The Ultimate Dining Convenience: Being Able To Pay At The Table

Canadians love dining out. Who doesn’t, right? In addition to the ability to absolve yourself from the time, effort and energy of cooking, eating at a restaurant is a fun experience. Both the unique atmosphere, presence of good company and of course, delicious eats make the act of visiting a restaurant for a meal one that will never go out of style. And it appears, these days, as if Canadians are dining out more than ever!

42 percent of Canadians prefer to not prepare their own meals.

As Adam Frisk reports for Global News, a 2017 Dalhousie University survey found that Canadians are increasingly ditching their home-cooked meals for either ready-to-eat meals or dining experiences. No less than 42 percent of the survey’s respondents said that they “are either buying ready-to-eat meals or eating at a restaurant once or twice a week, while another 3 per cent admitted to doing so on a daily basis,” reports Frisk.

He also reveals that “while 18 per cent of the 1,019 Canadians who took part in the survey said they never eat out or buy ready-to-eat meals, 33 per cent admitted to only doing so on weekends.” Naturally, this is excellent news for restaurant owners. But, it needs to be stated that no restaurateur should take Canada’s love for dining out for granted. Restaurant patrons appreciate convenience as much as they do sumptuous meals.

How can restaurants make the dining experience extremely convenient?

In addition to providing excellent customer service, it all comes down to the payment process. If you’re still having your wait staff request the credit cards of your customers, you’re living in the stone ages…so to speak.

Cayan.com agrees that the process is archaic: “Customers have to get their waiter’s attention, the waiter goes to print out the check and bring it back to the customer, the customer looks at it, puts in their credit card, puts it on the table and hopes it catches the waiter’s attention, and then the waiter eventually sees it and comes back and then goes and swipes it, and then the waiter brings it back, and then the customer spend a minute calculating the tip, and then you sign it. After all that back and forth, suddenly it feels like you finished your meal hours ago.”

These days, Canadians are used to the convenience provided by “pay at the table” solutions. Instead of relinquishing any cards, customers simply place their cards into wireless terminals that are brought directly to the dining tables by their waiters. Within seconds, the payment process is complete and the chances of fraud are all but none. In the past, the giving up of cards to restaurant staff was known to result in numerous fraudulent charges.

We offer the Verifone VX 680 as our wireless “pay at the table” solution!

It’s the perfect terminal for any environment where you need to bring the point of payment to your customers: table-service restaurants, curbside pick-up, and nail/beauty salons. Bringing the terminal to the cardholder improves the customer experience and cardholder security — the card is always in your customer’s control, helping ensure that cardholder data is never lost or stolen.

For more information about the Verifone VX 680, please don’t hesitate to call Canadian POS Corporation at 1-877-748-2884 or email us at info@localhost.