For Millennials, Smartphone Use Is An Irresistible Restaurant Habit

If you walk into a restaurant these days and ask Australian millennials to raise both hands, you will see a surge of iPhones and other smartphones shoot up in the air. And if you ask them to put away their devices, only a tiny fraction will heed your request, presenting QSR brands with new challenges and opportunities.

Millennials cannot seem to shake off their habit of using smartphones even while eating in their favorite food and beverage establishments, with 94% of millennials admitting to using their smartphones in a restaurant, one of the key findings from Oracle’s Millennials and Hospitality: The Redefinition of Service report, which surveyed thousands of millennials in Australia and seven other countries.

“Walk into a restaurant, bar or coffee shop, and you would be hard pressed to find a millennial not engaged with a device of some sort,” says Christopher Adams, Vice President of Sales, Food and Beverage, APAC at Oracle Hospitality. “For better or for worse, such behavior is commonplace virtually worldwide.”

When presented with the statement, “I wouldn't use a smartphone in a restaurant, coffee shop, bar or stadium,” only 4.4% of Australian millennials agreed, which is lower than the 6% average among all survey participants who said they would not use their mobile devices in restaurants or other food and beverage establishments.

Among the eight surveyed countries, millennials from Brazil and Mexico were the least willing to put away their smartphones with only 1% and 2% respectively, saying they would not use their mobile devices in dining places.

In sharp contrast, 19% of Japanese millennials said they would keep mobile devices inactive in such locations, by far the highest among those surveyed and 11.7% more than the second highest country, France (7.6%).

With the survey results revealing that Australian millennials prefer to use their smartphones in restaurants, QSR brands must grapple with the increase in dining times as millennials take pictures of the food and ask servers to take photos of them. But on the other hand, QSR brands stand to gain free promotions from millennials that snap photos of their food and post on their social media accounts. Sales can also be boosted through the use of smart phones when millennials walk into a store such as gathering customer insights when they connect to the store Wi-Fi connection as well as pushing promos and coupons through a mobile app.

You can download Oracle’s full report here - https://go.oracle.com/LP=28203?elqCampaignId=41791