Off-Premise Technology Showcase

The fervor for off-premise dining is driving restaurant operators to invest in solutions that promote and streamline order-ahead, pickup, drive-through and delivery options. Diners are clamoring for delivery and pickup options that offer the ultimate in convenience. Guest data from the 2019 Customer Engagement Technology Study charts that deliver in specific areas. Hospitality Technology’s 2019 Restaurant Technology Study also confirms that providing guests with customized hyper-convenience will be a top strategic goal. Removing friction from food delivery whether that be takeaway with curbside pickup and drive-thru or delivery will require strong integrations and nimble tech partners. Hospitality Technology’s Off-Premise Technology Showcase offers a look at solutions that help restaurants provide the seamless convenience diners want in delivery or takeout. Read on for exclusive executive insights and product spotlights from sponsors. What systems are vital for restaurants to manage and streamline an increasing off-premise business? What integrations will be most important to make an effective infrastructure? TOBY MALBEC: With the variable of timed orders introduced into off-premise or takeaway business, it is essential to be able to manage orders that are for the immediate and not-so-immediate future. This means that in-restaurant technology needs to be able to manage timed orders both in terms of when to fire them into the kitchen as well as a method of alerting customers when orders are ready. To achieve in these areas, integrations will be vital. A POS system must be capable of holding orders until the appropriate time. A kitchen-display system (KDS) needs to display all the vital information and a guest communication process (most likely the app where they ordered from) will need to integrate to the KDS to know when the order has been bumped and is either available for pick-up or on its way. What role will mobile play streamlining pickup, drive-through and delivery? What are some aspects of mobility (ordering, payment or mobile order management) that operators overlook or under-utilize? PATRICK CHEN: As we get further into the IoT world, mobile devices are playing an important role in everyday business. Having a thin tablet device, that does not have to be equipped with high computing power, can provide an interface for the end customer or employee to communicate with the backend system. Take drive-thru for example, to avoid waiting for each driver to get to the speaker box, employees can take a POS tablet and walk to each car to take orders as well as card payments. The orders will be sent to the kitchen for preparation and the server at the pick-up window only needs to worry about serving the food and not have to worry about payment (unless it’s cash). MALBEC: I expect we will see a growth in the number of vendors using location services on customers’ mobile devices in order to improve the quality of service provided. For instance, by using geolocation services, a restaurant could know when a pickup customer is three miles out from the restaurant and time the preparation of the order to avoid the food sitting around or the customer needing to wait. Additionally, in locations where parking is a challenge, geolocation allows a restaurant to identify exactly where a customer is parked enabling operators to run the order out to the car, avoiding unnecessary congestion, and moving traffic along. How can restaurants leverage digital signage to improve experiences for in-store pickup, curbside pickup, drive-through or delivery? What will the next generation of digital menu boards look like and what internal technology will make this possible? CHEN: The basic idea of digital signage is the advertising: attract customer to order more, improve customer experiences while waiting, build customer loyalty and more. Since the rise of off-premise business, we see more restaurants using digital signage, not only inside, but also outside of restaurants. Digital menu boards reduce the long-term cost of static menu boards, as digital allows the restaurant owner to automatically update the menu from his computer without having to use a third party printing company for static menus. Restaurant owners should keep in mind the necessary features of a menu board: water poof, high brightness, and wide working temperature for the outdoor applications. MALBEC: Digital signage in general is poorly leveraged. I have high hopes that in the next ten years a digital convergence will take place that will allow restaurateurs to manage a single menu item database across all channels and not have to manually keep five to six different databases in sync simply because vendors cannot establish a standard or work collaboratively. As for improving the guest experience, tighter integration with the customer’s online ordering app (using location services) combined with integration with KDS would allow a customer order delivery board to dynamically show orders in the queue and those that are ready for pickup. There are some versions of this out today but from personal experience they are still far from bulletproof. What emerging technologies do you think have real application to remove friction from off-premise dining? CHEN: We see there are more mobile solutions being used in QSR and restaurants. Restaurants use mobile solutions to resolve the line bursting issue inside and outside the restaurant, such as drive thru. The tablet for drive thru (outdoor) application is better to support wide working temperature, IP65 rating, sunlight readable for either a cold day, hot day, or a rainy day. It is also better to have a hand strap, shoulder strap, and for the tablet to be lightweight so it is easier for the employee who will be walking around with the tablet. It is better to support drop spec, swappable battery, and payment module for the business operation. MALBEC: I think alerting via text message (two-way) will have major benefits to managing a professional and timely transaction with the customer. Through the use of chatbots, many orders can appear more personalized yet require less human intervention. That, combined with the integration between restaurant systems that know when the order is ready and the mobile app would make for a much better customer experience and should also lead to a better quality food product. Since we know the craze of off-premise dining has moved some restaurateurs into the space where they are recognizing that product doesn’t travel well, all of these technologies can help to make the experience as enjoyable as possible. How can cloud-based systems help when considering the influx of off-premise orders? MALBEC: Cloud-based systems are growing in adoption and overall popularity because they greatly reduce integration breakpoints and simplify the aggregation of data as these attributes are native in their design. Due to the need for immediate access to orders to be communicated to the restaurants, however, it puts a great deal of dependence on Internet connectivity, which in this day and age should not be a challenge for any location, but alarmingly continues to be. As a result, in order to avoid missed or delayed orders, all restaurateurs should have a redundancy plan, normally in the form of a 4G cellular backup that takes over in the event that the primary connection fails. It is important that this rollover does not require manual intervention, that the user is made aware that the primary connection is down, and is also alerted with the primary connection is restored. What do you recommend for operators to enable true customer choice and provide service/ordering options to meet guest preferences? CHEN: Since McDonald’s started offering self-ordering kiosks, many QSR, FSR, and coffee shops have followed suit. By using the self-ordering kiosks, restaurant employees do not have to wait for customers to order at the counter, and customers can order with less pressure. This enables true customer choice. Restaurant owners can get highly accurate data of customer preferences by collecting the data from kiosks. Advantech 13 Whatney, Irvine, CA 92618 Email: IoT.Sales.USA@advantech.com https://www.advantech.com/ QSR Automations General Inquiries: qsr@qsrautomations.com Phone: (855) 980-7328 http://www.qsrautomations.com/dinetime-demo/

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