 Over the past several years, restaurant operators have had to manage a delicate balancing act: Assess and adopt new technology to make business run more efficiently, but do so in a way that engages employees and guests and avoids alienating them. It’s a challenging task to handle when there is often little time in the midst of running a restaurant to sit back and consider the broader picture. As a result, operators may find themselves drowning in too much tech, losing the human touch with guests, and possibly turning off staff who assume they will be replaced by automation. If this sounds familiar, it may be time to reframe your business’s relationship to your tech, emphasizing that it’s not there to take over, but rather to provide a new level of background support that makes it possible for you to provide the best human support you can. A recent report from Modern Restaurant Management provides some suggestions. Think about what you want to provide for your guests – is it friendly service with a personal touch, or do people simply want their food fast so they can get on their way quickly? Build your tech strategy around that. When considering new tech tools or systems, involve your staff in choosing them, giving the people who will be using the tech an opportunity to test it out, ask questions and raise concerns. Then, when training staff on your tech, help them understand the “why” behind it by taking them through each step of the guest journey and demonstrating how the tech supports it.
 As you look for ways to make more informed business decisions this year, the data you have on hand will provide a window onto what needs attention – and where you can make the greatest strides. To help, a recent report from Nation’s Restaurant News Intelligence advises operators to add a digital aspect to as many parts of the business as possible – and to aim to ensure the information you collect is complete and provides some nuanced detail about a guest. (For example, the brands that have the best handle on guest data tend to know more than just the person’s basic demographics – they seek to understand the person’s lifetime value, spending habits, order histories and preferred payment method.) Regardless of the kind of restaurant you operate, are there opportunities for you to digitize more transactions, enhance your loyalty program to gather more information on what your guests enjoy, connect every sale to a known guest, and engage guests in more targeted ways? Looking for ways to gather more and better information will help you make the kinds of decisions that can help drive your business forward.
 Whether you’re looking to slim down your tech stack this year or integrate new tools, your technology is likely to be the nerve center of your business going forward. Your ability to harness it and have your staff using its full functionality will be critical to managing your business in real time and course-correcting as needed. At a recent Fast Casual Executive Summit, restaurant leaders shared their thoughts about using technology to the greatest advantage. Eric Knott, COO at PDQ Restaurants, emphasized the need for employees beyond the tech team or restaurant leadership to be involved in selecting, testing and determining the need for new tech. "Anytime we evaluate any technology, we bring in a resource group of individuals from the organization to weigh in and get opinions,” he said. “That could be a cashier, somebody that works the drive thru, a store manager. So we have a good group of opinions on how it touches each of them.” These representatives can help you appreciate the nuances of integrating new tech with your service model and what functions are more important to solving existing problems. Beyond that, they can also make for helpful ambassadors and potential trainers of the tech down the line when you’re trying to increase buy-in across your team.
 Consumers want restaurant delivery – and not only on cold winter nights. According to research from Statista, the online food delivery market in the U.S. is projected to grow more than 13 percent annually in the next few years, reaching a projected market volume of $534 billion by 2028. It’s a good time to make sure your restaurant’s delivery mechanism works as smoothly as it can and offers guests the convenience they demand as you adopt new technology or consider taking on new delivery partners. Looking at your current delivery capabilities, are you able to rely on your system to deliver a consistent and positive experience to guests? Can your system easily scale up as your business changes and grows? Does it meet your budget constraints? Can it help you respond to order inquiries promptly and accurately? Do its features reflect the features available through your third-party delivery partners or do you need to compromise in certain areas? Do you feel that your system empowers you to act on in-the-moment decisions as business conditions warrant? For example, if you want to update a menu item, offer a limited-time promotion, or turn your delivery availability on or off, can you make a change in an easy, agile move? As you set out to preserve or build your delivery business this year, consider what goals you want it to help you achieve. Make sure you and your team understand and can use its full functionality. Where possible, adapt existing processes so you operate with leaner technology. Finally, review your progress on a regular basis so you can course-correct as needed.
 Artificial intelligence may already be supporting various tasks in your restaurant, from automating scheduling to monitoring inventory to personalizing staff training. But it can also serve as a self-contained brainstorming meeting of sorts by helping you develop new ideas that can keep your restaurant fresh for guests. For example, in recent months, chef Tom Aviv made headlines for using Dall-E, the image generator from OpenAI, to design the menu and décor for his restaurant Branja in Miami. One of the results was a chocolate mousse inspired by Picasso. Such uses of AI tools can help you formulate new recipes, identify different ingredient combinations, create engaging menu descriptions, and help you identify ways to bring your restaurant’s décor and online presence into better alignment with your brand. These tools need human intervention to generate the best results, but if you give them increasingly specific prompts, they can trigger new ideas in you that you can use to offer exciting experiences to guests.
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