Category Archives: QSRs

picks, QSRs, Restaurants

People – Top Ten Women in Restaurants

From Hospitality Tech MURTECH awards 2020 – By Anna Wolfe, Senior Editor – Restaurants – 05/15/2020

A billion-dollar digital channel, the most successful limited-time offer in a brand’s history, and a platform that empowers restaurants to take charge of their businesses online: These are just three noteworthy accomplishments from the winners of Hospitality Technology’s 2020 Top Women in Restaurant Technology Awards.

Sponsored by Tillster, the awards were presented at MURTEC in Las Vegas on March 10, and recognize women who are making their mark in a male-dominated industry. In the coming weeks we will be profiling each of the 10 honorees in-depth on hospitalitytech.com. Here is a preview of this year’s class of honorees.

LIFETIME ACHIEVEMENT

Nicole West

Nicole West

BUILDING BRIDGES DIGITALLY

As Vice President, Digital Strategy and Product at Chipotle Mexican Grill, Nicole West has driven some of the company’s most innovative initiatives including Chipotle’s award-winning app and website, and the addition of digital make lines at most restaurants. By providing a dedicated make line for digital orders, Chipotle has increased order accuracy, effi-ciency and speed. Digital make lines have also increased the employee experience by making it easier and more en-joyable to fulfill digital orders. Her dedication to creating a seamless customer experience has helped Chipotle win in the digital space, which was a $1.4 billion business in 2019.

Susan Carroll-Boser

Susan Carroll-Boser

DEVELOPING TECHNOLOGY & PEOPLE

Susan Carroll-Boser started her career with White Castle in 1994 as a systems administrator. Now, as the vice president of technology,  she’s responsible for the company’s technology strategy, leading the tech shared services, IT and informa-tion services departments.With a constant drive to find solutions, she has led the development of internal and external apps, and introduced AI into White Castle’s technology infrastructure. Developing the technologies and the people to support them are at the heart of her role at White Castle. “As a 99-year old family-owned business,” she says, “the one constant in all our progress remains taking something complex and getting it to elegant — easy to use, easy to understand and representative of our vision, to feed the souls of craver generations everywhere.”

Malia Alley

RISING STARS

 

Malia Alley
DELIVERING ON COMPLEX INITIATIVES
From 2017-2019, Malia Alley, Senior Manager — Digital, Taco Bell, successfully led the national rollout of upgraded network infrastructure to more than 6,500 U.S. Taco Bell locations. Network up-grades have stabilized restaurant systems, provided faster bandwidth for in-restaurant applications, accelerated use of customer Wi-Fi and helped grow digital sales of off-premise mobile and delivery orders, as well as growing in-store digi-tal sales from kiosks. Alley now leads the technology teams that will support the brand’s one-on-one customer market-ing platforms and is leading the launch of loyalty.

Richelle Anderson

Richelle Anderson
CREATING WINS FOR OPERATORS
Richelle Anderson, OneDine’s Chief Operating Officer, has cut customer onboarding from as long as eight weeks to as short as two weeks, improving customer satisfaction and company growth. Anderson says she is most interested in how operators are using data to evaluate and respond to customer habits for the purpose of improving the guest experience. “The combination of gathering and acting on data to better serve customers while giving them more control in ordering and payment processing is the technology I am most excited about because it creates a win for operators, servers and guests,” she says.

Sharon Evans

INNOVATORS

 

Sharon Evans

MANAGING DISRUPTIVE TECH WITH FINESSE
As an executive program manager at Dine Brands Global, Sharon Evans manages the execution of Dine Brands’ most innovative and disruptive programs related to cloud integrations, mi-croservices and restaurant technology transformation. Evans is driving Dine Brands to think “smarter” about program implementation. She’s a key part of usher-ing in Dine Brand’s next generational technology pro-grams. And h covering point of sale, cloud integrations, and guest data activation. Her programs have stayed under-budget and on-schedule.

Sarah Kabakoff

Sarah Kabakoff

DEFINING DATA STRATEGIES
As Director of Enterprise Solutions at Toast, Sarah Kabakoff has established herself as an expert in digital strategies, customer data analytics, restaurant operations, and point of sale. For the past three years, she has been designing tech-driven solutions to support the restaurant enterprise and assisting customers. Kabakoff has played a significant role in closing thousands of deals. She’s helped operators solve challenges with their digital experience, helped engineer restaurant menus to provide speed, and helped to enable a cashless model.

Leslie Leaf

Leslie Leaf
IDENTIFYING THE RIGHT PEOPLE, PROCESSES AND TECHNOLOGIES

As Chief Customer Officer at Revel Systems, Leslie Leaf drives client and partner success. By identifying the right people, processes and technologies, Leaf has helped Revel see real benefits by reducing the company’s call volume. Prior to bringing Revel’s customer support in-house, Revel had more than 300 outsourced agents who received 8 calls per day, but only resolved 3 tickets. Fast-forward 24 months, Revel is at 77 agents who answer 20 calls and resolve 15 tickets per day. As a result, Revel has achieved 750% improvement on ticket KPIs and 150% improvement on call volume KPIs, all with 25% of the headcount.

Krystle Mobayeni

Krystle Mobayeni

SOLVING PROBLEMS THROUGH DESIGN AND TECHNOLOGY

Krystle Mobayeni spent 12 years working as a digital designer at some of New York’s top agencies. She noticed that existing technology fell short of restaurant needs. Oftentimes, technology drove a wedge between the restaurant and the guest − and nobody was looking out for the best interest of the restaurant. She changed all of that when she launched BentoBox in 2013. With her rad skills in design and technology, she created a hub for restaurants to engage with the customers through a singular place: their website. BentoBox is used by more than 5,000 restaurants worldwide.

Catherine Tabor

Catherine Tabor

POWERING DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION STRATEGIES

Catherine Tabor is the Founder and CEO of Sparkfly, an offer management platform that helps restaurant marketers improve customer acquisition and loyalty programs by connecting real-time consumer behavior with online and in-store sales. She has worked with more than 65 retail and QSR brands, powering more than 10,000 locations with more than 100 million transactions. Tabor believes she’s solved how restaurants can transform their legacy POS systems and investments into an asset that powers digital and in-store marketing programs.

Felicia White

Felicia White

NEW LMS + LTO = BIG WIN

Felicia White, Senior Director of Train-ing and Development at Church’s Chicken, led the most successful limited-time offer rollout in years, resulting in double-digit increases in sales and transactions. Church’s Chicken was able to achieve a 90% increase in training completions at the unit level, while closing a persistent knowledge gap between corporate stores and franchise locations. Church’s Chicken improved communication with team members and doubled engagement with their restaurant app. The program was so successful, Church’s Chicken is planning to launch it again.

Kiosk Newsbits, Member, picks, QSRs

MURTEC 2020 Preview

MURTEC QSR Conference March 2020

In 2020, restaurant technology is coming in hot.

Unprecedented consumer empowerment is redefining food service: delivery, privacy, personalization, alternative payments, artificial intelligence; stir in new ways to streamline the back of the house, and it’s a full-on innovation inferno.

That’s why at MURTEC 2020 we’re giving restaurants an innovation heatmap. The agenda is packed with subject matter experts, and the show floor features 75+ of the hottest technologies. We’re helping restaurants find the solutions they need to feed time-starved, convenience-hungry consumers with a hankering for exceptional experiences.

“The ever-changing landscape of technology and its impact on consumer-facing brands makes MURTEC a must-attend event – a perfect combination of content, networking and learning to enable and drive real solutions back into our organizations.”

–Chief Experience Officer, TGI Fridays

Exhibitors

starmicronics murtec booth Star is excited to see you! Star is proud to offer a variety of restaurant solutions for both the front-of-house and the back-of-house, from online ordering solutions to kitchen ticket printing. Stop by booth #21 to learn about it all. To schedule a meeting, please click here.

MURTEC is only one week away! If you’re headed out to Vegas, make sure to swing by the Appetize Restaurant of the Future in booth #51 to see why multi-unit restaurants need an Enterprise Cloud Point of Sale platform to increase revenue and scale the business effectively. Our team will be exhibiting our self-service solutions, quick service terminals, handheld POS devices, multi-unit management tools, and more key features your POS needs to deliver a frictionless guest experience. Schedule a meeting with us here: https://lnkd.in/gKQrJKk

MURTEC KMA Related:

Food order kiosk, Member, picks, QSRs

How Self-Service Solutions Drive QSR Through Improved Customer Experience

QSR Customer Experience – Customer Study Survey

Excellent study from KIOSK Information Systems and Hathway on self-order kiosk CX and business impact

  • 75% of under 30s have used self-order kiosks
  • 60% of under 45s prefer kiosks over cashier ordering
  • 75% that order online also order in-store
  • And drum roll… – Customer that create their own order 30% more – >60% leave when more than 7 customer are inline

QSR consumers have heightened digital expectations and restaurant operators struggle to keep pace. Consumers are increasingly savvy and expect a highly personalized experience, one that is consistent across channels. Each time a consumer is exposed to an improved digital experience (i.e., Amazon, Google), their expectations are reset to a new higher level. How can restaurant operators gain a QSR advantage in this digital transformation?

To better understand this growing trend, KIOSK Information Systems and Hathway developed an industry survey and white paper. Results from this survey provide insights into QSR purchasing behaviors and customer preferences that pinpoint which factors can actually improve the customer experience and help drive significant gains.

Download the full case study


Kiosk Newsbits, Member, picks, QSRs

An Accessible Kiosk

Ensuring an Accessible Kiosk Experience

By Laura Boniello Miller of Vispero

Editors Note:  Worth noting the image shows QSR self order kiosk by Olea Kiosks and you can see the Audio Nav pad by Storm Devices integrated.

Restaurants are increasingly reliant on self-service technology to improve the customer experience. From handheld or desktop tablets used to collect payment to kiosks used for self-service ordering, technology allows restaurants to provide a variety of options to customers to enhance their visit. However, it is incumbent upon restaurants to provide an accessible and equal experience for all their customers when utilizing these new technologies.

Customers with disabilities are often left out of the interactive experience due to the misconception that guests who are blind or who have low vision are more easily satisfied with the assistance of an in-person attendant. Yet this alternative does not provide an experience comparable to that of a non-visually impaired patron. Most people with disabilities do not want to be treated any differently from anyone else, and an in-person attendant often serves as a reminder of their disability.

The Future of Kiosks in the Restaurant Industry

Kiosks allow users to avoid lines and oftentimes allow them a greater ability to customize their order.  Kiosk deployers typically attempt to design the kiosk interface to decrease the time it takes for a user to place an order. No one – neither the restaurant nor the restaurant patron – is well-served if the time it takes to place an order on a kiosk is significantly slower for users with disabilities and requires additional human assistance.

Restaurant self-service kiosks are currently deployed in leading restaurant chains such as Taco Bell, KFC, Panera Bread, Wendy’s, Subway, and Dunkin’ Donuts via both pilots and full international rollouts.  Additionally, tabletop ordering or payment tablets are used in TGI Fridays, Olive Garden, Friendly’s, Tropical Smoothie, and Chili’s, to name a few.  Self-ordering and self-service POS solutions are running apps such as Appetize, Tillster, and Ziosk. In these examples, the user experience should be accessible for all patrons, whether on a robust kiosk enclosure or a small handheld tablet.

Read full article at Modern Restaurant Management

Interested in Accessibility Consulting for your kiosk or website? Contact us.

picks, QSRs

Asian Grill Opens New Location with Self Order Kiosks

Asian Grill Opens New Location with XPR Kiosks

Asian Grill, known for its authentic regional cuisines, has recently implemented XPR’s self ordering kiosks and mobile application to help automate the ordering process. Along with the new equipment throughout the kitchen to help relay orders to the staff, these changes have helped to improve operational efficiency, check averages, and the overall customer experience.

XPR’s kiosks have a simple, yet appealing interface to increase guest satisfaction. Upon entering the restaurant, customers can easily skip the line and use either of the 2 large self ordering solutions. There the customer can build and submit their orders. If they are paying with credit card the customer can pay using the readers attached to the kiosk. If they wish to pay by cash a receipt is printed with a barcode that can then be taken to the cashier station to complete payment. Customers can also place order at the register if they wish to do so. There are 2 large menu boards above the register with high resolution images to help sell the menu items.

Asian Grill is also using a XPR’s mobile app which allows customers to order from their mobile devices, securely pay by credit card, and have their order ready for pickup when they arrive at the restaurant.

Member, picks, QSRs

Five Top Trends in QSR 2019

A host of new technologies are on the horizon for the QSR industry. For many of them, a self-order kiosk will serve as their foundation.

Quick-service restaurants have long had a reputation for being innovators when it comes to technology. In the early days of modern foodservice, QSRs were among the first to incorporate features such as drive-thru speaker system and cooking timers. Later, computerized point-of-sale systems and digital menu boards emerged.

More recently, it’s been mobile apps, online ordering and point-of-sale systems that trigger menu boards to display promotions or remove items based on low inventory levels. Facial and AI-based response systems now generate context. Moreover, of course, one of the most significant technological trends affecting the QSR industry over the past few years has been the self-order kiosk.

Customer Data Context

However, the developments haven’t stopped there. All of these trends have one feature in common: They provide operators with a firehose of data they can use to improve their operations.

McDonald’s, for example, acquired software company Dynamic Yield in March for $300 million, giving it technology that will allow it to customize digital menu boards based on data including time of day, weather and current ordering trends to deliver a more personalized in-store experience. The fast-food giant also took a stake in software company Plexure in April, giving it access to a mobile platform that uses digital marketing tools to increase sales. The platform manages mobile-based promotional offers and a customer loyalty program as well as serving as the backbone of McDonald’s mobile app.

Elsewhere, self-order kiosks at some locations of the South Florida-based BurgerFi chain are incorporating facial recognition technology that gives customers the option of saving previous orders along with phone numbers and facial geometry. The next time a customer visits a location, they’ll be recognized by the kiosk and will be given the option to use that stored information on their current order. Other chains including Dallas-based Malibu Poke, Pasadena, Calif.-based Caliburger and Philadelphia-based Bryn & Dane’s are using variations on the technology.

Drive-Thru Ordering

Because 70 percent of the revenue for a typical QSR comes via the drive-thru, it only makes sense to look there as an avenue for technological improvements. Digital menu boards have been appearing in drive-thru lanes for several years, and will likely be standard going forward. Companies including Dunkin’ Brands have eyed dedicated pickup lanes for mobile orders as a way to eliminate bottlenecks, although the idea seems to be slowly gaining traction. Also, several kiosk manufacturers have introduced devices designed for the drive-thru in recent years as restaurant operators seek to duplicate the success of dining-room self-order technology. Olea Kiosks’ Detroit model was an early entry into that category. Technology provider Xenial, which provided the facial recognition application for Bryn & Danes, has installed touchscreen drive-thrus in nearly 400 Subway restaurants to date. Drive-Thrus have become so popular that some countries (Canada) and US cities are looking at restricting drive-thru’s.

Location-Based Customer Service

Location technology and geofencing appear to be an up-and-coming trend, with its potential demonstrated by Burger King’s recent Whopper Detour promotion. Customers who participated in the promotion, which ran in mid-December 2018, could purchase a Whopper for just a penny via their mobile app, as long as they were within 600 feet of a McDonald’s. Other applications for the technology include alerting restaurants when a carryout customer pulls into the parking lot, with restaurant staff then delivering that customer’s order to their car.

Voice Command

And likely coming soon to a QSR near you is the same voice-ordering technology that drives the Alexa and Google Home devices in our living rooms. A voice-command POS would be a boon to labor-strapped restaurant operators who see their counter staff turn over on a near-weekly basis, while a voice-operated phone system in a pizzeria could free up staff to pitch in on the makeline. Such systems would never be rude to customers, will reduce errors compared with a live order-taker, and of course, will always remember to suggestive sell. Industry groups have already formulated frameworks for voice command concerning disability and accessibility.

Automation – The Robots have arrived.

Artificial Intelligence or AI-based systems are already being tested. Holly, made by Valyant A.I., is a disembodied voice that takes drive-through orders at a Good Times in South Denver.

The Colorado fast food chain started experimenting with conversational A.I. to lighten the load of some of its employees who often juggle multiple tasks at the same time. Rob Carpenter, the founder of Valyant A.I., said the hospitality industry needs robots right now to make up for the lack of applicants.

“In the United States, because it’s such a tight labor market, there’s somewhere in the neighborhood of 800,000 unfilled positions,” Carpenter said.

Olea's Austin Freestanding Self-Order Kiosk

Self-Service kiosks are driving trends

Many of these up-and-running technologies are likely to be incorporated into the self-order kiosks that have been at the heart of recent restaurant trends. There are plenty of reasons why: Research conducted by financial news site PYMNTS.com found that consumers spend as much as 30 percent more at a self-order kiosk compared with other ordering methods. Self-order kiosks allow easy customization of orders, never forget to suggestive sell and eliminate the “indulgence guilt” that can occur when ordering extra-large fries or an apple pie for dessert.

Others are seeing even more significant results. Point-of-sale platform Appetize recently reported that users of its self-service solution see a 40 percent increase in order size. Appetize’s Interact self-service solution offers embedded upsell functionality, and data shows that consumers are 47 percent more likely to add an item on a kiosk than when asked to do so by a cashier.

Research from ordering technology firm Tillster indicates the use of self-order kiosks will continue to grow for the foreseeable future. A 2018 Tillster study found that 54% of customers plan to place an order with a self-service kiosk within the next year, and if the line to order from a cashier is longer than five people, 75 percent of customers will choose to order from a self-service kiosk.

And although mobile apps may serve as an additional ordering channel that enhances the QSR experience, they’ll never supplant self-order kiosks (despite predictions from app designers). Although there may be some among us who gravitate to mobile apps, there are too many restaurant choices and not enough space on our devices to hold apps for each one. And anyway, who wants to go through the hassle of downloading an app to place an order when there’s a self-order kiosk already available? Instead, it’s likely that both channels will thrive.

However, with many of these technologies built on self-order kiosks, their success will hinge on the quality of those kiosks. Olea’s offering in the self-order kiosk arena, for example, is its sleek and modern Austin Freestanding Kiosk. Olea also performed custom kiosk work and purpose-built the kiosks Appetize is using to achieve its dramatic results.

The Austin works in any environment and continues Olea’s mission to provide better kiosks through intelligent design. To maintain the flexible configuration capability, the Austin is engineered to accommodate an optional 15″ or 22″ All-in-One computer in either portrait or landscape as well as an EMV-approved Card Reader & Pin Pad and POS-style receipt printer.

The wide array of transactional components housed in this sleek, feature-packed kiosk makes it one of the most powerful retail solutions available on the market. Its compact footprint and rugged security complement a variety of environments for companies that seek to improve ROI and user interaction in small spaces or high traffic areas.

The adoption of new technologies is setting the stage for exciting (and profitable) times in the QSR space. Olea Kiosks stands ready to help! Feel free to call us at 800.927.8063 or email us at info@olea.com.

Contact Olea Kiosks today at 800.927.8063 for more information

Article reprinted from Olea.com

Biometric kiosk, Fast Casual, Food order kiosk, Kiosk Newsbits, McDonalds, picks, QSRs, self-order kiosk

Bite Says Face-Recognizing Kiosks Improve Customer Experience

Bite Says Face-Recognizing Kiosks Improve Customer Experience

Jack In The Box Kiosk

That’s a belief driving the startup Bite, which creates facial recognition kiosks for quick service restaurants (QSRs). Using a combination of iPads, proprietary software and machine learning, Bite’s tablet kiosks can recognize your face to unlock loyalty programs, bring up food preferences and provide opportunities for restaurants to upsell.

Source: thespoon.tech

Jack in the Box CEO, Leonard Comma, made news this week when he said “it just made sense” for his fast-food chain to consider switching from human cashiers to machines. To be sure, there are big societal implications if every restaurant made such a shift, but what if automated kiosks provide a better customer experience?

Fast Casual, Kiosk Newsbits, QSRs

Taco Bell Kiosk

Taco Bell UX UI design 2016

First digital dine-in kiosk from Taco Bell.

Source: www.behance.net

To illustrate the long cycle of development to deployment, consider this “post examination” of Taco Bell self-order kiosk UX from January 2016.  Last week TB pushed out a bit of news that it actually may be actually going to do it.  I wonder if the original engineers are even there…More likely they rewrote  using this as style model.

Taco Bell Kiosk on Behance