Catering: why digitalization will be a profitable investment in 2026
21 January 2026
Digitizing your restaurant: an additional expense or a profitable investment? This question is often asked by restaurateurs.
Between rising costs, pressure on margins and ever-increasing competition, every euro invested must now prove its worth. For a long time, digitalization was perceived as an additional cost, reserved for large chains or highly structured concepts.
Since then, the context has changed radically. Formats have diversified, volumes have changed, customer expectations have accelerated and economic constraints have tightened. The needs of restaurateurs are not the same as they were a few years ago.
At the same time, digital solutions have gained in maturity and flexibility. They can be adapted to all restaurant formats, from traditional restaurant to the fast foodthrough to the franchises and food courts.
Order-taking, checkout, customer loyalty and marketing: today, digitalization is an operational investment that accompanies the evolution of the business.
Before digital: what did restaurateurs invest their time and money in?
01. To build loyalty
Before digital, customer loyalty was mainly based on habit. Stamped paper cards and little attentions at the counter: customer feedback depended largely on the memory of the teams.
This operation required time and constant involvement, with no real tool for monitoring behavior. When a customer stopped coming in, there were no warning signs, no data that could be used to understand what had happened or try to get them to come back.
02. To bring in people
Bringing in customers was achieved through local actions that were visible but not very measurable: flyers distributed in the neighborhood, posters, local partnerships, and sometimes the local press.
These actions required time and budget, but offered little visibility on their real effectiveness. We invested without being able to identify what worked, or reproduce what really brought in traffic.
03. How to order
Order-taking relied entirely on the teams. Between the notepad, oral transmission and individual memory, things worked well as long as the pace remained reasonable.
As soon as the activity intensified, the limits became visible: typing errors, oversights, back and forth between the dining room and the kitchen. To keep up with the fireworks, the investment was mainly in energy and human pressure, with direct repercussions on service quality and team fatigue.
04. For day-to-day business management
Business management was largely an afterthought. Reading tickets, manual calculations, end-of-day or end-of-week analyses: decisions often came too late to correct a problem in progress. In the absence of clear, accessible indicators, business was managed by instinct. And the time spent understanding the figures was taking up operational time.
Why are these "old-fashioned" methods showing their limits?
Being a restaurateur in 2026 has little in common with the profession of 5 or 10 years ago. The customer base has evolved, its expectations tooand economic constraints have tightened.
Today, we need to secure your marginsThe aim is to increase volume and generate more sales in order to absorb rising costs and maintain the establishment's equilibrium. Good work is still essential, but it's not always enough to guarantee the viability of the model.
In certain ultra-dynamic segments, such as burgers, competition continues to strengthen. Nationwide, the number of chains is growing rapidly (+8% between 2024 and 2025), driven by the continued expansion of chains across the country. This dynamic mechanically reduces the space available for each establishment, and accentuates the pressure on volumes and margins.
Methods based on habit, resourcefulness and intuition are showing their limits in the face of this new reality. As margins tighten and competition intensifies, the old-fashioned way of doing business becomes risky. What used to work costs time, money and opportunity.
Digitizing restaurants: what solutions exist today?
01. Operational management: stop wasting time on things that don't create value
The digitization of operational management aims first and foremost to reduce all those things that consume time without providing any return.
Inventory management, scheduling, personnel monitoring: these tasks already existed before, but they relied on tables entered by hand and a lot of last-minute adjustments. By centralizing key information, the restaurateur gains greater visibility and can adjust more quickly, without spending his days checking or recalculating.
02. Order-taking and cashiering: lightening the load without dehumanizing teams
The digitization of order-taking and checkout is aimed first and foremost at making service more fluid. Cash register software, Self ordering kiosk and QR codes allow us to absorb peaks in activity without putting all the pressure on our teams.
Contrary to popular belief, these tools do not replace the human element. They enable teams to keep up, especially during rush periods, without compromising service quality.
03. Customer relations: structuring loyalty without spending time on it
When it comes to customer relations, digitalization allows us to move away from a "one-size-fits-all" approach. loyalty based solely on habit or the occasional small gestures of our teams.
Loyalty programs and customer database give a clear picture of visit frequency, behaviors and truly loyal customers.
The restaurateur can maintain the link with his customers, even during busy periods or when teams are changing.
04. Marketing and visibility: avoid piecemeal marketing
Finally, marketing tools enable us to structure actions that were previously carried out on an ad hoc basis.
Targeted campaigns, behavior-triggered messagesperformance tracking: every action becomes measurable, while being less time-consuming. The restaurateur can test, adjust and stop what's not working, without mobilizing the whole team. Marketing ceases to be a vague (sometimes abstract) expense and becomes a controllable lever, even on a small scale.
Digitizing your restaurant: where to start?
Are you wondering which solutions are right for your organization? Do you need an outside perspective to help you prioritize without spreading yourself too thin? Our teams can help you deploy a digital ecosystem aligned with your business model, operational constraints and profitability objectives.
Want to go further? Consult our articles and guides dedicated to the digitalization of restaurants to delve deeper into the subject and move forward at your own pace.
➜ Opening a restaurant in 2026: the fundamentals of a successful customer experience
➜ Independent restaurants vs. chains: which digital solutions suit your business model?
➜ 5 reasons to choose an all-in-one solution rather than separate restoration tools
