Despite the steep rise in restaurant technology that restaurants have adopted in the past two years, a majority of restaurants still have a long way to go when it comes to reaping sufficient benefits from it. According to a survey of 300 independent and small chain restaurant operators in August by Technomic (on behalf of SpotOn), while 56 percent of independent restaurants use technology to manage certain aspects of their business, 81 percent still rely on legacy POS systems. These systems are often incompatible with add-on software that can help a restaurant get a tighter handle on critical functions like cost management and staffing. They are also the nervous system of a business, so if they aren’t offering the functionality they could, any added tools will be limited in the value they provide. Before investing in any new software or tools, ensure you’re building from a cloud-based POS system that can grow with you – and more readily adapt to new technology as it becomes available.

​Data has become increasingly valuable to restaurants, all while making foodservice businesses more appealing targets of cybercrime. According to Check Point Research, there was a 40 percent spike in cybercrime in the leisure and hospitality industry last year. Securing entry points is important to keeping information safe. A recent report from Modern Restaurant Management said legacy POS systems can be easy targets for attack. Taking action to bolster protection of every transaction at the point of sale is the most important thing you can do to safeguard your business from cyber criminals. That means having a POS with cloud-based monitoring and tech support. It helps an operator get to the root of a data breach or other problem quickly, then get back on track with minimal interruption.

​Restaurant tech has taken a big leap forward in the past few years, along with investment in new developments that breathlessly promise better efficiencies and lower costs. Amid all of these developments, it can be difficult to know what a restaurant really needs to compete right now. When in doubt, stick to the basics: one reliable POS that gives you real-time reports and offers some flexibility for adaptation down the line. As a recent report from Nation’s Restaurant News advises, it’s generally better to focus on the less-sexy tech. Systems to manage your guest data, safeguard credit card payments, and automate your training and onboarding may not make for juicy headlines, but they tend to go the farthest in protecting your information and helping you extract the insights you need from it.

As restaurants have acclimated to pandemic demands for low-touch ordering and pickup, many brands have tech stacks that need to catch up – with tacked-on updates, a range of software suited for specific tasks and bulky equipment that needs integration. Streamlining this setup will continue to be important to restaurant brands struggling to operate efficiently amid inflation, as well as supply and labor shortages. As a recent Forbes report indicates, adopting unified commerce may help multi-unit brands connect disparate pieces of their business, winnowing down their tech vendors and giving them a single view of what’s happening with their customers, staff and marketing. Does your tech give you an uncluttered, unified view of what’s happening in your business so you can make the right decisions?

Artificial Intelligence has been carving out a space in restaurants as a means of delegating tasks and saving labor costs. Though AI-supported ordering is still a work in progress (as McDonald’s has discovered with recent tests), AI is also serving as a kitchen assistant that can nudge employees to catch errors early – before they get the attention of an annoyed customer. One company in this space, Agot AI, places cameras over the food preparation line to watch how orders are being prepared. It connects with in-store, online and drive-thru orders appearing on the kitchen display system and will alert an employee in the line if an order is missing, say, the extra packets of ketchup the customer requested. In the process, the information the technology gathers can help a restaurant flag repeat problems in the line and adjust training to better manage them, and even create a rewards system to recognize employees who successfully move orders through the line with accuracy and speed.

​Technology should help make doing business easier and more efficient – not add a layer of extra equipment and complexity. It helps when you can use a single interface to manage many streams of business. One new tool from Nextbite makes it possible to manage their menus across a range of third-party delivery providers from one interface – kind of like a kitchen display system for managing external delivery streams. The single interface comes in handy when you have to remove or add menu items amid supply fluctuations, update pricing to reflect price changes from suppliers, and altogether make your menu consistent across many platforms at once.

​The new technology coming to market holds lots of promise for streamlining orders, payments and data. But those capabilities are only as powerful as your weakest tech tools. If you’re still using elements of legacy systems from over 20 years ago, any benefits of new tech will be limited. Aiming for a cloud-based POS will help you adapt and upgrade more easily in the future, minimize any downtimes and boost your security – and you don’t necessarily have to start from scratch. According to Upserve, many third-party vendors have cloud-based apps that allow you to maintain your rewards and promotions planning from legacy systems.

As supply-chain challenges continue to put pressure on prices, restaurant operators looking to make a profit – or to simply stay in business – need to understand the health of their business in small detail. While a POS system can collect reams of data about a business, the information won’t do much good if the operator doesn’t give the system the right prompts or know how to translate the information it collects into actionable insights. Your data can’t be a substitute for your own knowledge about your business. A recent webinar from Speedline Solutions covered how to use your POS to get to the heart of your objectives – and though the advice applies regardless of what kind of system you’re using, it starts with being able to ask some specific questions about your business (then leaning on your systems for help in answering them). Consider setting a general goal and then drilling down on it to get as specific as you can. For example, if you start by asking yourself how you can increase the amount of your average check, identify a more specific question you can ask: How can you entice more people to add the appetizer special to their order? If you’re wondering if you can raise your prices, how much you might be able to increase the price of your best-selling menu item before the price turns people away?

What’s next in customer-facing tech? Industry analysts say siloed tech solutions are out and all-in-one solutions are in. That means that any new tools and systems you adopt should be, above all, adaptable – to a range of surroundings, to the addition of new employees and sales streams, and to new applications that work alongside them. A new report from Restaurant Business also advises that new tools be payment-enabled and designed for easy transport. Servers should be able to carry them from tables to the drive-thru to curbside easily and without worrying about losing battery charge, and to process payments on the fly without having to return to the POS.

Just like flexibility has been key to keeping restaurants running in the past year, it’s also a critical aspect of any technology you’re implementing. Your existing system should not only be able to handle your current sales streams but also be capable of scaling up in different ways to accommodate changes. Flexibility extends to the ways in which you are able to collect and present data about your guests and other aspects of your operation. Even if you don’t know how the industry is going to evolve, your systems should be agile and user-friendly enough that you are getting the kinds of actionable information you need to be able to make incremental changes.