Digital Food Court for ECE Shopping Malls / Piloted at Skyline Plaza Frankfurt

Case Study

Background

Shopping malls have to face the digitalization, which is changing both the behavior of customers and the business models of tenants. In addition to a large number of retailers, restaurateurs and their offerings are also an essential part of shopping malls business concepts.
For our client ECE, we implemented “Easy Dining”, an innovative pilot project for a digital foot court in the Skyline Plaza in Frankfurt to improve the digital visibility of restaurateurs.
Customers were able to order and pay for food and drinks offered by the restaurateurs via digital touchpoints online, respective mobile. The pilot was carried out in the Skyline Plaza in Frankfurt, which is particularly frequented by employees of local companies for lunch due to the office buildings in the vicinity.

Analogous to the “Easy Dining” project, we implemented the „Digital Mall“ project with our client ECE to increase the digital visibility of retailers.

Objectives

The “Easy Dining” project was designed to offer consumers added value when visiting the shopping centre and thus improve the customer experience. The goal was to provide a center-specific app for the visibility and ordering of the restaurants’ dishes. Customers were able to order and pay for food and drinks from the catering area online or by mobile phone via the newly created digital touchpoint. A content and order management system was made available to the merchants in order to map the orders on the caterers’ side.

In addition to visitors of the centre, the newly developed app was also intended to open up new possibilities for employees of the surrounding companies, as food could be ordered and collected at the desired time.

The “Digital Dining” project was to receive additional visibility through an efficient ordering option via tablets at the tables located at the catering area. Furthermore, the functionality of the system and, above all, the response of customers and restaurateurs were to be tested and evaluated in live operation.

Solution

The decisive advantages of the “Easy Dining” concept result from the more efficient ordering process. The customer saves time when ordering cashless via app, tablet at the table or centre website, for example, by simply bypassing long queues during the lunch break by arranging desired appointments in advance. The gastronomy operators benefit from better capacity planning, especially at peak times.
Furthermore, additional reach is generated for the restaurateurs and new advertising opportunities open up, for example through customized offers via coupons that are presented in the app.

Results

The pilot project “Easy Dining” was successfully designed, implemented, operated and analyzed by eStrategy Consulting. The offer of the restaurateurs was made visible to the customers via different digital touchpoints such as apps and displays.
The acceptance for restaurateurs and users was increased through marketing measures. The project was managed according to key figures and the findings were processed for the customer after the pilot phase.

Our Role

As part of the pilot project “Easy Dining”, eStrategy Consulting carried out a 360-degree project management for ECE. Our role included the conceptual design of the idea for the “Digital Food Court”, the selection and management of technical service providers, e.g. for the ordering app, as well as software and hardware solutions in the mall. Furthermore, eStrategy Consulting was responsible for the approach, onboarding and support of the restaurateurs within the framework of the pilot project. The project was

In addition, we led the coordination of marketing measures in the Skyline Plaza in cooperation with the center management. The continuous evaluation of the data and a careful analysis formed the foundation for the successful completion of the project.

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