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. “This enduring customer loyalty drives the restaurant industry forward, creating clear opportunities for restaurants to enhance the dining experience through strategic limited time offers, efficient delivery and exceptional in-person service," said Samir Zabaneh, CEO of TouchBistro.
A recent eBook by Softarex Technologies highlights all the main aspects of AI usage in restaurant operations, from customer service to back-of-house management. This transformation is not just about automation; it's about creating smarter, more efficient, and more personalized dining experiences.
In 2025, I expect automation to keep expanding beyond back-of-house applications into more guest-facing roles. Self-serve kiosks, QR-code menus, and personalized ordering systems will continue to redefine how patrons interact with venues. As we navigate these changes, one theme stands out: innovation.
Front-of-house teams juggled high guest expectations with paper logs, manual reports, and legacy systems that weren’t built to keep up with the pace of service. We saw widespread adoption of mobile payments, digital ordering, and contactless dining almost overnight. Real-time insights? Virtually nonexistent.
Steady Online Ordering Brings Food Waste, Donations to the Forefront of Priorities Ordering food online increases restaurant sales, but it also can potentially increase wasted food if proactive measures aren’t taken – for both the business and consumers at home.
From salted egg yolks and chili crunch fusions to mushroom-infused teas and freeze-dried fruit powder garnishes, Kimpton’s in-house experts share the standout ingredients, menu items and techniques that will come to the table in 2025. What can you expect to see on menus in 2025?
Hospitality operators are rapidly turning to contactless ordering and payment solutions to help navigate the long road back to normal from COVID-19’s impacts. " While contactless ordering and payment is here to stay, many operators remain concerned about how this new service model will impact their guest experience.
Online ordering has transformed the restaurant industry, turning what was once a convenience into an absolute necessity. Customers expect to browse menus, place orders, and pay for their meals with just a few taps of their phones. Why Every Restaurant Needs an Online Ordering System The answer is simple: to stay competitive.
Solo dining – a time dedicated to eating a meal alone at a sit-down restaurant – is an opportunity for diners to practice self care over a meal, whether that be by relaxing and reflecting at the end of a long day or even by engaging the mind with a book or catching up on the news. Just the “cover count.”
Increasing your restaurants online order volume doesnt have to feel like an impossible task. In this guide, well walk through seven practical ways to boost your restaurants online order volume. Optimize Your Website and Online Ordering Experience If your restaurants website isnt easy to use, youre probably losing out on online orders.
To tackle these challenges, restaurant owners are relying more on digital tools like mobile ordering, self-service kiosks, and AI-powered workforce management. Self-order and payment kiosks as well as QR code menus are streamlining front-of-house operations, improving order accuracy and speeding up service.
In today’s fast-paced dining world, guest satisfaction goes beyond just great food—it’s about delivering a seamless experience. When guest expectations are sky-high and every table turn counts, how quickly a team responds – both to guests and to each other – can significantly shape the dining experience.
So much data is generated at every point within a restaurant, whether fast casual or fine dining. The question now becomes – how to make sense of that data and use it to elevate the dining experience. For the first part, click here and for the second part, click here. Data, Data, Data.
One location might offer seamless mobile ordering, while another struggles with glitchy payment systems, creating inconsistencies that can frustrate customers and impact revenue. It’s no secret that restaurants with more than one location depend on standardization to thrive.
If you want to increase order volume for your restaurant, focusing on online takeout and delivery is key. Since 2014, these channels have grown 300% faster than dine-inand the trend isnt slowing down. But growing online order volume isnt always easy. Make mobile-friendliness a top priority.
With the rising costs of goods, consumers growing more conscious of spending habits, and private equity-backed brands popping up in communities large and small, mom-and-pops are in danger of adding to the failure statistics. Today, independent restaurants can and should tap into those same tools–without the massive corporate budget.
When properly deployed, they can transform the employee experience by improving daily operations, syncing front-of-house and back-of-house communication and execution, and delivering a memorable dining experience that won’t send staff to the walk-in cooler for a good cry.
Adopting in-house technologies became necessary for restaurants to stay open throughout the pandemic, restart operations after temporary closures, and pivot services to maintain revenue while still following enhanced health and safety protocols. Too Much Tech Is Not a Solution. Want to be Tech-Savvy? Start with Your Staff.
As a new normal emerges, it will be more important than ever to elevate the dining experience with experiences that are personal and delightful. This includes the entire order to pay processes, from employee collaboration to guest interaction, whether via smartphone, tablet, kiosk or VR headset. And this will take some time.
: MRM Restaurant Survival Guide Updates , COVID-19 Resources for Restaurants , PPP Part Two and More News Restaurants Need to Know Now and Restaurant Reopening Resources. The form and instructions inform borrowers how to apply for forgiveness of their PPP loans, consistent with the Coronavirus Aid, Relief, and Economic Security Act (CARES Act).
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced thousands of traditional restaurants to transform themselves into order ahead restaurants; pre-pandemic, only 15 percent of restaurants offered curbside pickup; today, that’s up to 70 percent. Automating Order Ahead Logistics. But they lacked a piece of technology to manage it.
I came across an old quote from Phylicia Rashad (for those my age – the lead actress in the series “Fame” from many years back) that gave me another opportunity to think about the cooks that I know and have known over the past five (nearly six) decades and why I chose to stand in front of a range. Art is the basis of human expression.”
There will *always *be something your staff can do to enhance a patron’s dining experience. As a restaurant manager or operator, you are the driving force in productivity – leading your staff and keeping customers happy. However, productivity is more easily trained than managed.
A chief reason is due to caution or uncertainty exhibited by conscious consumers, with 48 percent saying they are taking the ‘wait and see’ approach and holding back on spending in 2024. Moving to Multichannel Dining Experiences Dining out is… back? Orders come from a multitude of places.
You can capitalize on peoples’ cabin fever during this time of self quarantine by promoting your order pickup services. Try offering free curbside pickup for all orders placed directly through your establishment, saving the cost of third-party services. This idea can be applied to dine-in, pickup, and delivery orders.
Heading into the winter months, restaurants will be challenged even further as the revenue streams that have been keeping them afloat during the summer and fall such as outdoor dining and patio seating will see fewer customers with inclement weather and colder temperatures.
Since the pandemic, restaurants have endured a plethora of issues ranging from fluctuating dining restrictions to supply chain issues to rising food prices. Demand for Dining Out Isn’t Going Anywhere. Taking Orders with Artificial Intelligence.
This edition of Modern Restaurant Management (MRM) magazine's Research Roundup features delivery data, tariff troubles, summer dining trends, and Beer Serves America. The report analyzed data from more than 30,000 QSR restaurants that generated a total of 4.5 billion transactions and $67 billion in sales in 2024. labor costs at 3 percent.
The tool from the East Coast vegan chain — a digital take on a split-flap mechanical display that appears on its website and in the chain’s ordering app — estimates the amounts of water, land, CO2, and oil saved by eating vegan burgers. The “ PLNT Impact Tracker ” on PLNT Burger’s website wants you to think about what you’re eating.
Operational efficiency: Fresh-baked waffle mix is shelf stable, creates minimal waste and has a 3-day shelf life once prepared, supporting back-of-house operational efficiency. . That’s where waffles come in: they’re high margin for the operator, crave-able and on-trend for the consumer and efficient for back-of-house.
Here are some examples of how connectivity technologies are helping QSR brands, like Dunkin’, connect with customers and redefine the dining experience. Enabling Flexible Ordering. Flexible ordering has become an expectation for restaurant customers – from fine dining to quick service.
The biggest challenge will be on-premise dining and the shift from outdoors to indoors as temperatures decrease in many regions. The biggest challenge will be on-premise dining and the shift from outdoors to indoors as temperatures decrease in many regions. Are certain tables too close together?
In just three weeks, they created a native solution that allowed Clover restaurant merchants to enable online ordering for delivery or curbside pickup. This digital innovation has been helpful for small business, with roughly 20 percent of all transaction volume for Clover restaurants running through online ordering. Ellen Linardi.
The past two years have brought unprecedented changes across the restaurant industry, from new concerns related to social distancing and cleanliness to the acceleration of pre-pandemic trends such as the rise of mobile ordering and third-party delivery services. Set the Bar. Stay Connected.
On the other hand, when you know exactly who your ideal customers are, you can craft an experience that resonates with customers on a deeper, emotional level, creating a connection that will keep them coming back for years. Key customer factors that influence dining preferences, from demographics to behavior.
With a critically shrunken talent pool, restaurants are racing to fill positions in every part of the business — front of house, back of house, and corporate teams. Enter digital tableside ordering. For fast-casual or QSR brands, digital tableside ordering is equally beneficial.
Youre delivering a great dining experience, yet foot traffic remains inconsistent, online engagement is low, and new customers arent coming in as often as youd like. Are you doing all the right thingsserving amazing food, delivering top-notch service, crafting perfectly balanced drinksbut the tables still arent filling up like they should?
As brands scrambled to change their business models – whether through the adoption of touchless payments, delivery and curbside pickup, or the use of QR codes to access online menus – consumers were also forced to adapt their dining behaviors. And according to Technomic, Inc.,
For some, breakfast is a simple, grab-and-go convenience, while others prefer to savor a dine-in brunch. “Online ordering, whether through our own app or third party providers, continues to grow by leaps and bounds. Fanchisees also told them what they wanted in terms of booths versus customizable tables. "Our
Front-of-House. Henry is ready to order some dinner. He visits your restaurant’s app and orders his favorite dish on the menu. He receives an estimated wait time for his order of 45 minutes. He’s then directed to numbered cubbies and finds his order waiting in the indicated cubby.
The right marketing strategy helps you get the most out of every dollar by increasing customer retention , boosting order volume, and encouraging repeat visits. Between online reservations, third-party delivery apps, and direct ordering from your website, digital interactions often happen before a guest ever steps through your doors.
Every day, youre juggling staff, food quality, inventory, customer service, purchasing, and moreall while trying to cultivate a dining experience that wows your customers enough to keep them coming back. Its tough, and cant be done passively. Great restaurant operations dont happen by accident.
We were greeted by the manager of the restaurant and shared with him the concept of contactless dining, an experience where dine-in guests can view menus, order, and pay directly from their mobile phones. contactless payment, mobile ordering, text on arrival for seating).”
Nearly every restaurant in the United States relies on a Point of Sale (POS) system for the majority of its front-of-house operations. That system needs access to the internet in order to keep functioning. Not only can that become frustrating for your guests, but it can also make in-house operations much more difficult.
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