From new coldbrew coffees and craft sodas on tap to robots carrying plates and scrubbing floors, plenty of new ideas were available to try at the National Restaurant Show in Chicago this week.
Among the tens of thousands of attendees were expert speakers who shared information on ways to improve the customer experience, often by using technology they’ll accept.
The trend toward automation was obvious at the show, where robot demonstrations stopped people in their tracks.
Making Way for Robots
Pudu Robotics, based in Shenzhen, China, brought several waiter-assisting robots to Chicago to demonstrate how the programmable traveling machines can take the weight off the backs of restaurant servers. By carrying tiered shelves of prepared food items, the robots do the heavy lifting and let the wait staff focus on the customers.
For convenience stores looking to offload the floor-washing chore, Pudu also makes a floor-scrubbing robot that scurries across the floor and knows to move out of the way of people, said Antonio Wu, regional sales manager.
New York-based WowRobee Inc’s KettyBot is designed to carry food in tight spaces, while FlashBot navigates elevators and hallways for deliveries in hotels and office buildings. LG’s CLOi Servebot is capable of carrying several menu items to tables in one trip autonomously using a three-dimensional camera and LiDAR sensor to navigate without incident.
Brightening Display Options
LG plans to release an EV charging port in the fourth quarter of this year for c-stores, said David Boerlin, a strategic account manager based in Lincolnshire, Illinois. The charging station incorporates a commercial display to allow convenience stores to show off the menu items to encourage consumers to go into their stores. “You can do a lot with dayparts in a menu board,” he said, by changing the display content from breakfast to lunch and then dinner. “The hard part is getting customers to come into the store now that we all pay at the pump,” Boerlin said.
For in-store marketing, LG also has expanded its line of displays and digital signage, boosting the resolution and brightness to grab consumers’ attention as they enter the retail locations. The displays now come in more size options, from 22 inches to 86 inches, and are controlled with WebOS, LG’s multitasking operating system connects with a content management system.
Samsung featured a Loop EV charger with its digital display at the restaurant show, along with a forthcoming automated Grubber Gas & Go Fast Checkout self-checkout designed for convenience stores and fuel centers. Using camera technology instead of barcode scanners, the self-checkout is designed to detect multiple items consumers place on a shelf, and it doesn’t require shoppers to scan items.
The Gas & Go helps the c-store operator monitor inventory to avoid out of stocks. At a demonstration for CSP, the checkout identified a bag of Doritos but had more trouble when a second item, a nutrition bar, was placed next to it on the shelf. It also integrates software to keep operators informed of inventory levels and out of stocks.
Integrating Software
Integrated software pulls together solutions for managing different c-store tasks to make it easier for operators to run the business. Deliverect, an online order management system, connects to operators’ point-of-sale (POS) systems. It includes more than 400 software integrations, including menu builders, sales analytics and delivery management.
7 Shifts’ human resources solution, designed for the hospitality market, integrates software for hiring, onboarding training, team communication, scheduling, tip management and payroll in one platform.
Back to Serving Customers
Higher wages and a tight labor market are encouraging restaurants to automate more tasks, according to a panel discussion on Technology that Helps You Do More With Less, held Sunday.
Pretty Bird restaurant in Salt Lake City installed kiosks for ordering during COVID-19, said co-founder Alexis Furkioti Pham. While efficient, kiosks were impersonal. Now the restaurant is training staff to engage with customers.
“The difficult part is getting them out there to talk with customers, but they’re getting it,” Furkioti Pham said. The restaurant hires many Gen Z workers accustomed to communicating with their phones instead of face to face with customers, she said.
Balancing ways to reduce costs while maintaining personal service at the table to drive tips and higher tickets is a challenge for many restaurants. Data from Square suggests 70% of restaurants are short staffed and 66% of consumers are willing to use technology for order placing, said Jane Hong, head of partnerships, food and beverage at Square.
Looking for Tips
In Oakland, California, inflation has affected restaurant workers and owners alike. Servers eager for big tips to help pay the bills don’t always welcome automation. Staff members at NIDO’s BackYard and ODIN want to interact with guests to sell more food items, said Cory McCollow, founder and co-owner with wife Silvia Hernandez-McCollow of the two restaurants. “It’s easy for them to not want to use the technology as a crutch all the time,” he said.
McCollow favors technology for tasks customers don’t see. NIDO’s uses technology solutions to automate scheduling, tip collecting and distribution, ordering, payroll and other tasks, and McCollow said it’s challenging to manage the separate solutions. “I would love to have that as one dashboard,” he said.
Other restaurants are in the same boat, Hong said. “The theme is, I have multiple things I use. How do you put it all together to make my life easier,” she said.
Artificial intelligence (AI) can speed routine tasks. “For most restaurants, it won’t be a robot serving food. It will be more subtle,” Hong said.
Online Presence Counts, Too
In a separate discussion at the National Restaurant Show, Joe Reinstein, executive director of the Digital Restaurant Association, supported what McCollow and Pham shared about the importance of the customer experience, but he emphasized the importance of showing up where consumers are most likely to search for a restaurant. In most cases, it’s Google’s search engine.
It’s critical for restaurants to have relationships with their customers, Reinstein said. “When your customers order from third-party platforms, sometimes you are disconnecting from your customers, and that can create issues,” he said. “We like customer information-sharing so that if your customers want extra pickles or have a food allergy, they can communicate directly with you.”
Reinstein, who spoke about Transforming Your Online Food and Delivery Business, said customers need a way to communicate directly with the restaurant about any issues with their orders.
Be Aware of ‘Hangry’ Customers
“You don’t know who they are when they’ve ordered through a third-party platform. This is a very negative brand customer experience because they are very ‘hangry’ because their order has not arrived. These are things, together as an industry coming together, we can fix,” he said.
Restaurants need to appear on Google’s search engine so customers can find them, Reinstein said. “It’s important to be there and greet them so they move through a marketing funnel and convert,” he said. “You need to be where your customers are.”
Reinstein presented several interesting stats:
- 83% of restaurant operators believe technology innovation has favorably changed the industry.
- 42% is the amount of growth in Google search for restaurant keywords post-pandemic as the search engine tallied 48 million restaurant searches per day.
- 69% of consumers start their restaurant search with Google.
- 84% of users look up a menu online before deciding on a new restaurant.
- 43% of final restaurant decisions are made after looking at a menu.
- 30% of users are more likely to take action if a structured menu is present.
- $1 trillion is the expected size of the foodservice industry for 2023, with $653 billion coming from the restaurant industry, with takeout and delivery sales accounting for at least $18 billion. That’s the amount generated in 2022.
Many Products, Many Routes
Being online doesn’t preclude restaurateurs from advertising in other ways to expand their reach. Likewise, coffee and beverage companies are branching out with multiple routes to market and broader product offerings.
Take Westrock Coffee. The Little Rock, Arkansas-based company known for its hot dispensed variety of coffees, concentrates, coffee drinks and teas chose to feature a line of canned coffee drinks at this year’s show. It’s available in four styles for retailers or restaurants interested in a private-label approach to ready-to-drink coffee, giving Westrock a position in the cold vault.
Atlanta-based Coca-Cola Co. has developed three routes to market for its Costa Coffee brand:
- Using equipment manufacturer Schaerer’s Coffee Soul 10 provides a bean-to-cup format with graphic user interface, patented Best Foam technology and a flavor-point syrup station fitted under the counter, among other bells and whistles.
- Working with manufacturers Pininforina and Nayax, a full-size vending machine is a “café in a box,” producing espresso-based coffee drinks, ground fresh at the touch of a finger. About 182 such vending machines are in use in the United States.
- Falling back on its strength in packaged beverages, Coca-Cola Co. now offers three packaged versions of branded Flat White by Costa Coffee in 11-ounce slim cans. The drinks are available in Signature Blend, Mocha and Caramel flavors.
A Spot at the Fountain
Carbonated soft-drink makers are looking to update options on the fountain to varying degress.
Craft soda brand Tractor Sodas doesn’t expect to replace major soda brands on the fountain, but it wants to be included as an alternative with a premium price point. “We’re the ‘and’,” said Luke Emery, chief customer officer of Tractor Sodas. The Keurig Dr Pepper portfolio beverage is available in a dozen bubbler flavors and eight soda-fountain flavors.
Smart Soda’s coldbrew coffee also wants a fountain spot, and the brand envisions itself holding down the entire fountain, by retrofitting stores with its JuLi dispenser system to provide a “healthy” and upscale offer. “We want to see people fully transition to Smart Soda,” said Senior Account Executive Mitch Voll.
Besides coldbrew coffee, the Smart Soda portfolio includes multiple flavors of craft sodas, flavored waters, teas and lemonade, available in 12-ounce slim cans and on the interactive JuLi dispenser, where customers can add functional shots and adjust carbonization levels.
Other craft soda options included Wild Bill’s, which takes a food-truck approach by offering 12-ounce slim cans in seven flavors, and Bevi’s interactive dispenser of flavored waters and shot enhancements.