FOODSERVICE UPDATES
  • Foodservice Updates
  • Trends
    • Commodities
  • Digital Media
  • Technology
  • Safety
  • Corona News
  • Management Tips
  • Free Newsletter
  • Recipes
    • Mains
    • Soups & Sauces
    • Salads
    • Desserts & Snacks
    • Sides
  • Corona Virus Guidance

​Make sure your tech enhances your service

1/18/2021

0 Comments

 
tech
The technology you’re adopting now to bring efficiencies to your business and minimize contact may have the unintended effect of distancing your guests from your staff – and the service they have come to expect from your brand. As you introduce technology into your business, make sure that it includes features that somehow replicate (and ideally, enhance) your service. When your return customers order food from you online or via your app, are they prompted with information on their past orders to help streamline the processing of their current order? Whenever they are in the vicinity of your restaurant, could you use predictive analytics to send them a promotion they are likely to crave? Using artificial intelligence can help you demonstrate that you know a guest well – and fill any empathy gaps that exist when a guest has less human contact with your brand.
0 Comments

​Get ready for a data deluge

1/18/2021

0 Comments

 
data
The pandemic has made us all the more reliant on data from a growing number of sources – and the restaurant brands using their own data most adeptly (and pulling from useful external data sources too) have been the ones most able to steer their way through the challenges of the past year. In its recent list of top-five predictions for restaurant tech in the year ahead, Restaurant Technology News said operators will need to be ready to take advantage of the “tidal wave of data” resulting from their interactions with consumers. So how could this look in practice? If you have a large customer base of sports fans, the report says, you could be combining your first-party transaction data with player stats, weather changes and your inventory to predict sales on game days. And that model adjusts depending on the demographics you’re serving: Whoever your ideal customer is, there are multiple sources of data that can predict how that person will make decisions. Are you collecting data from sources that can help you make the best decisions in the year ahead?
0 Comments

Drill down on the data you have

1/11/2021

0 Comments

 
data
Is your restaurant as future-proof as it could be? Whether you can answer yes or no largely depends on how well you are gathering, managing, measuring and responding to the data you collect – about your customers, your inventory, your sales throughout the day/week/month (and the list goes on). The information you gather now can prepare your business to power through the next crisis and, in stronger times, make it as profitable as possible. If you’re not in a position to hire a team member whose full-time responsibility is managing data, consider the tech acumen you already have on your team. What’s most important is an ability to see patterns in your data and make connections. Studying the approaches of quick-service restaurants, which had already been well on their way down this road before the pandemic, may also provide some clues. Start with your biggest pain points. Now is an important time to take stock of the challenges of the past year, identify key weaknesses, and use the capabilities of your POS system to defend against them going forward – or possibly eliminate them altogether.
0 Comments

Kitchen equipment designed to manage pandemic challenges

1/4/2021

0 Comments

 
kitchen equipment
The new pandemic-era guidelines that restaurants must follow may help protect health and safety, but they can also slow down service: More frequent handwashing and cleaning, fewer staff on hand at once, and a decline in shared work surfaces can add time to food preparation. Is your kitchen equipment earning its keep by helping you adjust to these changes? This year could be time to swap out single-use tools and appliances for smaller, multifunctional ones – and if you are in the market for an oven, consider a smart oven like a cook-and-hold oven that you can set and forget, or a smart combi oven that can cook using convected heat, steam or both. In addition to helping restaurants manage labor costs, maximize available space and remotely monitor cooking, these kinds of appliances can save energy and also track safety.
0 Comments

​Use online ordering for better pre-order management

1/4/2021

0 Comments

 
on-line ordering
One change to life after the pandemic that could be a lasting one is the drift in meal times and snack times during the day. Your online ordering system – and your use of it to manage pre-orders during the day – can help you accommodate those changes and serve more people. A recent Eater report describes how the owners of Dee Dee, a Thai food truck in Austin, are actually doing more sales volume now than before the pandemic. While their customers have long asked if they could place orders ahead of time, before COVID-19 this was too difficult for the owners to manage in the midst of serving the long line of customers appearing at their window each day. That line could require a wait of between 45 minutes and an hour, but now that the owners have taken their ordering fully online, there is no longer any wait. Knowing when people will want their food – and having the freedom to spread out those orders – helps them churn out more of them in less time.
0 Comments

​Touch-free inventory tracking

12/28/2020

0 Comments

 
voice activated
You know the appeal of technology that enables touch-free interactions at the front of the house. But increasingly there are touch-free options that can help you manage the back of the house as well. If you have already graduated from manual, paper-and-pen checklists to tablets, this takes things a step further by allowing you to use an app to carry out voice-activated, touch-free, time-efficient inventory counting. On Dec. 8, the National Restaurant Association presented a webinar about this topic in conjunction with VoiceStar.ai and Orderscape.com if you’d like to learn more about the technology.
0 Comments

​Video builds a restaurant star

12/28/2020

0 Comments

 
video
If you don’t regularly use video to promote your food, people and background story, listen up: A Brightcove study found that 76 percent of adults report that they make a purchase after watching a marketing video – and nearly half of consumers watch branded video on social media. As you prepare to ramp your business back up after the pandemic, consider creating a calendar of video content that you can share across your social media channels. There are a multitude of options to try. Record a mini cooking tutorial with your chef – or have him or her share favorite tips for using a seasonal ingredient. Talk about how you source food and make decisions about where to get the items you serve – or record your visit to a local farmer’s market or small supplier. Have a new staffer on board with an interesting life story? Record a brief interview with the person and ask questions that share a bit about his personality, background and professional role. How about your restaurant’s story – or the history behind your restaurant’s location? You can share promotional content too – like a contest to win an appetizer platter for the Superbowl or a house-brewed beer subscription for a month. The key is to find ways to share your restaurant’s authentic self and create useful or entertaining content that viewers will want to share. Look at this winter as a time to build your brand and strengthen customer loyalty for when people feel safe returning in bigger numbers.
0 Comments

​Restaurants, reinvented

12/21/2020

0 Comments

 
restaurant
Times of challenge spark new ideas and we’re about to see an innovation boom in the restaurant industry – particularly when it comes to ghost kitchens. Technology companies, having assessed how the pandemic has forced restaurants to transform their sales models, streamline delivery and curbside pick-up, address labor challenges and take additional precautions to protect safety, are finding opportunities to help restaurants whittle down their operations so they can excel in those areas. Specifically, look for more opportunities for turnkey restaurant-in-a-box solutions that give operators the hardware, software and management technology to set up a mobile shop in a parking lot (and in the process, decrease the cost and risk of starting a business). Restaurant Technology News reports that companies like Reef Technology are focusing on “proximity-as-a-service” platforms for organizations ranging from restaurants to retailers to even healthcare testing centers. While such solutions lower the barriers to entry for people with little experience, they can also help experienced operators dip their toe in the water with ghost kitchens to determine their ideal sales model going forward.
0 Comments

​Tech tune-up time

12/21/2020

0 Comments

 
tech
As we wind down the year (and one for the history books at that), take a moment to review where you are as a business – and what changes need to happen for it to keep pace with the rapidly changing times. As the Spoon reported recently, digital sales will comprise 54 percent of all quick-service and limited-service restaurant sales by 2025, according to research from Incisiv. That’s a 70 percent leap from where we were before the pandemic. If your restaurant has been delaying the adoption of tech – particularly to help streamline guest ordering and fulfillment – it’s no longer a nice-to-have but a must-have feature that will help your restaurant survive. Talk to Team Four about how you can take small steps to adopt technology to bring more efficiencies to order management in 2021.
0 Comments

​Automation escalation

12/14/2020

0 Comments

 
robot
What kitchen tasks do you wish you could automate? Even if you haven’t contemplated bringing in a robot – or some kind of technology to help with repetitive tasks – a growing number of brands are doing so as a result of the pandemic. As a result, they are creating efficiencies that are likely going to give them a competitive advantage down the line. New research from Research Nester found that the market for cooking robots is likely to grow more than 16 percent between now and 2028 – and have a market valuation (now $86 million) of $322 million by 2028. The good news is that as automation becomes more widespread, it could also become more financially accessible for smaller operators.
0 Comments
<<Previous

    Subscribe to our newsletter

    Picture
    Picture
    Picture
    Picture

    Archives

    January 2021
    December 2020
    November 2020
    October 2020
    September 2020
    August 2020
    July 2020
    June 2020
    May 2020
    April 2020
    March 2020
    February 2020
    January 2020
    December 2019
    November 2019
    October 2019
    September 2019
    August 2019
    July 2019
    June 2019
    May 2019
    April 2019
    March 2019
    February 2019
    January 2019
    December 2018
    November 2018
    October 2018
    September 2018

    RSS Feed

    Categories

    All
    5G
    Accounting
    Ai
    App
    Automate
    Blockchain
    Carry Out
    Cashless
    Communication
    Composting
    Credit Card
    Crops
    Customization
    Cyber-threats
    Data
    Delivery
    Digital
    Drive-thru
    Email
    Encryption
    Face-recognition
    Food-safety
    Forecast
    Fraud
    Ghost-kitchen
    Gift-cards
    Gmofoods
    Gps
    Hiring
    Internet
    Inventory
    Kiosk
    Labels
    Labor
    Marketing
    Menu
    Mobileordering
    Mobile-ordering
    Mobileorderingb02c87f4a0
    Network
    Ordering
    Payables
    Payment
    Pos
    Reservations
    Robots
    Safety
    Scheduling
    Security
    Socialdistance
    Special-offers
    Staff
    Takeout
    Take-out
    Technology
    Touchless
    Uv-light
    Video
    Virtual
    Voice
    Waste
    Website
    Wifi
    Wi-fi

Get our Free Newsletter
Team Four Foodservice
​Recipes
Corona Virus Resources
Value 4
Quarterly Outlook
​Palette Foodservice
​
Foodservice CEO
© 2021 Team Four Foodservice
  • Foodservice Updates
  • Trends
    • Commodities
  • Digital Media
  • Technology
  • Safety
  • Corona News
  • Management Tips
  • Free Newsletter
  • Recipes
    • Mains
    • Soups & Sauces
    • Salads
    • Desserts & Snacks
    • Sides
  • Corona Virus Guidance