Managed Wi-Fi can take your restaurants to new heights

Customer dynamics are forcing almost every sector to change the way they work. To stay competitive and relevant, your businesses must adapt to changing customer requirements. Today, an important requirement for restaurants is free and accessible internet.

Social media and the tendency to stay online around the clock is driving this change. Visitors to any restaurant want to check up on their friends on social media, share updates or chat online while dining in. 

But that’s not all. When connected to Wi-Fi, consumer devices share data that provides you with valuable insights into their habits. You can then analyze their digital journey to market more effectively.

Leveraging Wi-Fi to engage customers and monetize IT infrastructure is gaining popularity as a part of commercial strategy. To support their efforts, restaurants are investing in secure, right-sized Wi-Fi services.

What is Managed Wi-Fi Service?

Subscribing to a managed Wi-Fi service refers to outsourcing the management of your wireless networks to a third-party vendor. Helping you with custom Wi-Fi solutions tailored to your business requirements, these services boast industry certifications and provide skilled human resources and infrastructure.

Managed Wi-Fi services are cost-effective and offer comprehensive services such as:

• Site assessment that ensures optimal installation and equipment recommendations
• Configuration settings and deployment process for wireless devices
• Continuous monitoring for security

How Cisco Meraki tackles challenges for restaurants 

Restaurants often rely on consumer-grade equipment, which results in poor Wi-Fi coverage and performance. Limited insights into network structure and performance leaves these restaurants struggling to improve their Wi-Fi quality. This all leads to a bad experience for customers. Additionally, restaurants with basic Wi-Fi systems miss out on valuable analytics that can be useful for future marketing decisions.

Easy-to-install Meraki solutions provide an excellent network structure to support growing restaurants. While offering a vast portfolio that can be managed consistently on a single platform, Meraki touts multiple benefits, including: 

• Access to professional network solutions: Outsourcing your Wi-Fi management to professionals at Telekom gives you access to fast, secure and tailor-made network solutions. Our professionals offer round-the-clock support to you so that you can take care of your core business while we handle its networking aspect.
• Branded experience: Let your customers better identify you and your brand. We offer a branded guest webpage and allow you to communicate with your customers over Wi-Fi. 
• Analytics: Meraki Dashboard — a centralized, remote management platform — allows for accessible network set-up across an entire chain of restaurants. This dashboard also assembles detailed analytics regarding restaurant visitors' habits, such as time spent on specific websites, the number of returning and new visitors, and a heat map, all of which support your business's decision-making.
• Seamless Wi-Fi experience: We enable your guests to browse the internet smoothly while offering high speed and high-performance connectivity enabled by:
  • Best-in-class, wireless with gigabit throughput
  • Multi-user MIMO architecture that supports multiple client devices simultaneously
  • Isolated, secure guest Wi-Fi separated from internal network
  • Enterprise-grade security and authentication
• Scalability: Restaurants aiming for global expansion can rely on Meraki Solutions for quick, easy scaling and immediate deployment. 
• High roll-out speed: For restaurants operating around the clock, it isn't easy to operate when the IT Team is working for a few hours. It can be challenging to manage the entire setup and its testing at a specific time when your peak hours differ. Meraki solutions are easily configurable in a few minutes, with setup done in a few hours; roll-out time is significantly less than traditional methods. 

Harness the full potential of Cisco Meraki with Deutsche Telekom 

For many years, we at Deutsche Telekom have partnered with Cisco to help hospitality businesses across the Central and Eastern European region achieve their technological and digitization initiatives. We enable restaurant owners to boost customer satisfaction by providing a seamless internet surfing experience with our comprehensive range of services.

Take your restaurant business to the next level with us. To learn more, reach out to our team today.

For any questions, please contact: Martin Jurca.