Dinner and lunch breaks are perfect moments to top up an electric vehicle. That is why both the number of restaurants interested in offering this opportunity and the range of products able to deliver charging in a short time, without putting too much strain on the electricity meter, are growing. Dynamic load management, RFID cards and ease of use are top priorities when choosing devices
What better time than a lunch break or an evening meal to “top up” your car’s battery while you eat, and above all, what better opportunity for a restaurant to build customer loyalty and attract new customers than by investing in charging infrastructure? Electric mobility has opened up new horizons that fit perfectly with this dynamic and that, if properly exploited, can act as a driver for growing your business. In Italy, a growing number of hospitality and catering businesses are choosing to offer their customers the chance to charge their electric vehicle too: “Our database on the EViaggio portal, which offers a free, ad-free service, currently includes over 2,000 properties in total, including hotels, restaurants and accommodation that also offer catering. Compared with 2023 we have seen an increase of between 30 and 40% in listings, a figure also confirmed by the trends recorded in the Motus-E reports,” explains Nicola Carlon, creator of one of the leading free portals for e-drivers looking for accommodation that can guarantee the availability of charging stations. “Over the years we have formed several partnerships with companies that install charging points, and this has contributed significantly to the increase in the number of businesses listed on the site. On this basis, and looking at the pace at which properties are being updated, I would say there is ample room for growth, in the sense that, proportionally, there are still few businesses across the country offering charging as a service. This trend, from the feedback we have collected, is driven above all by the still small number of BEVs on the road, which in turn translates into a lack of urgency among restaurants and other accommodation providers to install wall boxes or charging points.” “Restaurants are part of the hospitality category, that is, all those businesses with a public or semi-public car park for which being able to offer charging as a service by installing dedicated infrastructure is becoming very attractive,” confirms Federico Bussatori, sales director of EliosTech, an installation service operating throughout Italy. “At Elios Tech we are very closely tied to this target market, which for us is a genuine core business, as shown by the more than 600 hospitality properties we have electrified and continue to support with assistance, training and follow-up.”
CPO or private management of the station?
One of the first steps for restaurants wishing to offer charging as a service is to assess the business model best suited to their needs. There are essentially two routes: the first is to install your own charging infrastructure and manage it in-house through a dedicated platform, with the option of charging customers for the kWh consumed by setting specific tariffs. The second involves having the station managed by a CPO, opening up access to the charging points to the public (and not just to your own customers). “At Driwe we have worked with both restaurants and many hotels that also offer a restaurant service,” explains Luca Secco, founder and CEO of Driwe, a company involved in installing and developing services for electric mobility. “One of the most important issues is first of all how the property intends to use the charging station. Some prefer private management of the charging points, for the sole use of their customers, while other businesses prefer to share them on maps to make them available to the public. Usually the more ‘protective’ owners who prefer private management are pushed towards this solution because they may have limited parking spaces, especially in town centres or close to cities. However, as also emerges from the feedback we regularly collect through our platforms, this approach can generate a kind of dissatisfaction among users, because if at a tourist destination or a restaurant they see a charging point they cannot use, they perceive it as poor service, especially if they only realise it on the spot, perhaps when going in to ask for information, or when they see the space occupied by combustion-engine vehicles. And then there is another issue linked precisely to the technical management of these spaces. That is, if the business owner decides to manage the infrastructure privately without relying on a shared platform, they must do so impeccably. Perhaps the installer recommends a budget, not very smart charger, but then the owner finds it impossible to manage it properly, making life even more complicated for whoever runs the venue or restaurant. I have personally visited restaurants with a charging point in the car park that the staff were unable to operate because the person in charge was not there that day or was on holiday. Obviously this poor service can also have a negative impact on customers’ overall experience of the venue. In these situations we believe it is important instead to rely on external Charging Point Operators, such as Driwe, to delegate the management of the charging point and offer a working service with user-friendly charging. Installing a charging point and including it in an international network managed by a CPO is a great advantage, and we see this above all in the tourist destinations where we operate, places that are very popular with foreign visitors (for example on Lake Garda) who arrive and want to charge their car as simply as possible, without having to deal with the business owner and with as few ‘steps’ as possible to avoid problems. Simplified, universal approaches are needed: there cannot be 10 apps for 10 different restaurants, each with a different way of using them. Standardisation is also crucial for the good of the business itself, because it improves the user experience. Furthermore, being paid for the charging service can also be an incentive for the owner of the host business in the hospitality sector, encouraging the spread of charging infrastructure that is always kept at maximum capacity and at the highest quality of service, both delivered and perceived.”
In this respect, the support of a competent installer or technician becomes essential in helping the business owner choose the business model best suited to their needs. “This is a market segment that is definitely growing and has great potential, but every day we find ourselves fighting the widespread misinformation that still surrounds the world of electric mobility,” says Federico Bussatori. “Today, even before thinking about or planning the installation of a charging point, there is a necessary information process to put the restaurateur in a position to choose the most suitable solution for a given context. Not least because it doesn’t stop at simply choosing the charger: we are also talking about different business and management models, in which a business owner can delegate the management of charging or run the station independently. That said, it is important to make it clear that being able to offer customers the chance to charge during lunch or dinner is in itself a driver for increasing restaurant turnover. Charging can truly become a magnet for customers, including new ones, for your business. The widespread problem throughout Italy, for which we are still paying the price, has been the poor information spread by some media about electric vehicles. And besides fake news, which is obviously harmful, there is a real lack of information: electric vehicles and sustainability are heavily advertised, but few people really explain what charging involves, what differences the various stations make depending on their power, and a whole series of features that are unfortunately underestimated. To address this gap we have set up a team of 8 consultants covering all of Italy’s regions, whose job is precisely to inform potential customers about the opportunities and the challenges of electric mobility. In other words, to help business owners understand how a charging station is actually used. To the properties that rely on our expertise we can offer both ready-to-use all-inclusive packages and platforms for independently managing charging payments. The restaurateur can in fact offer charging in different ways, either by handing the charging point over to a CPO to manage, with a lower margin per kWh, or, for example, by using the energy produced by a photovoltaic system for charging and offering the service to customers free of charge. Then there are restaurateurs who prefer to make their charging station public on eMSP maps, thereby sharing it and making it available to all potential customers. Others prefer not to, perhaps because they have few spaces available and want to give priority to their customers, or more simply because they cannot guarantee access to the car park when the business is closed. In fact, it must be borne in mind that restaurateurs generally prefer to offer charging when the business is open, so that they can also earn from lunches and dinners.”
For restaurants that prefer to manage their own charging station privately, much like the destination chargers listed by Tesla or Porsche on their interoperable networks, the EViaggio portal lets them share their venue, listing in detail all the features of the station on site. “It is difficult to identify a trend in the segment by looking at the listings on our portal. This is simply because the site is mainly based on user-generated content, meaning that it is customers, installers and the restaurants themselves who add the venues where charging stations are available,” explains Nicola Carlon. “Our site is designed to promote, free of charge, venues, in this case restaurants, that reserve the use of their charging infrastructure for their own customers, thus with the guarantee of a dedicated station managed directly by the business owner. On our portal, when a venue decides to add its listing, it can specify whether the charging points are publicly accessible, but the vast majority of listings do not opt for this, partly to guarantee a certain level of quality. In practice, EViaggio provides a service comparable to what Tesla has done with its destination chargers, but open to all types of users. What’s more, the restaurant’s listing also specifies whether or not the station is compatible with all car models.”
[Source: “L’appetito vien ricaricando” (Charging works up an appetite), E-Ricarica print monthly, June 2024, https://e-ricarica.it/lappetito-vien-ricaricando-lofferta-di-mercato-per-i-ristoranti/, E-Ricarica ]
