Olive Garden brings digital to the table

Olive Garden is adding a new omnichannel twist to its traditional Italian dining experience.

The casual dining chain has completed rollout of Ziosk tabletop tablets at more than 800 restaurants nationwide. Ziosk's seven-inch touchscreen tablets allow Olive Garden customers to browse the menu, order drinks, appetizers and desserts, and pay checks. The tablets also feature interactive activities such as trivia games.

All tablets are compatible with point-to-point encryption for heightened payment security that extends from card swipe through transit to the payment provider.

"The addition of Ziosk tablets has helped enhance our guests' dining experience, resulting in higher overall satisfaction scores," said Dave George, Olive Garden president. "The technology creates efficiencies that allow our servers to focus more on our guests to create memorable dining experiences."

Fast and efficient customer service is of utmost importance in the casual dining segment of retail, where quickly getting and paying for food is almost as important as the taste and quality of the meal. By integrating mobile into the store environment, Olive Garden gives customers more control of their experience and servers more time to focus on getting customers what they want.