’t new in the industry. Some prod- ucts, such as St. Petersburg, Florida-based GoZone WiFi’s Easy-Fi, offer menus through a restaurant’s Wi-Fi signal. Eye on costs Menu costs can vary based on the design and number printed, Rauhoff said, adding menus purchased for the hotel cost roughly $2,000 for 115 menus. Most bars and restau- rants could pay hundreds of dollars monthly when needing to print new menus to accom- modate product or price updates, he said. Touchless Menu eliminates the need for those additional costs, as it allows businesses to make instant and unlimited online menu changes. The product sells for $10 per menu for industry professionals, with an optional $10 monthly website hosting fee. The additional fee aims at restaurants or bars without a website or online menu, Rauhoff said.  “We’ll host a PDF of their menu and al- low them to have access to that,” he said, noting restaurants have averaged an order of 25 menus. “We know restaurants operate within very thin margins and we’re wanting to keep our products very cost-effective for them.” Touchless Menu comes at a challenging time for bars and restaurants, which are just start- ing to see jobs bounce back from a major decline brought on by the pandemic in the spring.  The leisure and hospital- ity industry added 3,600 jobs in August from July, with 3,100 of those in accommodation and food services, according to Missouri Economic Research and Information Center data. Still, the industry has shed over 41,000 jobs from a year prior – nearly a 16% drop. Missouri’s seasonally ad- justed unemployment rate for August was 7%, up from 6.9% in July. McQueary said the pandemic allows Touchless Menu to become commonplace and customers to get more comfortable us- ing it for safety and convenience.  “That opens the door to exploring other advantages that an online menu can have,” he said, adding new features of the product are in development. Restaurants open for multiple meal servic- es soon will be able to have different menus instantly available for customers to bring up on their phone depending on when they visit. McQueary said he expects to have that feature available by November. Early adopters Split Social Kitchen, which opened in ear- ly July, started using Touchless Menu around the start of August.  “First of all, it’s a great idea. It’s a great way to save paper,” said co-owner Kristen Doug- las. “We can update things on the menu online within a couple of minutes. We don’t have to spend as much time sanitizing every single time.” The restaurant has plastic covers over its physical menus that are offered for anyone not wanting to use the new tech- nology. “Most people are really recep- tive. People who really don’t un- derstand it will ask questions,” she said. “Some of our older clientele doesn’t know how to use it, but we show them and they think it’s amazing and a whole new world has opened up.” B.J. Lowrance, owner of bar and live music venue The Royal, said good word-of-mouth from Chris Brown, co-owner of downtown bar MudLounge, got him to start using Touchless Menu earlier this month. Aside from the safety factor for customers, he’s impressed with the ease of menu updating. “It just makes so much sense,” Lowrance said. “So many things happen from the time you make a menu to the time you switch. Pricing your products can change, things don’t sell like you thought they would.” Lowrance said he spent about $200 to get 50 paper menus printed upon open- ing in June. He’s on the verge of unveiling his fall and winter menu, and knows he can make changes to it at anytime with the new product. It also links straight to his website, where he posts music show updates. Those have been limited to virtual concerts amid the pandemic, he said.  Touchless Menu joins other technological products that have been part of the restau- rant industry for years, such as point-of-sale systems and online ordering on restaurant websites. While the hands-free menu device was created during the pandemic, Rauhoff said it was an inevitable industry addition.  Douglas and Lowrance said their estab- lishments utilize point-of-sale systems, not- ing customers still prefer staff handle their credit or debit cards rather than make con- tactless payments. Both said sanitizing com- mon touch points such as check processing stations and pens is practiced frequently. “It’s kind of just a habit now,” Douglas said.  Touchless Menu’s creators believe their device isn’t just a temporary convenience for consumers and restaurants.   “Online menus will be the future of our industry,” Rauhoff said. “It allows the restaurant and the operator flexibility to change the menu as they need to versus having to wait for reprinting all their menus on a full run.” Menu: Average order is 25 devices Continued from page 3 54 · SBJ.NET SEPT. 28-OCT. 4, 2020 NEWS Kristen Douglas : New product saves time and money on menu printing costs.