Spatial Computing INSIDE restaurants - where could this tech head next?

In this week's The Digital Restaurant podcast, we discuss the following key headlines, and here are some of our key quotes. To get the transcript of our podcast - head here .

Articles mentioned in the video:

1. Google's scaling back its restaurant ordering feature

Use this form ?to inform Google bout your preferred ordering link.

"A Google search often has a direct intent to engage with your restaurant, and so it's important for Independent restaurants particularly aiming to direct more customers to their more profitable and data rich own channel to really focus on this.It 's going to flow those searches of 'food near me' directly to their own website." - Carl

2. Uber Eats Earnings Report ?

"You've got a bunch of consumers out there who are being trained to look for a promotion and are being trained that they should buy something that's on sale. And so it's creating a bit of a like pricing doom loop in the entire industry where everyone's taking their prices really, really high in order to accommodate, say third party fees and things like that.But then the third parties are giving a bunch of promotions to make it palatable for the consumer. "- Meredith

3. $125M an HOUR? Lots of stats from the NRA's latest State of the Industry Report

Related Article:?Restaurant sales expected to Top $1T for the first time in 2024

"$1.1 trillion is forecast to be sold by this industry just in this year alone. That's the first time we said the T word. Now, if I'm doing my math right, $125.5 million an hour, an hour. That's crazy. This industry is that big. It's often difficult sometimes to put some level of context around how big an industry this really is."- Carl

4. Starships shooting for the moon with the latest raise

"The startup has to finance all of the robots and then recoup that money over time in a kind of robots as a service model. Now, that was really, really hard last year when interest rates started peaking.I think it's getting easier now that interest rates are going down" - Meredith

5. Where will Virtual Reality take us?

"I think the biggest innovative step in wearable and augmented reality functionality in many years, and it could be that moment which changes the world and how we interact with it in the same way as the iPhone and the iPod did." - Carl

Additional Articles:

6. McDonald's set sights on $45B in loyalty sales

7. Yum Brands accelerate the rollout of its proprietary tech

8. Sweetgreen adds an annual loyalty subscription for $100

9. Why Gen Z Craves Personalized Restaurant Experiences - QSR Magazine

10. Ghost kitchens are dead. But new models arise from the ashes

11. Restaurants embrace the darker side of Valentine's Day

A dissection of the hidden costs and myths in online food delivery.

Water Waiter Drones???

Platforms on a fee spree

Next week: A dive into content creation and digital engagement with Mike Duffy from YumCrunch and Matt Holloway from Bad Manners . Tune in to our special episode on February 20th 2024 on our YouTube channel (subscribe here or wherever you listen to podcast)