 Technology is making it hard to tell how big a foodservice brand really is. Small, independent restaurants are increasingly adopting technology to enhance efficiency and customer experience. In the process, they are gaining advantages of scale that allow them to compete with much larger chains. Affordable solutions like self-service kiosks and AI-powered analytics are streamlining operations without massive investments. Small restaurants can use kiosks to reduce wait times and free up staff – all while they collect data that helps them optimize their menu for guests in ways that used to be only available to major brands. For example, Tony Roma’s, a smaller fast-casual chain, launched its “Tony Roma’s 2.0” initiative, which (in part) integrates AI and robotics to boost order accuracy, automate tasks and enhance overall efficiency. It’s allowing the brand to streamline order management and operate on a larger scale than before.
A brand’s tech-supported scalability factor can often mean the difference between stagnation and rapid growth. As Modern Restaurant Management reported recently, a small restaurant could land a major corporate catering contract – but if they have outdated delivery and logistics systems, they will struggle with inefficiencies and delays when orders increase. However, if the restaurant adopts platforms that manage delivery and optimize logistics, it can scale seamlessly, expand service areas, and take on ever-larger opportunities without compromising quality.  We have all been there: It’s been a long day, you’re hungry, you’re craving a meal from a favorite restaurant, and you want it here now. Somehow the effort it takes to order or adjust a past order to your preferences – never mind collect orders from others – feels like more than you want to manage. Wouldn’t it be nice if you could skip that first part and allow the restaurant to get a jump start on preparing your dish? This functionality is something that Panera is offering their loyalty club members. The new feature, dubbed Crunch Time Ordering, allows guests to pre-program their favorite meals into their app and set them to be ordered at a set date and time. The app sends the person a reminder to place the order for pickup or delivery, then they just need to swipe a prompt within the app to complete the process. This kind of functionality is something to consider if you serve craveable foods that your guests think about at certain times of the week – like a large coffee on the way to work, a soup-and-sandwich combo for lunch during a busy work day, or a Friday-night pizza to kick off the weekend. Looking at your guests’ ordering habits and the preferences of your most loyal fans, are there ways you can remove friction from your ordering process and make it a little easier for people to get the food they crave?
 You’re likely leaning on your mobile app or website for more orders these days – and ensuring your service is seamless through these channels is key to bringing customers back. But this requires staying on top of the lower-tech side of managing this service. Specifically, your staff needs to be conversant in both how you interact with guests in person and through digital tools. That includes knowing how your online and in-dining room menus differ, having some baseline knowledge about how your ordering and payment systems work for those using them, and having some ability to troubleshoot the common problems that arise with these tools.
 Third-party delivery platforms can be kind of a mystery for restaurant operators. They can be critical in helping restaurants accommodate guest preferences for delivered food, but much is unknown about them. For instance, how will your restaurant appear on their site? What factors determine better placement and exposure for some businesses over others? As a recent report from Restaurant Business indicates, several factors play a role. The tiered pricing structures of some of these services can determine a restaurant’s exposure on a platform, though selecting the lowest tier of pricing can offer more exposure on some platforms than on others, so it pays to shop around. Beyond that, your restaurant’s speed of preparation, historical order size, order accuracy, regular promotion offers and customer reviews all help inform the algorithm too. Boosting your performance in each of these areas can appease the algorithm — it’s hard to know if one factor is valued more or less than the next.
 Feeling competitive? A lot of your industry peers are. Recent research from the National Restaurant Association found that nearly half of operators expect competition to be more intense this year than it was last year. Only 7 percent expect it to ease – and that’s in an environment where the majority of operators say there either the same number of restaurants or fewer restaurants than there were in 2019. Your technology stack can help you make sure you’re seizing every opportunity to serve guests well and keep them coming back. You can accomplish this in several ways: Smooth out and speed up your ordering process. Your mobile app can go far in representing the experience of your restaurant. Make it easy for people to view the menu, place orders and make reservations with a minimum of clicks and scrolls. Regular customers should have easy access to previous orders and be prompted with special offers and add-ons that complement their favorite menu items. In-house, consider incorporating tableside ordering and payment to improve order accuracy, expedite service, and ensure your staff can make best use of their time. Depending on your restaurant category, consider using digital menus and signage to update your menu in real time and draw guests to your most profitable items. Finally, your customer data – as well as information you collect about the competitive landscape – can help you better understand how people feel about your menu, keep tabs on your service, and allow you to stay nimble so you’re able to make proactive changes to benefit your business.
 Short on staff? Whether you are or not, tech tools may help you reorganize tasks so you do the most with the people you have on hand – and support them in ways that promote retention. Take the burden off of staff (and give guests some freedom to order and pay when they like) by enabling table payment via mobile phone or tabletop kiosk. Tie this to a guest’s loyalty program data so when they order, they are receiving targeted recommendations that complement their favorite dishes and may help you boost check totals. The targeted communication can help provide the quality experience a guest might otherwise appreciate in a server. QSRweb.com suggests that pizza restaurants (and even some other restaurant types) could also benefit from a grab-and-go setup that requires little staff intervention: They can simply place a customer’s pizzas in a warmer that can be unlocked by the person’s mobile app when they come to collect their pizza. Where is your restaurant especially labor-heavy right now? Could technology lighten the load?
 In addition to helping you staff your business and prepare orders more efficiently, restaurant technology can help you ensure you’re not leaving any potential sales on the table. Digital menus, mobile apps, loyalty programs, and systems for tabletop ordering and payment all provide opportunities for you to suggest menu add-ons to complement a dish, or prompt an order of appetizers, drinks or desserts that might not have happened otherwise. (And when combined with your loyalty program, to do so with personalized recommendations that the guest is more likely to crave.) Are you seizing the right tech opportunities to maximize your sales?
 As consumers have used digital channels more frequently to order restaurant food in recent years, many independent restaurants have been lagging with the mobile tech needed to facilitate those transactions. According to the June edition of the Digital Divide study, which included data from a PYMNTS survey of approximately 2,400 adults who regularly purchase food from restaurants, 56 percent of chain restaurants offer mobile order-ahead capabilities, compared with only 31 percent of independents. Low-cost tools to help eliminate the snags from the ordering process will become increasingly important. Fortunately, some companies are focusing on supporting independent restaurants’ tech transition to help level the playing field. ItsaCheckmate, for one, recently announced it would be launching an integration for small and medium-sized businesses that would enable direct ordering through Google’s search and maps functions.
 Your guests have clear, distinct preferences about what they order from you – so why should it be any different when it comes to how they order from you? You may serve guests who are technology phobic right alongside others who are early adopters of the latest gadgets. Neither kind of guest should feel alienated during the process of ordering from you. Whether you are accepting an order from your drive-thru, a tabletop tablet, a guest’s mobile phone, someone sitting in your dining room, or from some other source, you can earn your guests’ loyalty by providing some flexibility in how they order. When your guests place an order with you, do they feel this flexibility – or do they feel pushed in a certain direction? Can you accommodate a range of preferences without compromising order accuracy, speed and data quality?
 If there is one area of tech to focus on this year, you’ll be in a good spot by smoothing out the process your guests must go through when placing orders and making payment – and finding low-touch, low-interaction ways of doing so. According to a new report from Oracle about consumer expectations for restaurant dining, 73 percent of restaurant patrons would like to reduce their use of cash, 49 percent would like to minimize their human interaction, 46 percent want to settle their bill on a mobile app, and 71 percent wouldn’t mind if restaurants, at the time of online booking, communicated a limit to the amount of time guests could keep a reserved table. This is good news for operators struggling to keep labor. What aspects of your guest experience might be better managed by outsourcing them to tech this year?
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