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As we step into 2025, the restaurant, bar, and hospitality industries are experiencing transformative shifts driven by evolving consumer preferences, technological innovation, and economic dynamics. From reimagining workflows to enhancing guest interactions, technology is shaping how restaurants, bars, and hospitality businesses operate.
Twenty years ago, hospitality looked very different. Over the last two decades, I’ve worked alongside operators in just about every hospitality setting—independent cafés, high-end dining rooms, food halls, and regional chains. Kitchens ran on handwritten tickets and verbal handoffs. Operators had to shift—fast.
Restaurants must now navigate a razor-thin margin between maintaining customer loyalty and managing escalating costs. Accuracy of food order leads the way at 88, while beverage quality and waitstaff performance both score 86. Accuracy of food order and quality of mobile app lead the way at 85, both down 1 percent year over year.
"These tariffs could deeply affect the food service and hospitality industries on both sides of the border," Alex Thalassinos, President of Silverware POS, one of the first tech providers dedicated to Canada’s hospitality industry, told Modern Restaurant Management (MRM) magazine. AI is also boosting staff productivity.
Customers expect seamless online ordering, loyaltyprograms, and delivery options, and franchise systems need to invest in tech to stay competitive. Customers expect seamless online ordering, loyaltyprograms, and delivery options, and franchise systems need to invest in tech to stay competitive.
When you pull up to the speaker box in the drive-thru at chains like Wendys, McDonalds, and Taco Bell, the first question you will likely hear is a distinctly modern one: Will you be using our mobile app today? Mobile apps have boomed in popularity over the past five years , with tens of millions of downloads.
Adaptability became non-negotiable as takeout, delivery, and digital ordering shifted from secondary revenue streams to essential lifelines." The past five years have reinforced the critical intersection of digital and hospitality in the restaurant industry. Technology continues to transform restaurant operations.
The restaurant industry is rapidly evolving, and mobile food ordering is at the center of this transformation. These mobile food ordering statistics reveal just how quickly digital habits are shifting — and what it means for restaurants trying to stay competitive. At first, mobileordering seemed like a long shot.
The research found that businesses worldwide – particularly restaurants – intend to experiment more in 2025, especially with customer retention programs like loyalty, as they face the triple challenge of sustained high inflation, shrinking consumer wallets and the need to raise prices across the board.
Restaurants are already experimenting with using AI to handle drive through orders to allow human employees to focus on customer interactions in the restaurant. We'll see the continued shift of leveraging AI to help with other commodity tasks to free up humans to have more time to give customers higher-quality hospitality.
A single missteplike a delayed order or a system glitchcan throw off an entire shift. Whether theyre grabbing takeout, dining in, or ordering delivery, diners dont have patience for long waits or clunky systems. The easier it is for customers to place orders and receive their food, the smoother operations run. The result?
From real-time inventory tracking to mobileordering and multi-location management, the right POS helps restaurants grow faster and operate more efficiently. Toast : Designed for restaurants, offering tableside ordering, inventory management, and a free starter plan with 3% payment processing. Thats where Lavu leads the way.
Be sure the orders are easy to read and understand. From traditional computer displays to mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets, the display is the beginning. Do you plan to take your hospitality to the next level? First, a POS system will ensure that all ordered items have a track record.
Adding hundreds of clients each week, these new partnerships showcase SpotOn’s flexibility to support the needs of diverse hospitality operators, from local establishments to multi-regional restaurant groups. Dedicated Loyalty Sign-Up Page for Diners: Simplifying customer enrollment in loyaltyprograms for higher engagement.
A well-designed POS system improves restaurant operations by streamlining order management, speeding up transactions, and delivering real-time insights that help optimize every aspect of the business. Enhances Order Accuracy: Directly sends orders to the kitchen, cutting mistakes by 25% and improving customer satisfaction.
Choosing the right point-of-sale (POS) system is a high-impact decision for any hospitality business. To ensure your investment delivers real ROI, here are the top 7 features to look for in a cloud POS system built for hospitality. MobileOrdering and Tableside Service Guests today expect fast, flexible service.
Optimizing the Bar Program with Digital Tools Beverages, especially alcoholic ones, offer some of the highest profit margins in the restaurant industry. Creating customizable prix fixe menus for groups with easy online ordering. Offering direct online ordering via a restaurant-branded app to avoid high third-party app fees.
In today’s hospitality landscape, guest expectations are higher than ever. For guests, this translates into quicker service, more accurate orders, and smoother payments —all of which enhance their overall impression and likelihood of returning.
As a leader in restaurant POS technology, Squirrel Systems was on-site, connecting with operators, tech partners, and hospitality leaders. Whether it’s adding a mobileordering station, launching a loyaltyprogram, or integrating new third-party platforms, the focus is on modular systems that grow with the business.
Loyalty is a huge factor now as guests desire rewards and perks for sticking with a favorite small business, and repeat customers are keeping many restaurants going. While the ways we order and dine may have changed, the reasons people choose a restaurant haven’t. Customer habits have also shifted after the pandemic.
With cashless options such as credit cards, mobile payment apps, and contactless payments, customers can make quick and hassle-free payments, reducing wait times at the point of sale. This fosters customer loyalty and allows restaurants to gather valuable data and insights to inform their business strategies.
Over the last several years, QR order and pay has gone from being a fringe technology to a widely used solution for restaurants, bars, breweries, and wineries. What started as a simple way to swap paper menus with contactless ordering during COVID quickly evolved into an operational solution to battle staff shortages and improve efficiency.
Ensure it’s easy to navigate and mobile-friendly. Building a community around your brand fosters loyalty. Offer Promotions and Discounts Implement LoyaltyPrograms Reward repeat customers with discounts or freebies. A loyaltyprogram not only encourages repeat visits but also makes your guests feel valued.
Mobile & Tablet-First Experiences Phones are the new remote controls for life—and dining is no exception. Guests want to scan a QR code, view the menu, place their order, and even pay—all from their phone. Think smart upsells based on past orders or timely promos they’ll actually care about. Let’s break it down: 1.
"As awful as it was, the pandemic pushed restaurants to completely rethink their operations in order to survive, and some of the changes they made during the pandemic have continued to be beneficial to those restaurants and industry at large." The pandemic made speed, accuracy, and seamless ordering non-negotiable.
Off-Premises Dining Is Essential Nearly 75 percent of all restaurant traffic now happens off-premises—meaning that almost three out of four restaurant orders are taken to go. More than 60 percent say they’re ordering off-premises more often than a year ago. Older adults still prefer in-person ordering.
This menu price inflation has a number of causes, from higher raw-ingredient costs to an unprecedented labor shortage in the hospitality industry. Rewards for Loyalty. Many restaurants woo diners by offering them incentives in the form of rewards for their loyalty. It’s a strategy that seems to be paying off.
Chick-fil-A even reported disabling curbside ordering in some locations to reduce strain on their workers. Next year, operators will continue to lean into technologies like order and pay-at-the-table options, mobileordering and curbside operations to increase efficiency and decrease the number of staff needed.
The hospitality industry constantly changes and evolves in the face of new industry and consumer trends. After all, the future in the hospitality sector quite literally lies in the hands of guests and customers, so it’s imperative that you always perfect your customer service. The industry never stands still.
Additional funding has been allocated for the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP ). To make it easy for restaurants of all sizes and types to adapt to these changes, OpenTable is introducing a new Open Door ’ pricing program. For more information, visit: sba.gov/paycheckprotection. According to Administrator of the U.S.
You are sitting in your favorite restaurant and have placed an order on a tablet at your table. After a few seconds of placing the order, a notification appears on your messaging app. Ding* ‘Your order is being prepared by Chef Bot 19 and will be delivered to your table in approximately 19 minutes.
Many food and beverage establishments have seen success with technology — such as contactless options, automation to support changing workforces and innovative customer loyalty strategies — in their endeavors to meet the demand for safer and more convenient dining experiences. Ordering screens.
Self-service kiosks can maximize the number of on-premise orders while mobile apps or websites allow customers to place orders directly without staff intervention. The short-term costs of a comprehensive training program may be high but the investment will pay handsome dividends in the long run.
TouchBistro acquired Boston-based TableUp, a provider of loyalty and marketing solutions for the restaurant industry. and will enable TouchBistro to fully integrate customer loyalty and guest marketing into its all-in-one point-of-sale (POS) and restaurant management platform. TouchBistro Acquires TableUp.
Forty percent of those surveyed in the US and 39 percent in the UK said they would feel safer if they could view the menu from their mobile device, while 35 percent in the US versus 31 percent in the UK would like to be able to pay in the same manner. The US and UK also varied on how they wanted to retrieve take-out orders.
Other advancements include: integrating data from various sources, including social media, reviews, and loyaltyprograms, to gain a holistic view of customer behaviour as well as as well as the implementation of real-time analytics for immediate insights into customer behaviour and preferences. Nothing is fraud proof.
Restaurants pivoted to contactless ordering with open arms for sanitary and social distancing purposes, and embraced digital platforms and apps that enabled streamlined delivery and curbside pickup. Now imagine if you could enjoy the same benefits when placing your next drive-through order?
Early in the pandemic, 72 percent of operators invested in delivery and mobile/online ordering to boost revenue during mandated stay-at-home orders according to TD's 2020 survey, and it appears the popularity of these offerings is here to stay. Investment in delivery and mobileordering pays off.
Restaurants will continue to embrace digital on-premise, including mobileordering and payment at the table, to streamline operations and improve the guest experience. Restaurants will continue to embrace digital on-premise, including mobileordering and payment at the table, to streamline operations and improve the guest experience.
A Q2 survey from Joblist found that higher pay, more benefits, or a bonus would motivate job seekers with hospitality experience to pursue open roles in restaurants, bars, and hotels. Order accuracy is a pivotal part of the diner experience. Digitize Tedious Tasks. Embrace Gamification. Expect the Unexpected.
based participating restaurants of DoorDash’s program to support Black-owned businesses who Kiva approves for a loan* by seeding a revolving loan fund starting at $150,000 with potential to grow the investment in the coming months. Jon Taffer launched a new program on his Taffer Virtual Teaching platform, Resetting America.
Although mandated dine-in restrictions have held back all restaurant segments, particularly full service, consumer demand for restaurant meals and the ability to serve the demand with a host of off-premises services, like digital ordering, delivery, drive-thru, and carry-out, are the silver linings that enable the industry to persevere.
This will enable brands to better manage off-premises orders and balance their hybrid operating models. As mentioned before, this expands the need for loyaltyprograms, and also demands an agile technology stack that can go where customers are, as well as bring customers in.
We have historically and continue to offer competitive pay, thorough training programs, flexible hours and a fun work environment so that we can continue to staff our locations as we grow. Rick Camac, Dean of Restaurant & Hospitality Management at the Institute of Culinary Education.
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