As concession stand managers and operators scramble to find the best concession stand ideas in a post COVID-19 world, sometimes it’s not the new menu items that matter the most, but how your concession stand is operated.
Implementing mobile ordering like FanFood means you can take your storefront online and have it also serve as a POS, where people can both browse your entire menu and order directly from their phone. That means your order-taking and transaction process isn’t limited to just the one lane in front of your concession stand. Rather, you open up the possibilities for anyone in the vicinity to complete the order and transaction at their convenience right from their phone.
That also means instead of having a concession line in front of your concession window, you now have a digital queue of orders coming in from throughout the venue. All your concessionaires need to focus on is fulfilling the orders that appear directly on your Manager Portal.
What are some ways for your customers to discover your digital menu and order from there? Typically there are 4 ways, and you might want to promote just one of them, or all depends on the circumstance, to make the user journey as seamless as possible.
1. Scan a QR code and directly access your digital menu in a web browser
Unless you’ve been living under the rock, you must have seen QR codes pop up every where these days, especially at restaurants when you try to pull up a digital menu.
Now you can do the same thing with your concession stand menu — but better. Instead of having it only as a PDF menu, our team helps you digitize your concession stand menu so that people can directly click on the item and purchase them right on their phone — very much like an ordering app such as Uber Eats or DoorDash. All you have to do is provide your customers with a QR code that they can point their phone camera at. The phone will automatically read the QR code and direct the customer to your digital storefront in their web browser, without having to download an app.
There are many ways you can distribute this QR code. Some popular marketing materials are table tents, flyers, seat stickers, business cards, banners, or even on video ads and on social media. Basically you want to have it as accessible as possible for your customers, so that they can easily scan the QR code when they feel like getting some nachos and beer. Below are some examples of QR code placements at FanFood’s partner venues:
2. Enter a customized short URL in the web browser to pull up your digital menu
A QR code is just a different format of a URL link, that people can enter into the address field in their web browser to access your “online concession stand”.
For each of our partner, besides giving them a QR code, we also provide a short link in the form of https://fanfood.app/venuename. You can distribute that along with the QR code so for those who prefer manually entering a URL link in their browser, they can do that instead.
Examples of partner URL links that direct people to their storefront:
Harrah’s Cherokee Center: https://fanfood.app/harrahs
Western Nebraska Pioneers: https://fanfood.app/WNP
Casper Horseheads: https://fanfood.app/casper
Pamlico High School: https://fanfood.app/pamlico
We’ve recently launched a new product feature that allows partners to fully customize this short link, such as https://venuename.order.fanfoodapp.com, or even https://order.venuename.com. All these are part of our effort to help our partners build up their brand, and offer as holistic a customer experience as possible.
3. Download the FanFood App and search for your venue name
Yes, we know that these days people prefer not having to download an app (we’re probably all guilty of having a very cluttered home screen on our phone and never being able to find the app we want). Besides opening up your digital storefront in their browser through a QR code or a URL link, people can also find your venue — and therefore your concession stand — by searching for the venue name in the FanFood app. The FanFood app is downloadable from both Apple Store and Google Play, and therefore works on both iOS and Android devices. Your menu will look exactly the same in both the web browser and within the downloadable app, so will the entire ordering experience.
Especially in two circumstances, we do recommend that our venue partners encourage people to download the FanFood app for placing an order, before pushing the QR code / URL access method:
1. You have a lot of returning customers who keep coming back to your concession stand. This could be your season ticket holders, or if you happen to be in a tight-knit community (such as a high school or a drive-in theater), where the percentage of returning customers is very high. You might want to have people download the FanFood app so that they don’t have to scan a QR code each time to place an order. Instead, they can easily pull up the FanFood app on their phone and search for your venue name.
2. If you’re launching a pre-event promotional campaign leading up to your season or re-opening, you should encourage people to have the FanFood app downloaded and installed before visiting your venue. This way they can explore your menus beforehand within the app, and already be familiar with the ordering process even before coming to the event.
4. Link to your concession menu inside an existing app
If your team, or venue, already have an app for other purposes, such as score updates, newsfeed, navigation or loyalty program, you can integrate FanFood mobile ordering into your app so it’s a one-stop-shop experience for your customers. This can be done in a fast and simple way: you can simply link to the web-based online storefront within your app, so that the menu expands within your app without directing the user away from the app.
Many sports teams are doing it this way, so that fans can access newsfeed, check scores, engage with their teams and order concessions all within one app! 
Teams can even customize the button colors to fully comply with their team branding. All this is to help you build greater fan loyalty and truly promote your brand!
To learn more about FanFood mobile ordering capabilities, get in touch with our team so we can discuss whether FanFood is the right solution for you.
You can also check out our pricing here: www.fanfoodapp.com/pricing