As we usher in 2018, restaurant tech disruption accelerates

Things are changing fast in the foodservice world. The restaurateurs who are gaining ground appear to be the ones with their eyes looking forward, finding new ways to engage their audiences and learning about new technology tools that will help them improve the restaurant experience. Here are some things to visualize in our near-term foodservice future:

The culture of convenience is recognized

Restaurateurs are definitely on board with cleaner, better, and tastier food. Here's the twist in this story: While consumers are seeking out better food, they are also getting very comfortable with technology and the ways that tech helps them run their lives more seamlessly and conveniently. And convenience is a top priority right now as people's lives and time are burdened with more demands and as they are expected to be on call 24/7.

Restaurant owners, operators and executives are wise to learn ways to balance culinary innovation with convenience. In many instances of quick-food occasions, whether it be take-out, quick-service or grocery prepared meals, restaurant owners need to develop a quick learning curve in order to be familiarize with how to balance great food, great service and convenience. Embrace delivery, catering, drive-up, online ordering, mobile ordering, having?dedicated app for your brand, employee training and retraining, social bot/app ordering and rapid take-out.

For those of us who have been writing about the culture of convenience for a few years, there’s much optimism as more foodservice executives and media focus in on the value of addressing this evolving consumer affinity. Nation’s Restaurant News recently wrote about the topic, and experts from this year’s MUFSO conference offered suggestions and innovations.

Segment blurring: here and real

Fast casual anyone? QSR+ for “fine casual” for dinner tonight? How about digital casual or posh casual? Consumers have many choices when it comes to food and the experience of a restaurant ultimately will win out over the food.?But ask a customer if they are thinking along categories, buckets or segments, and you'll clearly see some disdain or puzzled looks. Well-known journalists still call fast-casual restaurants “fast food” or simply, “quick-service” restaurants, for example.

As restaurants and foodservice professionals are continuously learning to drive decisions from the customer’s perspective. A total paradigm shift is necessary. A challenge for restaurant owners and executives is to think beyond the four walls, and in today’s fast-changing environment, it’s the only way to think.

In the past few years, we have seen fast-casual restaurants become more like casual-dining restaurants, offering real plateware, light table-side service and delivery of food to tables. Casual-dining restaurants have gone in the opposite direction, become more casual. Others have installed kiosks and tablets for faster ordering and self-ordering at the table. Digital casual and virtual restaurants will abound in the near future.

Diners will embrace concepts of all shapes and sizes. Restaurant leaders will be savvy in embracing categorization and segment definitions for benchmarking and metrics, but they will put more emphasis on customers' desire for something different and innovative, keeping an open mind when it comes to how, when, and where they will serve their customers.

My advice has always been to invest more in innovation and consumer insights; much less in categorization, buckets, and labels. Consumers are speaking loudly and clearly about what they want. Let's listen.

A great opportunity this year will be the way in which customers are expressing what they want and how they are taking to social media, blogging, and reputation sites to voice their opinion. Despite restaurateurs maligning many aspects of Yelp (even Anthony Bourdain?), at the end of the day, there is a lot of qualitative data there to help them run better businesses. Much of the younger generations are looking for restaurant experiences online, not by driving/walking the neighborhood.

From digital parody to digital convergence

If you have played or witnessed someone playing Pokemon, then it’s all too clear to see why we are in midst of a digital convergence of real world experiences with digital interaction and guidance. Brands are racing to enhance the restaurant experience to mimic the daily lives of Millennials and Generation Z, where digital and online living is getting blurred with everyday routines. The home theater? The home personal, digital assistant, including Amazon Echo, you say? The home security and digital hub? The fridge that orders its own Walmart restocking or the personal assistant that orders up Amazon packages for your car’s trunk?

(Photo credit: Roll Play, Vienna, VA)

Restaurants are also in the wake of integrating efficiencies and conveniences so that restaurant-goers can order through kiosks or their phones, click to order ahead and have food waiting for them, enter orders at stationary kiosks and pay & entertain themselves through their phones. This summer, tech-centric Valor Equity Partners, quietly took a controlling interest in Wow Bao, which has made good use of self-ordering tech, and has a partnership with Eatsa, the digital-casual automat.

All these examples are quickly becoming less spectacular as newer and more disruptive foodservice tech innovation comes to the forefront and new announcements are made nearly on a weekly basis.

Facebook recently fully-launched its “order food” integration from within the main navigation section of the social platform, and has partnerships with providers for online ordering from Facebook Pages. TGI Friday’s embarked on its own digital convergence endeavors in many ways, including testing personalization of sports listening/viewing. According to CIO, this, holograms and “anticipatory IT,” are endeavors that will be used in the near-future to digitize the restaurant experience for those who want it. For those who don’t, there’s still the destination fine-dining restaurant in the city center or the local, very quiet, romantic, French Bistro, no?

What are you thoughts, and how are your restaurants moving into the future? Please comment below.

Residing in the Washington, DC area, Rick Zambrano is a profit optimization and menu management consultant, executive editor of Eatery Pulse News and producer. He developed a strong understanding of today’s most meaningful foodservice and food trends as a trend analyst, research editor and writer, working with research tools, topical experts, forensic experts and trend watchers.