Top 5 Restaurant technology trends that will shape 2021-2022

As the dust of 2020's pandemic disruption begins to settle and a permanently altered restaurant landscape comes into focus, operators are still asking a major question: What technologies will shape 2021-22?

Restaurants have traditionally abstained from digital innovations and other kinds of consumer-facing technology out of fear that these changes could cheapen the diner’s experience and undercut their value proposition. The times and the state of the industry is going to financially necessitate that restaurants get better at implementing technology. It’s clear that technology will transform traditional aspects of the restaurant industry in 2021 and beyond to cater to new customer expectations for convenient, contactless experiences.

In-store technology reduces labor costs and you can use it as a marketing tool as well. Restaurants have to use as much tech as possible to give the customer an excellent experience with little or no touch. According to a report from Panasonic, which surveyed 150 food services and food retailer decision makers. One in four foodservice retailers now believe their company is a tech-forward early adopter, versus one in eight pre-pandemic.

One-hundred percent of foodservice operators reported in a December Panasonic survey that the pandemic has intensified their sense of urgency to adopt transformational technology. These businesses are adopting technologies that prioritize safety, self-service and preferred delivery methods to fit new consumer behaviors. With emerging technologies like facial recognition or GPS-enabled curbside service comes the debate over privacy concerns and opt-in agreements will become a critical piece of the puzzle for operators. Such opt-in agreements won't likely compromise the investment in such technology, however — more than half of Panasonic's respondents said consumers are willing to provide more personal data through personally-identifiable recognition technologies. Panasonic's study shows that 78% of respondents believe contactless payments are in high demand. Restaurants have had to shift their business models to make up for the loss of heavily restricted dine-in traffic. An October study from TD Bank found that 72% of franchisees have implemented enhanced delivery services/online and mobile ordering since the pandemic started.

1. Cloud Kitchen - The disruption of the F&B market

In Industry Insight Gastro, everything revolves around the ghost kitchens. They were only perceived as a niche phenomenon before the corona crisis, but during the pandemic they became an important pillar of the urban local supply with food. With the ghost kitchens, of course, a disruption of everyday gastronomy was announced even before the crisis. Now it's happening faster than expected. The new food delivery platforms that operate with ghost kitchens are developing into Netflix and Spotify in the catering industry. The delivery service companies are becoming food platforms that create completely new gastronomy concepts.

With the increasing quality of delivery food, restaurants are increasingly becoming places where the quality of stay is becoming more important. The corona crisis is the decisive driver and at the same time the stress test for alternative catering concepts. If the food delivery works well in the crisis and the quality of the food is convincing, Ghost Kitchens have the chance to establish themselves in the mainstream.

We’ve seen restaurants switch to a ghost kitchen model, double up as grocery delivery stores, turn their fare into meal kits and heat-and-eat meals, offer to-go cocktails, and even repurpose their parking lots into dining spaces to keep with social distancing guidelines. 

Chefs and influencers are also doing their bit to get hunkered down consumers excited about saving their local eateries. Expect to see a lot more innovation come out of the foodservice industry in the coming year in their struggle to stay afloat and innovative in these trying times.

2. Fresh food Kiosk can increase ticket size, customer satisfaction

With post COVID-19 market trends emerging, including the desire for more healthy food, sanitary and public safety, we can expect major growth in the demand for intelligent vending machines, equipped with more sensors monitoring the status of the food, and even consumers’ temperatures. According to research firm Technavio, the intelligent vending machine market size has the potential to grow by $11.24 billion during 2020-2024.

With growing consciousness around hygiene/food-safety, a ‘zero-touch’ vending could potentially see an accelerated adoption for fresh food. Currently, most of these needs are fulfilled by packaged food offerings, with very few fresh options. In countries such as Japan, Singapore & USA we already see a massive adoption of fresh food vending and we believe the trend will catch-up. In specific, we see application of these in channels such as:

• Colleges (round-the-clock, high accessibility)
• Travel (round-the-clock, quick take-away)
• Corporates (round-the-clock, mid-meal snacking along with tea/coffee breaks)

The idea is to use base FMCG products and carry out last-mile value addition in the vending machine to dispense out a high variety of hot and ready-to-eat products.As the maturity of connected devices and IoT sensors has been established, there is increasing demand both from customers and operators to use more intelligent machines.

Micro markets are not only for traditional vending machine operators. By the nature of operations and data management, the micro market can be an ideal solution for FMCG companies and even restaurant owners wishing to expand beyond the store and allow customers 24/7 availability of products.

Even FMCG product manufacturers, some of which are looking to get direct access to the end customers, are considering their own micro market networks.

3. Frozen Food is the Best Option for Your Restaurant

In the current economic climate, restaurants struggle to make a profit and continue running successful enterprises. It can be challenging to source in-season fresh ingredients at the right price. Frozen food components give you the flexibility to maintain an interesting menu by providing seasonal ingredients all year round, at a steady price. You can save money by making a dish using frozen items over creating the same dish with all fresh elements.

Restaurants also experience intense consumer demand for cheaper food and better deals when eating out. Many restaurants are unable to offer the choice and prices that diners expect without using frozen ingredients. Diners also demand choice in menu items all through the year, with an emphasis on different flavours and exciting ingredients. It can be difficult to meet this demand consistently without at least some reliance on ingredients which are frozen.

If your dishes require individual fruit or vegetable pieces, quick-frozen food is the best option to preserve the shape and texture of the food. Frozen food often gets a bad review from consumers and the industry. People claim it is not as healthy as fresh food and it doesn’t contain the same amount of nutrients. But this is not true. With modern freezing methods, frozen food retains freshness and nutritional benefits even better than transporting items fresh.

There is no escaping the fact that using frozen ingredients is often more convenient than using fresh. Preparation times are considerably shortened, which makes it easier to maintain fast and efficient service in a busy restaurant. And using frozen helps to cut down on the problem of food waste. This makes a difference to the environment and to your restaurant budget. There is a clear place for frozen ingredients in the modern caterer’s kitchen. All you need to decide is in which dish to use them.

Frozen food has, in the past, equalled poor quality. It was once seen as the low-cost, low-quality alternative to the more desirable fresh ingredients, for good reason. But there is now a better understanding of frozen food and how it does not equate automatically to bad quality. There is a greater acceptance of frozen items and their place in the modern restaurant kitchen. Potential bad feedback from customers should be minimised if you use frozen food appropriately in your dishes. In many cases, no one will be able to tell the difference.

4. Third-party delivery - Is there a alternative?

With changing lifestyles globally, convenience has probably become the first and most sought after aspect of any delivery experience. Our customers expect to get whatever they need, whenever they need it, locally and fast – and that does not stop with food.

The benefits of 3rd party delivery

• Offering lots of choice within one single app: whether you want to order your morning cappuccino, get painkillers, some flowers for a dinner party or a nice bottle of wine, it all should be possible to do it through one application. 
• Optimizing for speed: constantly improving our services and focusing on smarter logistics and faster delivery times are an intrinsically strategic part of our business and will remain one of our focus areas going forward. 
• Personalizing the customer experience and offering shortcuts through the decision making process, so that our customers can find the items that best fit their needs and cravings as fast as possible. 
• Promoting no contact pick up and delivery: throughout 2020, Food delivery app increased its focus on cashless payment, no-contact pick up and online tipping to keep all personal contacts to a minimum and keep riders, partners and customers safe.

In the post-Covid world, consumer lifestyle changes will mean that, for restaurants, a hybrid infrastructure might be necessary in order to continue operating successfully. This is because the number of occasions in which someone might order food for delivery has increased dramatically, and the requirement for physical space for patrons is diminishing. In the not-so-distant future, many new restauranteurs will likely choose to capitalise on the growing demand for home delivery and operate ‘dark’ or ‘virtual’ kitchens, which are traditionally much smaller premises dedicated to fulfilling online delivery orders.

The benefits of having an in-house delivery

• Complete Staff Control: One of the most critical advantages that you would have while hiring an in-house delivery staff is that you have complete staff control over them. You could direct these people on everything from the way they treat your customers to the condition in which you expect your food to be delivered. There needs to be extensive training given for the same, but once that is achieved, you can know about their whereabouts at all times of their working days. Using restaurant management software for the same would help you achieve your goals better. 
• Better Service For Customers Apart from complete control over your food delivery executive, you can be sure of the kind of services you want them to provide. For instance, an in house delivery executive could carry more seasonings or ketchup for your customers, which a third-party delivery executive generally won’t. Such gestures help you to retain your customers for a much longer time. You can also use a restaurant management software to keep track of all your delivery executives. An ideal POS should be able to provide you with a detailed insight on what your delivery executives are doing, their attendance, the average time they take to deliver an order, their feedback comments and so on. 
• Reduced Time Of Delivery The time taken to place an order and getting it approved from a particular restaurant remains similar in the two kinds of the food-delivery fleet. The only difference occurs in the time taken for delivery. An in-house delivery executive might take lesser time to deliver your order as it is only handling requests from one particular restaurant, whereas a third-party food delivery executive could be handling orders from several restaurants at the same time. Once the order reaches your restaurant, you can directly hand it over to your delivery executive, and save a lot of time. The time is taken for a particular delivery to be completed hence shortened, thereby increasing the number of orders you can take in the same amount of time.

5. Automation jumps from the back office to the kitchen and beyond

Back-office automation has been around for years. Ordering, procurement—the days of a manager counting actuals and tallying up what’s needed for an order are long gone, and most restaurants now have systems that will do automatic, predictive ordering for food and liquor

But now we’re seeing automation move into kitchens—and not just quick-service restaurants (QSR), but casual and even fine dining. Kitchen video screens, for example, used to be strictly a QSR staple. Now you can find them in restaurants across the spectrum, being used to improve efficiency and order accuracy. 

Of course, automation has other uses, too. Our new product MiSty (High steam microwave) (You can see the video attached) oven addresses one of the biggest challenges in a microwave segment i.e. losing the moisture. While microwaved food tends to dry out easily as the moisture within the food is heated and evaporates out, a high steam microwave oven continually adds extra moisture often at varying levels depending on the food you’re cooking

In the COVID-19 age, the contactless aspect of automation is one of its major selling points. Consider something like Briggo’s Coffee Robot—it’s a fully automated robotic coffee machine that can create barista-quality cappuccino, flat whites, and other coffee drinks at the rate of 100 per hour. Customers order via their phones and receive a text when their drink is ready. It’s not only a contactless experience, but the Coffee Robot also comes with zero labor costs (other than installation and maintenance).

Another example is 3D-printed food. Take pasta—making it is a very labor-intensive process, and yet you can’t charge much for a bowl of spaghetti bolognese. 3D-printed pasta, however, removes the labor aspect, which can increase profit margins substantially and free up kitchen staff for other tasks. 

Looking forward to 2021

It may be awhile until we fully understand just how much impact this crisis has had on this massive industry, but the high-level impacts have become quite clear in just 10 months. Essentially, consumers miss dining out and they’ll return. But their behaviors have changed and they’re not changing back. That means restaurants are going to have to master the art of balance now more than ever.