Almost a week since the roll-out of its WhatsApp pilot at the KFC Cumberland store in Portmore, Restaurants of Jamaica (ROJ) said it is pleased with the uptake of the new service which is positively supported by customer feedback.

“So far the response has been extremely promising. The customer base at Cumberland is quickly getting accustomed to our WhatsApp ordering service and our expectation is that its use will continue to increase during this pilot phase as more and more customers take advantage of the ease and convenience,” said ROJ Brand Manager Andrei Roper in his response to queries from the Jamaica Observer yesterday.

The recently added service aims to reduce in-store traffic while providing safer alternatives for customers to purchase their food in line with government -implemented measures to curtail the spread of the ongoing novel coronavirus pandemic.

Roper, in speaking to his projections for the impact of the latest ordering service, said that the company’s intention through the added platform was to not only convert walk-in and drive-thru customers, but to also attract new business from the underserved masses, as more people warm up to the convenience of the service.

“We expect the impact on sales to be very positive as we grow and develop this new ordering channel, which definitely has much potential,” he told the Business Observer.

Roper also said that based on the ease of utilising the service, customers were already eager for it to become available at other restaurants in Portmore and islandwide, a move which the company was already fast-tracking.

“We certainly do intend to expand our WhatsApp ordering service to our Braeton and Portmore Mall locations in the next few weeks, and then to Kingston and St Andrew not long afterwards, before expanding to other parishes as well.

“In addition to the expansion of our WhatsApp ordering service, we will also continue to expand our delivery network, with more regions across the country being serviced through KFC delivery in the coming months,” he stated.

ROJ’s Marketing Director Tina Matalon, at the launch of the pilot last Thursday, said that the move to add the new service forms part of the company’s larger thrust to support the digital transformation of the local food and beverage industry.

“The COVID-19 pandemic forced many local companies across industries to speed up the rate of their transition to digital.

“We want to empower customers to order directly to their nearest KFC and conveniently pick up without any wait time or even the need to leave their vehicles. We will be using the lessons learnt from the Portmore pilot to adapt and improve the programme to ensure that the national expansion goes smoothly. I expect this programme to be a game-changer for our operations,” she said in a news release last week.