North American COVID-19 consumer habits survey signals a return to pre-Covid patterns for foodservice with heightened expectations around safety and cleanliness

Ottawa, Canada (May 11, 2021) - Intouch Insight, a leading provider in Customer Experience Management software and services, released its latest survey results exploring how consumers are interacting with restaurant and other foodservice establishments during COVID-19. This study was a second follow-up to the original study from May 2020 which was undertaken to understand the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on food service businesses.

The latest results continue to provide insight into how businesses can pivot to meet the demands of their customers and reinforce that, while consumer habits are on track to return to pre-COVID patterns, new habits have formed. “Heightened customer expectations around cleanliness and safety have now become standard,” says Sarah Beckett, Director of Marketing at Intouch Insight, “and businesses need to understand which protocols put their customers at ease, and ensure they continue to reinforce these procedures to keep customers coming back.”

Key findings from the study:

• Respondents continue to reinforce their need for safety and cleanliness as a top concern, ranking ensuring customers wear masks and improved cleanliness as the number one and two change they want to see businesses make.
• When making the decision to visit a restaurant or order prepared food, 90% of March 2021 and October 2020 respondents rated quality of food as extremely important, compared to only 49% in May of last year.
• Off-premise operations continue to see steady adoption across the board, and results show a preference towards ordering for pick-up over delivery, especially when orders are placed over the phone.

For additional details on the results of the study you can download the full report here: https://go.intouchinsight.com/changes_in_consumer_habits_restaurant_apr2021.

Intouch Insight will be releasing subsequent reports covering specific industry verticals. For more information, or to request specific data and insights, please contact Sarah Beckett at sbeckett@intouchinsight.com.

About Intouch Insight
Intouch Insight (TSXV: INX) (OTCQB: INXSF) offers a complete portfolio of customer experience management (CEM) products and services that help global brands delight their customers, strengthen brand reputation and improve financial performance. Through its flagship SaaS product, LiaCX®, Intouch helps clients collect and centralize data from multiple customer touch points, gives them actionable, real-time insights, and provides them with the tools to continuously improve customer experience. Founded in 1992, Intouch is trusted by over 300 of North America’s most-loved brands for their customer experience management, customer survey, mystery shopping, mobile forms, operational and compliance audits, and event marketing automation solutions. For more information, visit intouchinsight.com.

For further information, please contact:

Sarah Beckett
Director of Marketing
sbeckett@intouchinsight.com
613-270-7922