Integrators with restaurant clients take note: many restaurants are already enjoying the myriad ways that the latest smart devices can increase business and enhance profits. These devices can include everything from smart refrigerators that track inventory and expiration dates; to digital ordering kiosks that make fast-food restaurants even faster; to smart lighting and thermostats that work in concert to create the most comfortable environment for customers.
Add to this menu of technological advancements a family of smart connected devices that complement a restaurant’s technological ecosystem while drawing compliments from customers and staff for its sleek operation and attractive design — connected, automated window shades.
Top 5 Reasons for Automated Window Shades
There are many reasons why restaurants are adding automated window shades to their smart device technology ingredients, and why integrators should pull up a seat at the table. What follows, in no particular order, is our top five.
1. Taking control of guests’ comfort
One of the main benefits of automated smart shades is that, by managing glare and temperature, these window treatments help your restaurant clients provide the most comfortable dining experience, which can lead to longer visits and repeat business. Automated shades with enhanced control features can provide restaurant management and staff with the ability to control the shades from a variety of locations, including a wall-based control center, and/or an app on mobile devices such as a cellphone, tablet or PC.
Plus, these shades can be programmed in different parts of the establishment (such as the central dining area and private event spaces) to take advantage of the warmth of the sun during colder days and keep rooms cool by lowering light-blocking blackout shades during the heat of summer. If desired, these shades can even be pre-programmed to raise and lower at set times such as opening, midday and closing.
2. Setting the scene (and how a restaurant is seen)
Automated shades can be pre-set or controlled in real time to create the ideal ambiance for a beautiful dining experience any time of day. For example, they can glide open at lunchtime to create a bright, inviting atmosphere — one that is potentially visible by potential diners walking or driving by. Or they can gradually close at dinnertime to give a dining space a warm, intimate feel.
Dealers and integrators can also demonstrate an understanding of your restaurant customers’ unique needs and help them to elevate visual appeal by offering automated shades in a range of fabrics, including decorative and blackout shades, as well as a wide array of colors and styles.
3. Sustaining a great climate for dining (and for the planet)
Because smart automated shades can help regulate temperatures by being preset to let more or less sunlight into a space, they can reduce a restaurant’s reliance on heating and cooling systems. Of course, this can also reduce your clients’ energy bills. Plus, integrators can pair automated shades with other devices such as smart lights and smart thermostats to create an intelligent ecosystem that can lower a restaurant’s operational costs while increasing the scope of a project.
A restaurant’s smart shade investment can also pay dividends for the planet. With the additional level of lighting and temperature control they provide, automated window treatments can ideally suit your client’s goals for sustainability while appealing to planet-conscious customers.
4. A window to greater efficiency
Restaurant management and staff might be hesitant to learn how to utilize a new technology, but the push-button operation of automated shades couldn’t be easier and more intuitive to learn, and to sell.
Additionally, with the synchronized control of some or all of an establishment’s shades, employees don’t have to walk to each individual shade to raise or lower them. This provides your clients with another distinct advantage over manual shades, taking some of the time and labor out of preparing a room for guests and allowing staff to focus on other important tasks.
5. Making the great outdoors even better
Since the pandemic, an increasing number of restaurants have answered the popular demand to make outdoor dining a significant part of their business. This means more seating, more customers, and possibly (depending on the location) more visibility. But outdoor dining also comes with all the headaches and unpredictable problems inherent to the great outdoors — weather, bugs, sun damage and more.
Automated shades and screens designed specifically for outdoor applications work to extend the outdoor season while protecting furniture from harmful UV rays, keeping insects away, providing privacy when desired and moderating the climate year-round. Of course, they also offer the convenience-enhancing benefits inherent to automated shades described earlier.
Side guides are useful for addressing the unique needs of automated outdoor shade and screen applications. This feature helps to ensure that pergolas, verandas and balconies have maximum protection from unwanted weather and insects.
Make your Client’s Restaurant Business a Shade Better
If you’re looking for technology that can have an immediate positive impact on your restaurant business, take a look at what’s hanging in front of your clients’ windows. Integrating automated shades into your restaurant clients’ business will not only improve their operational efficiency and reduce costs, it might also inspire more of your customers to develop an appetite for more automated window shades and other smart devices.
(December 23, 2024). Ryan Chacon – Commercial Integrator. Retrieved from https://www.commercialintegrator.com/insights/5-ways-restaurants-can-boost-business-with-automated-shades/139146/
