Innovation Heroes: inspiring ideas from two ambitious food & beverage businesses

In his influential 1985 articleThe Discipline of Innovation, the famed management consultant Peter F. Druker stated that “Innovation is the specific function of entrepreneurship…..It is the means by which an entrepreneur either creates new wealth-producing resources or endows existing resources with enhanced potential for creating wealth.” Drucker’s ideas still hold true.

For most food & beverage businesses the focus is on creating efficiencies or enhancing existing services to generate more revenue, something that a payments platform can assist with. This is even more important for ambitious local players, and we’re often brought in to support these initiatives.

In our Innovation Heroes series, we look to highlight entrepreneurial brands with big ambitions. Brands that collaborate with us to inspire their innovation, improve their payments processes, and in turn fuel their growth. We recently caught up with two in the food & beverage sector.

The two have more in common than an ampersand, they’re both high growth companies thriving in an ultra competitive industry at a difficult time. Here we’ve tried to condense their learnings into three key focus areas for burgeoning food & beverage entrepreneurs.

Drucker lists seven sources of innovation in his article. These sources, he stated, “account for the great majority of all innovation opportunities”. Number one on his list is “Unexpected Occurrences”. Undoubtedly, one of the greatest unexpected occurrences of the century has been the coronavirus pandemic which has forced businesses to rapidly evolve.

When the coronavirus first landed in the Netherlands, Bagels & Beans acted fast. Realizing that takeaway would now be the preferred method for picking up their delicious bagels and salads, they quickly set upan online ordering facilityon their website. On this site people can order and pay online, and then pick up their order at the time and restaurant location of their choice. This prevents people from needing to queue, improving the flow for staff and customers.

On 7 April, the Bagels & Beans team reached out to Adyen about their takeaway website. The first orders were placed on 9 April.

In fast casual cafés and restaurants, revenue is driven by efficiency in every aspect of operations, including payments. In-store this means terminals with up to date software, always ready to accept the latest payment methods, be they card or wallet based. Online, it means being able to quickly start processing payments through an out-of-the-box solution.

Max Kochen from Beets & Roots details: "The integration of the entire POS system into our cash register system was very quick and easy overall. The process of the entire POS introduction corresponded to the experience we had with the introduction of online payments. With Adyen, we had one of the smoothest rollouts when it comes to payments."

In densely populated cities such as Berlin, Hamburg, and Amsterdam, competition in the food & beverage sector is intense, so any slight advantage you can gain in delivering customer happiness over a competitor is welcome. One way to achieve this is ensure that every interaction is optimized, be it the greeting they receive at the counter or in your app.

Two of the key takeaways fromrecent research on quick-service restaurants (QSRs)gave indicators to the modern diners’ preference:

Adopting aunified commerce modelcan help you make every customer interaction count. A unified commerce solution is one that consolidates your sales channels, online, in-app, or in store, meaning all of your customer data and sales information is available via one interface.

For your customer this has two big advantages. By tying their loyalty to their preferred payment method, they can collect points, or get that sixth latte free without having to plunder their bag for their illusive loyalty card in the process. It also opens up a plethora of convenient ordering options such as paying via a kiosk, or ordering in-app and collecting in store.

For you, the advantages from both a practical and strategic point of view are immense. With a unified platform and in-depth customer data you can:

“New Knowledge” is the seventh and final item of Drucker’s sources of innovation. It concerns the speed at which entrepreneurs are able to implement the latest innovations in their field. For both Bagels & Beans and Beets & Roots, working with a trusted partner on their payments set up is something they’ve both been able to cultivate by outsourcing the responsibility of their payments to a trusted partner. Both have teams that are more adept at running food & beverage business, than on optimizing payments processes.

Working with us has allowed them both to free up more time to dedicate to areas of the business that they can influence most, while we take care of their payments.

“We want to keep developing and that often depends on speed. Adyen's support system helps us enormously and thanks to the fast processing of our questions, our development processes are never slowed down. Compared to other providers, Adyen's service is a great unique selling point and perfectly supports us in our agile development style.” Max Kochen CEO, Beets & Roots

The agility afforded to them by having a knowledgeable payments partner is a particular advantage in our current uncertain times. Rather than deploying resources on managing their payments systems, both of these Innovation Heroes benefit from having an agile payment solution that allows them to grow their business at speed without administrative and technical complexities.

And the same holds true for you, if you think your food & beverage business would benefit from working with a partner that can help them be quicker, more efficient, and assist in placing your customer at the heart of everything you do then get in touch.