Buying food for the family at a mall’s food court can be a time-consuming exercise if you want to keep all the kids and grandpa happy. At Mall of Cyprus, Atterbury Property Executive Director and consultant to Atterbury Europe in Cyprus, Lucille Louw and the local management team in Cyprus have harnessed technology to make shoppers’ lives easier.

In Europe, much more so than in South Africa, the food court is typically the heart of a mall, where everyone gathers and socialises at lunch time, and where quick-service restaurant tenants vie for shoppers’ custom. “The food court is actually an anchor of its own; and food-court dining is a big thing,” explains Lucille Louw.

When buying lunch for the family, traditionally you’d have to go from outlet to outlet to order and collect one child’s KFC burger, the other one’s McDonald’s fries, dad’s Ocean Basket and your own salad, or everyone would have to eat the same thing because Mom wasn’t going to stand in five queues. At Mall of Cyprus, the management team are in the process of solving this conundrum once and for all by introducing self-ordering facilities within the food-court seating area for the use of all the quick-service restaurants.

Explains Louw, “How it works is that you order from all the different restaurants via screens in the food court. You pay, and then find a seat in the common area, and the restaurants will bring the different orders right to your table. It makes things so much easier for families who have multiple orders; and because it is all taking place in one area, it supports all the tenants simultaneously.”

Offering the customers the luxury of choice with none of the hassle, is another way to create loyalty and repeat customers, and to give consumers what they want.

“Self-service facilities are a big trend in Europe; you don’t see many manned tills the way we know them,” says Louw. “McDonald’s was the first quick-service restaurant to jump on this trend. It has made sense for us to follow their lead, and we will bring it into our food court for our tenants to use, and in the process adding value to our customers’ experience, giving them one more reason to choose Mall of Cyprus.”

The possibilities of online shopping are only in its infancy, and Louw is excited about a future that holds many more opportunities for overlap and synergy with formal retail.

Such as a shoe shop in Romania where no shoes are physically on display, but shoppers browse among an extensive catalogue on an iPad from the comfort of a couch, while sipping a coffee. “It is like online shopping, only, when you like a shoe, it is fetched from the back for you to try on, and if you like it, you buy it,” explains Louw. “The store is basically a lounge and a storage facility and the experience is that of online shopping, with the touch and see benefit of regular shopping.”

“We want shops and tenants in our malls that offer innovations such as this, to entertain shoppers and give a whole new meaning to the word convenience. I am looking forward to finding more of the right tenants who will surprise and delight us as much as they thrill our customers.”