Restaurants will look for solutions to raise convenience and lower cost of labor
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.
Drive-thrus will need a makeover Even as diners return to restaurant dining rooms, takeout and delivery remains in demand, and customers don’t want to leave their cars. From Taco Bell to Burger King, national chains began unveiling “restaurant of the future”-style redesigns, starting in the second half of 2020, complete with smaller physical footprints and a particular focus on a modernized drive-thru.
Coming soon are 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.
For example, Taco Bell said in March that their stores moving forward would “prioritize digital elements,” adding multiple drive-thru lanes, tablets for ordering and curbside pickup. To make sure these elements all run smoothly, Taco Bell has added a new store-level position — a bellhop — which will serve as a concierge service.
Even smaller concepts are modernizing drive-thru lanes, like 40-unit fast-casual chain Piada Italian Street Food, which tested a drive-thru pickup window last year in Cleveland. Guests can order ahead and drive up, pick up and go.
In Taco Bell’s latest Cantina location in New York City, customers place orders ahead of time and can pick them up at a wall of cubbies by manually entering their order number, and the correct locker will pop open.
Matt Harding, Piada’s senior vice president of culinary and menu innovation, said giving guests options for how they want to get their food is a natural extension of the build-your-own-meal experience.
“Whether it’s a drive-thru or pickup window, I think the customization piece that began with create-your-own, that’s just flowing into every facet of the consumer use of a product or a service,” he said. “Not only can they order what they’d like, and omit things, but they can pick it up a special way. And I think any restaurant company that is really going to win the day is going to make all of those access points completely available for the guest. Because, ultimately, they’re going to choose by convenience.”
That demand for convenience is also fueling the design of drive-thrus with different lanes for different needs.
“Go ahead have your traditional drive-thru window and your payment system for your everyday items,” said Kevin Bessy, CEO and founder of drive-thru technology company Humdinner. “Then you can add a second lane for express items, things that are pre-made like doughnuts and wraps. And then you have your third lane for delivery drivers or pre-order pickups. The traffic flow is going to be so much smoother.”
Del Taco’s new prototype includes food lockers, as well as a special area for retrieving mobile orders.
In Humdinner’s contactless, multilane drive-thru design, an automated conveyor belt-like mechanism brings food from the kitchen out to the guest waiting at the third drive-thru lane, where people who ordered ahead don’t have to wait in line behind traditional drive-thru customers and their food can meet their car in a contactless solution to the drive-thru lane backup.
Restaurants will increasingly use food lockers
As more customers use order-ahead features, operators are responding with technology like preorder pickup lanes and food lockers.
Food lockers are being used in multiple ways. In Taco Bell’s latest Cantina location in New York City, for example, customers place orders ahead of time and can pick them up at a wall of cubbies by manually entering their order number, and the correct locker will pop open.
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.
“I think you have to understand what the guests want,” Brooklyn Dumpling Shop founder Stratis Morfogen said. “There have been a few attempts [to] bring the automat back over the years and they failed because it’s impersonal. […] What we’ve done is half the restaurant is lockers and half the restaurant is our dumpling lab […] assembly line and the guests can see everything. It’s convenient and you eliminate any concerns about guests staring at a metal box.”
Not only are they more personal than traditional automats, but food lockers can also act as a labor solution. Morfogen said that he thinks his concept is a solution for the “number one killer” of new restaurants: high labor costs.
With his automat model, he said, he can get payroll costs down from 24%-34% of a restaurant’s total costs to 12%-18%. The company has plans to grow to 100-plus franchised locations with this model in the tristate area.
“Tomorrow’s restaurant has a smaller footprint, less labor and fixed costs and that to me equals success,” he said.
Other chains like Del Taco and Smashburger have been adding food lockers to their new store prototypes.
Denver-based fast-casual Smashburger has even been testing two versions of pickup lockers: one that displays the status of a customer’s order on a screen that directs them to the cubby where their food can be found, and another that allows customers to use the restaurant’s mobile app to unlock the correct locker when they approach, using geofencing technology, Smashburger’s president, Carl Bachmann, said in a recent interview with Nation’s Restaurant News.
Kitchens will use more automation
With the labor shortage expected to continue, restaurants will also turn to technology as a solution in the back of the house.
"Tomorrow’s restaurant has a smaller footprint, less labor and fixed costs and that to me equals success."
Stratis Morfogen, Brooklyn Dumpling Shop
Gary Stibel, founder and CEO of New England Consulting Group, believes that robots in kitchens will be a lot more common in the near future, and not just for novelty or labor reasons:
“Instead of having a human line cook back there, you’re going to have a robot,” Stibel predicted. “It’s going to be so easy to perfect micro-personalization […] you’ll be able to more easily select exactly what you want and instead of a bunch of people running around the kitchen, a robot will do precisely what the customer asks.”
Brooklyn Dumpling Shop is bringing robotics into the kitchen to add even more contactless precision, in partnership with Miso Robotics. While Miso Robotics’ Flippy the robot — a mechanical fry cook that can precisely measure prep area portions and drop food into sizzling oil — is coming soon to Brooklyn Dumpling Shop, Miso Robotics has already partnered with brands like White Castle to add precision to the kitchen and alleviate some labor pressures.
In November, Marco’s Pizza shared the news they would be testing automated pizzamakers in their kitchens with machines that stretch the dough, put it on the assembly line and sauce the pizza, and then a computer programs the perfect amount of cheese to distribute on top before toppings are added. The machine ensures a perfect pizza every time made in about 45 seconds. Although that project was delayed, the company plans to get back into automation solutions later this year.
Restaurants will look for new ways to mine data
Throughout the pandemic, even restaurants that were previously not doing delivery hopped on third-party delivery apps, such as Grubhub, DoorDash and Uber Eats. But the problem with putting your digital platform entirely in a third-party company’s hands is that you likely lose access to one of the most important resources today’s restaurant can have: customer data.
Lunchbox is one of many companies offering a suite of digital tools to help restaurants bring delivery in-house, and implement loyalty programs, targeted marketing and advertising, and improved customer communication.
“Everyone is trying to figure out how to connect the data,” Lunchbox CEO Nabeel Alamgir said. “We’re teaching the industry how to do that and building tools to do that as well, and it’s not just us. We want to make that Grubhub data digestible for everyone. You want to make it simple.”
On their platform, for example, Lunchbox organizes digital users into three categories: lost, regular and active customers. Restaurants then have access to intel that advises them to ping that first category of lapsed customers or to offer a burger coupon for a customer that always orders a specific type of burger, for example. Their software does this automatically so that operators don’t have to manually parse through customer data to create one-to-one marketing plans.
Jon Weber, managing director of restaurant consulting company LEK Consulting, said there’s still a long way to go to convert delivery dollars into consumer data and information.
Meaningful interactions can look like targeted Facebook or Instagram ads launched from a digital dashboard like Lunchbox’s suite, or they can look like improved loyalty programs. White Castle, Wendy’s and Burger King have all launched new loyalty programs over the past year built on knowing and interacting with their customers as much as possible to offer them personalized deals.
Burger King’s new Royal Perks program, which began testing in February, becomes more personalized and convenient the more a customer interacts with it. Similarly, White Castle’s Craver Nation program, which launched in September, uses customer data based on purchasing habits to offer custom rewards and perks.
