| dc.description.abstract | Recent years have seen many digital changes that have affected businesses and individuals, which the recent COVID-19 pandemic reinforced by forcing businesses like restaurants to adapt. Some restaurants that have faced several challenges, such as hiring difficulties, high turnover, and low margins have utilized digital technologies to accommodate customers and to overcome these challenges. This thesis sets out to explore how these digital technologies have impacted the venues' employees and how the venue and its operations have been affected.
To explore this, nine semi structured interviews with nine employees, in nine venues have been conducted. Furthermore, it has been combined with a continuous literature review. Utilizing relevant literature and inspiration from the well-known TAM framework culminated in an interview guide designed to explore and understand how the employees perceive the technology, its utilization, and its implications for both venue and employee. The interviews revealed diverse experiences and similarities in challenges, opportunities, and utilized technologies. These insights were discussed and compared with literature to highlight and underpin the findings revealed by interviews.
A diversity of digital tools used by restaurants and bars was revealed, such as QR-codes, digital work schedules, and handheld POS systems. The findings further revealed that many restaurants neglect training employees to use digital tools. Furthermore, self-service technologies like QR-codes may increase stress and reduce customer-staff interaction and customer and employee satisfaction, but also showcase many benefits. The opportunities revealed emphasized solutions like handheld POS systems and analytics, but also that QR-codes could increase employee efficiency, increase order accuracy, and it was highlighted that self-service opportunities had been noticed to increase sales within the venue. Moreover, the interviews revealed that many employees are positively inclined to technology when it adds value to the employee or the customer. It also highlighted that digital tools should be easy to use, which for some was a requirement for them to even to be considered useful.
This thesis highlights that restaurants should aim to utilize digital tools that retains the employee and customers in mind, providing sufficient training for the digital technologies to be useful for the venue. This may provide several benefits for the employee which will trickle down to the customer. Furthermore, a recommendation of three specific digital tools based on the interviews is compiled, which are handheld POS-systems, QR-codes and digital work schedules. | |