Article

3 restaurant tech trends that can help get the 'whole house' in order

Whether it's in the front-of-house. the back-of-house or outside the house, restaurants should rely on technology this year to create agility, increase digital channels and collect data.

February 6, 2019 by Cherryh Cansler — Editor, FastCasual.com

 Editor's note: FastCasual interviewed executives from a variety of tech vendors to reveal some of 2019's most promising tech trends. Part 1 of this series featured executives from Paytronix and CoInspect. Part 2 discussed customers relying more on near-me and voice searches to help them decide where to eat. Part 3  focused on how the rise of third-party delivery and the tight labor market were forcing restaurants to evolve their POS systems. In Part 4, we heard from Givex  COO Graham Campbell.

In order to keep up with customers' expectations for speed and accuracy, increase traffic and average check while also minimizing expenses, restaurants must leverage digital solutions for back-of-house, front-of-house and outside the house, Mike Wior, Omnivore, co-founder and CEO, said in an interview with FastCasual.

"Restaurants continue to find themselves in a situation where they cannot innovate quickly or participate in critical technology because of past integrations and architecture," said Wior, who said creating agility was one of the most important tech trends of the year. "In the meantime, third-party technologies, focused on consumers and restaurant staff, are evolving at a record pace."

Examples include online ordering iterations, third-party delivery optimization, loyalty integration, order and pay at table digitally, kiosks, digital menu boards, inventory management, labor management, data management, etc.

"Restaurant brands need a technology platform that is agile and flexible in order to experiment, test and deploy these technologies faster than their competition. Brands like Domino's and Panera have done this well.," Wior said. "

That means they'll need to build the infrastructures themselves or have an outside company do it for them, said Wior. He also believes restaurants should pay attention to two other trends: channel proliferation and syndicated data partnerships.

Channel proliferation
"Over the past couple of years, we have seen the innovation and evolution of third-party delivery and native restaurant brand apps which will continue to evolve rapidly over the next 24 to 36 months," he said about channel proliferation. "Enhancements with user interface experiences can be seen with consumer-driven innovations in voice ordering, social media ordering, artificial reality, ordering from maps, ordering from reviews, etc. Third-party technologies are answering these consumer digital needs, and restaurant brands will want to participate in these channels too. However, restaurants will have to manage several different ordering capabilities with different menus."

Restaurants hoping to get a better handle on that will use a single portal for digital menus resulting in better brand and content control, as well as operational control with features like order injection.

"Truly addressing the increased complexity of digital channels while giving the restaurant consistency over the brand's experience," he said. 

Syndicated data partnerships
As the restaurant experience has become more digitized there is more data than ever to gain game-changing insights and measure success, which means data will have the most impact on a restaurant's business going forward.

"The brands that turn those insights and metrics into strategies and actions fast are the ones building strong competitive advantages," Wior said. "Something as simple and niche as Domino's Dinner Bell is built on understanding the consumers need and reaction to such technology. Something as complex as Subway's strategy of having multiple third-party delivery partners is also heavily reliant on real transaction and consumer data."

Wior admitted, however, that most restaurants can't afford to create a data warehouse, hire a data science team and procure and manage external data sets — all necessary for building meaningful actionable insights.

"This high bar will create a gap between the very large brands who do have the resources to manipulate this data and those who don't," he said. 

The way around that? Working with a company that offers a product that enables restaurants of any size to collect, warehouse and extract their data in a low-cost efficient way.

Cover photo: iStock

About Cherryh Cansler

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Cherryh Cansler is VP of Events for Networld Media Group and publisher of FastCasual.com. She has been covering the restaurant industry since 2012. Her byline has appeared in Forbes, The Kansas City Star and American Fitness magazine, among many others.

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