Full article on NRN May 2021
Technology Solving Restaurant Drive-Thru and Kitchen Modernization
After focusing tech investments on off-premise, restaurants will look for solutions to raise convenience and lower cost of labor
Highlights
- Modern Drive-Thru Ordering – dual drive-thru lanes alongside pickup lanes, and perhaps walkup pickup windows. At first glance, the multitude of options that elevate the classic drive-thru experience might look like a complicated traffic jam. But the key here is to ease the customer experience.
- Food Lockers Will See Increased Use — operators are responding with technology like preorder pickup lanes and food lockers.
- Automats – Brooklyn Dumpling Shop — a New York City-based dumpling franchise that is opening its doors this spring — takes the food locker idea one step further by offering the automat 2.0. The 24-hour grab-and-go spot — which is ready to open its doors in Manhattan after delaying due to the pandemic — allows customers to place mobile orders for any number of dumpling varieties, then scan their smartphone and the correct UV-lit (for sanitation purposes) cubby will pop open.
- Kitchens and Robots — Brooklyn Dumpling Shop is bringing robotics into the kitchen to add even more contactless precision, in partnership with Miso Robotics.
- Effective and Useful Data Connection — Lunchbox organizes digital users into three categories: lost, regular and active customers.
Excerpt:
Taco Bell Restaurant Cubbies
Ask almost any operator and they’ll agree that the restaurant industry was headed toward a digital, off-premise-focused business before 2020 and that COVID-19 just accelerated that process.
With shuttered dining rooms and mandated lockdowns in place, 2020 became the year of off-premise innovation, with a focus on delivery, digital ordering and payment and speeding the to-go process. But as the nation heads back to normal and dining rooms begin filling up, what’s next for must-have restaurant technology?
Here’s a look at some of the challenges the restaurant of the (near) future will likely face and the tech-based solutions that are expected to be in demand.\
Read Full article on NRN May 2021