Mobile Application Integration: An Essential Factor for F&B Operations in Singapore

In recent years, we have started to see a rise in retail stores in Singapore developing their own brand apps. Initially, the sentiment from most people, whether users or businesses, was that it was a waste of money.

Reason? The user retention rate for such applications did not justify the investment for retailers. However, we have begun to see a shift in sentiment over the past year.

Initial Use Cases of Retail Applications Defined by Users

Brand apps such as Watson, ValueClub, Starbucks, and Ya Kun mainly use applications to manage their customers through loyalty programs, as well as providing an additional avenue to promote their brands and products.

However, the downside for users is that it is rather useless to have the app just for keeping track of how many loyalty points they have earned from shopping. Often, users have downloaded so many brand apps that they have forgotten if they have the app by the next time they visit that particular shop to make a purchase.

What is worse is that there are more membership applications that encompass the same features, with repeated brands diversifying their digitalization onto different platforms.

How Luckin Coffee Changed the Whole User Sentiment of Retail Applications

When Luckin was introduced to Singapore in March 2023, it demonstrated what mobile application integration can really do for the F&B market. Their app-only transaction method forces every consumer to make their coffee purchases through the application.

This process eliminates the physical queuing entirely, resulting in a more seamless buying experience.

Customers can now buy their favourite Ice Latte a few shops away and slowly make their way to the designated Luckin outlet to receive their drink without the need to wait in line to pay or for the barista to make their drink.

Some might complain that this takes away the joy of interacting with people, particularly the cashier, as it makes the whole process rather transactional.

However, here are my two cents: when considering the wider impact, reducing wait times and the workload for baristas to make drinks, serve, and act as cashier versus feeling good when someone hands over a drink to you, I think the first is hard to beat.

Needless to say, for people who crave interaction with the cashier, that is the minority.

Subsequently, customers will have less patience for waiting and queuing after habitually getting used to making purchases online and receiving their food later, once it has been prepared.

This shift in consumer expectations underlines the importance of F&B outlets adopting mobile applications to meet the demand for quicker and more efficient service.

As online ordering becomes the norm, the patience for traditional queuing diminishes, pushing retail and F&B businesses to innovate continuously to cater to this new consumer behavior.

Brand Passive Approach towards App Integration

Loyalty and promotion are some of the key features for brands to onboard into building their own app. However, when it is done without considering the user experience, having an app might be more of a con than a pro.

For example, “ValueClub” by Challenger requires purchasers to scan to sign into their system when purchasing to receive the cashback that can be used in future purchases. As Challenger opts for e-receipts, the additional use case is that customers can now also keep track of their purchases on the application as well.

On the downside, the application doesn’t actually have much use other than this. It is also less efficient compared to other retailers who can just add loyalty points, redeem cashback just by providing their phone number directly to the retailer. However, I am still positive about the potential of a retail store that sells mainly digital products having an app as it can simplify the warranty application and claims process much more easily than the traditional method of applying through the specific product brand.

Gamification on Retail App

Some brands also took up a more engaging approach towards promotions. For example, KFC recently came up with a game in the application that provides e-vouchers upon achieving x points per game, per day.

This is a more interesting way of pushing promotions, and due to the gamification nature of the promotion, users will value the e-voucher much more compared to just directly giving it to them.

The Future of Retail Operation: Retail Apps Will Become the Norm, and for F&B Businesses, It Is a Must-Have

When touchscreen smartphones first arrived, that marked significant changes in the mobile industry. As more people adopted smartphones, we saw traditional yet well-known brands like Nokia, LG, and Blackberry start to fall behind when they didn’t adapt quickly enough.

In the F&B sector, the integration of technology is not just about making promotions easier or offering cashback. It is more about the efficiency of making purchases easier and receiving the product without the need to queue for purchase and wait for the food to be made.

When this becomes a norm in the market, a large number of consumers will no longer choose to purchase in stores that do not follow this new progression of digitalization.

To Conclude

More brands are thinking of more creative ways to increase their app visibility, which can indirectly improve their retail store sales. This will bring about a new rise of a retail x digital customer experience, and in the next 2-3 years, more F&B stores in Singapore will have their own apps to make purchasing more efficient for their customers.