By Sarah B. Hood
The COVID dust has settled, and for many, that means re-examining the patchwork of tech solutions that helped them survive when distancing was de rigueur.
“Restaurants have been applying tech Band-Aids to their problems,” says Bob Vergidis, Chief Vision Officer with pointofsale.cloud. “The next trend they should look at is integrating their technology.”
This process has already started; this year’s top tech trends show how functions that were once separate are now blending to create a seamless integration of data that unites customer, server, kitchen and office.
Online ordering
“The low-hanging fruit is making digital ordering as seamless as possible,” says Vince Sgabellone, Foodservice Industry Analyst with Circana, who predicts white-label providers will be increasingly working towards helping restaurants pull all their apps together.
Digital orders “have doubled since pre-pandemic,” he says. “It’s about 12 per cent of all restaurant-visit ordering, with 80 per cent of that from mobile apps.” This proportion will increase as younger diners move into the picture.
Brands are promoting proprietary apps in creative ways: last fall, Firehouse Subs Canada offered diners a free sub for their first purchase via its website or app. Tim Hortons awards points when users scan their credit card to use public transit in the Greater Toronto Area.
Dining rooms are adapting for digital customers; in 2024, Wendy’s plans to open 200 of its Global Next Gen restaurants, with self-order kiosks, pick-up pass-throughs and dedicated parking for mobile-order pick-up. In 2023, Swiss Chalet also opened outlets with takeout ordering kiosks and a Chalet Valet Prepaid Pickup Lane.
Third-party apps
We’re still in the Wild West of third-party apps, with key players striving to differentiate themselves: good news for restaurateurs, because competition is driving innovation.
Last September, Deliverect and Uber partnered to allow restaurants to connect directly with Uber couriers and set the pricing to deliver orders placed through their own websites or apps. In October 2023, Popmenu and OpenTable launched a partnership that streamlines the creation of digital menus. Meanwhile, in Kingston, Ont., a local food-delivery app called Delish Local is challenging the big players with low restaurant fees and better driver compensation.
Lightspeed has recently launched Pay at Table, which lets servers take payment for all or part of a cheque without returning to the POS area. “It’s an efficiency gain for the restaurant and also a great guest experience,” says Peter Dougherty, Lightspeed’s general manager of Hospitality. Its Tap to Pay app lets servers run payments through an iPhone.
Artificial Intelligence
“Artificial Intelligence (AI) will make a big splash in restaurants because it costs less,” says Vergidis. He sees it being used to take food orders, identify frequent visitors and evaluate product value, among other tasks: “in five years, we will all be using it.”
Upselling targeted at individual diners is just the beginning. The Boston-based Incentivio platform announced last May that it has raised $10 million to explore ways to use AI and machine learning specifically to help restaurants reduce hands-on staff time, cut costs and increase revenue based on their own data.
Robotics
Don’t be surprised to see a food-laden cart dash past next time you’re in a Loblaws parking lot; robots are here, and they’re not only handling deliveries, but cooking, too.
At The Hospitality Show 2023 in Las Vegas, KEENON Robotics showed off hotel and restaurant robots that offered information, guided visitors and handed out exhibit materials. The Smyze “robarista” can blend custom drinks, and robots are concocting the salads at Sweetgreen outlets.
Sgabellone believes robot servers and hosts provide “a little bit of fun, some Instagrammability” and predicts growing delivery applications for closed environments such as universities and large work campuses as prices drop.
Predictability is a benefit, notes Vergidis, who says that, in kitchens, “restaurants should look at automation as a way of reducing labour; a robot will do it exactly the same way every time.”
Predictive inventory systems
Inventory systems are also offering new ways to integrate data and make operations more cost-efficient. For instance, last September, TouchBistro added TouchBistro Profit Management to its suite of POS products.
“It allows operators to regain control of costs and inventory,” says Jackie Prange, the company’s VP of Marketing. “Within Profit Management we have invoice processing, digitization for food costs and multifunctionality for various locations — you can send and receive items between locations.”
The system allows granular tracking of food and other inventory, with new items added and prices updated daily. “If you’re using more of one ingredient all the time, you can see that and update your storage accordingly,” says Prange. “It handles recipe and menu analyses; you can calculate your plate costs and your most popular and high-volume items.”
Virtual reality
Last May, spoon.tech launched a mobile-based training system in North America that uses gamification to make learning fun, with levels, rewards and cute pixelated characters to get trainees hooked.
“We make training addictive, so your restaurant workers want to repeat the training,” says founder Daniil Klubov.
Most digital training today consists of screen-based video segments followed by a quiz; younger workers are much more engaged by the handheld interface. Training segments are populated when an operator uploads existing documents, such as cleaning protocols, training handbooks and recipes; creating video segments is quick and intuitive.
True virtual reality is quickly arriving in restaurants, with 3D menus that show food from all angles. “They used to be hard to produce, but now you can get apps on your phone,” says Virgidis. Soon cooks and servers will be able to train in a digital environment using 3D food and equipment.
Gamification
Customers and staff alike are being engaged through gamified interactive apps. For instance, with Tims Hockey Challenge, Tim Hortons invites its customers to log in and pick three NHL hockey players every day to win prizes if any or all of them score in that day’s games. The brilliant feature, says Sgabellone, is that it incentivizes players to “go to the app every day even if you’re not ordering coffee.”
He also singles out the Coca-Cola Freestyle app, which allows users to mix and share their own soft-drink blends in conjunction with in-store drink dispensers and to receive special offers. In August, Boston Pizza announced a partnership with Nintendo that brought Mario-themed activities to kids’ menus. On Nintendo Switch Fun Sundays, some locations even offered gaming systems for play at tables.
Contactless payment
Diners are quickly becoming more comfortable with new technologies; tech company Snappy’s 2023 consumer foodservice findings indicate that 22 per cent of customers are now opting for self-serve over face-to-face ordering, with Gen Z guests 31 per cent more likely than millennials to use it.
Last August, an Interac survey showed that 78 per cent of Gen-Z adults now pay for transactions via smartphone and that Mobile Interac Debit purchases at restaurants and eating places had risen 63 per cent over the last 12 months (40 per cent at fast-food restaurants.)
Guest-Facing Technology and Service-process Automation, a recent Cornell research study, finds that, although about 20 per cent of restaurant guests resist guest-facing technology, introduction of “cashless payments are inevitable industry wide.” The researchers note that while “tipping levels have decreased from 19 per cent to 18.5 per cent” with cashless service, overall revenues are up.
Kitchen display systems
“The topic du jour is AI and how you leverage it,” says Lightspeed’s Peter Dougherty. “What if your KDS knows, using AI, that take 3.5 minutes to cook the salmon?” The KDS can advise when to start the fish; soon it will be able to track and predict allergens, populate a menu into multiple languages or even generate an image of a dish without taking
a photo.
Vergidis says we’re reaching the point where a guest can place an order digitally and a robot cook will fulfill it. “And it will take just three minutes,” he says. “It will always take three minutes, because each robot has six fryers. You can have your very own food cooked just for you like your mother used to do: that is the holy grail of the restaurant industry. I think restaurants will run with fewer people, and I think people will make more money.”
Leveraging data
As digital systems connect, restaurants can fine-tune staffing and cost control like never before. With its new Lightspeed Insights module, “we’re using very smart technology to match the items on your menu with dining habits of guests,” Dougherty says.
Insights can identify how likely a menu item is to bring guests back to the restaurant and alert operators when a dish should be promoted or dropped. “We know that restaurants using the Lightspeed Insights module are growing their business 50-per-cent faster,” he says.
Now, restaurants are working with multiple providers, but some foodservice companies are building proprietary software to tie everything together, while Dougherty sees some providers pulling ahead of the pack — such as management and sales app Tenzo or Toast POS — because they focus on connectivity between functions.
“People are beginning to realize that data is everything in business,” he says. “People who have clean data will be winning, because they can connect it to AI.”
