Top 6 Latest Technology Trends That Will Shape the Restaurant Industry in 2021

With the change in time, you come across new innovations, new products, and also new trends in technology. Every industry goes through transformations when there is an advent of new technology trends.

Likewise, the restaurant and food services industry have completely revolutionized due to the arrival of new technologies that changed the way customers order and receive food.

The technology-enabled service has made it convenient for users to order their food, make a payment, or get served at the restaurant.

In this blog, you can find new technology trends that have impacted the restaurant and food-serving industry all over the world.

Let’s jump right in.

Online ordering and food delivering

Back in the day, the only food item we could order online or call the restaurant for pizzas and takeouts. But, now, the on-demand food-delivery apps like UberEats or Postmates enable us to order any dishes. These services also make it convenient for customers to seamlessly place an order through an app and get it delivered to their doorstep.

How does it help the restaurant?

1. These platforms help restaurants to get their food orders from customers.
2. It helps restaurants to reach more customers and improve brand awareness.
3. The on-demand food-delivery platforms also help new restaurants to find their customers and their target audience.

Delivery orders using drones and robots

The new-age delivery option is using drones and robots. To make delivery very simple and also reduce human-workforce, companies have decided to deliver the orders to customers using drones and robots.

JustEats partnering with Starship Technologies developed moving pavement droids to deliver food to customers in the UK. The droids can travel 4 miles per hour and deliver orders that are placed from a 10-mile radius. The droids can help to deliver orders in a congested locality.

Likewise, Tacocopter in the San Francisco area started the drone food delivery option by carrying tacos and delivering to customers.

Digital inventory tracking

Gone are those days when managers of the restaurant track the inventory by manually keeping a note of the number of ingredients, fruits, and vegetables.

The technology growth has benefitted the restaurant industry by increasing the efficiency in managing its inventory. The restaurants have embraced automatic digital inventory tracking and successfully implemented it.

The inventory tracking system allows managers or owners to track and manage all the ingredients, vegetables, and fruits. You can analyze how much food you need per week or month to restock your inventory. If the stock is running low, it alerts the manager to shop more. You can also add the overhead cost of each item and help in your accounting.

The software can be synchronized to your mobile phone or other smartphone devices as well to be accessible from anywhere.

How does it help the restaurant?

1. The tracking system helps restaurants in tracking food wastage and can introduce precautionary measures to avoid happening.
2. The restaurants can manage the budget and can be well sure to avoid overspending.
3. Also, digitalizing the inventory can also avoid incidents of theft in your restaurant. Of course, not every time food items get stolen in huge quantities. But it can help in identifying missing items even if it is of a small quantity.

Self-order kiosks

Self-order kiosks are the digital touch screen that allows customers to give an order by selecting the dishes from the menu.

According to the research report from Tillster, the self-service kiosk market will reach an estimated $30.8 billion by 2024. The rise in demand is due to the advantage of automated ordering and payment.

The kiosks make customers order their dishes by viewing the menu and ordering on their own. It helps customers to review the orders by themselves before finalizing it. The kiosks help in decreasing customer waiting time. Also, customers can know about today’s special foods or the available dishes by using the kiosks.

How does it help the restaurant?

1. The restaurant can easily update the menu every day.
2. The restaurant owners can get data on the number of orders made per day, most ordered dish, least ordered dish, and other analytics reports through kiosks.
3. Kiosks help restaurants in reducing staffing hired to look after customers.
4. Restaurants can better understand their customers and their preferred dishes.

Robot servers

Sometimes we ponder upon this thought that robots will take over the world as we see in sci-fi movies and books. That day is not that far off.

Most companies are viewing robots and AI as an advantage to their business. They can be used to do multiple tasks efficiently and also to automate repetitive tasks.

The Alibaba restaurant Robot.he in Shanghai has introduced robots to serve food to customers. The robot serves the food by using QR-code that has been submitted by the customer to identify the seating.

Similarly, many companies are seeing the potential of the robot waiter and considering to include it in their Restaurant management software

How does it help the restaurant?

1. The restaurant can reduce the human workforce if robots can efficiently serve and handle customers.
2. It reduces the workload of the waitress and servers.
3. It attracts the attention of customers and children, and they love to see how a robot works.

Even though there is a huge potential in the robotic industry, it still faces limitations. The robots are high-priced and cost more to maintain. The robots benefit high-end restaurants and posh hotels. But, it is considered an expensive technology for middle and small-sized restaurants.

Contactless payment

The contactless payment is when payments are done either through credit/debit card, net banking, payment gateways like Stripe or PayPal, scanning QR code.

Customers for a long time paid their bills using cash. But the technologies today have made payment simpler. Customers can quickly pay the restaurant bill using a payment gateway or credit/debit card. The customers don’t have to carry the cash everywhere. Also, they don’t have to worry about carrying change and they can pay an exact amount to the restaurant.

How does it help the restaurant?

1. Customers don’t have to wait for a long time to get any change.
2. It makes it easier for restaurants to track their earnings made per day, week, and month.
3. Providing a contactless payment helps customers to let them choose their convenient mode of payment.
4. Also, contactless payment is secure and avoids the issue of any fraudulent activities.

Kitchen display screens

Years back, restaurants monitor the orders by writing on paper and passing them to the chefs in the back station. But, now to make things simpler and efficient, kitchen display screens are installed in restaurants for watching the status of an order and keeping track of inventory.

Customers can clearly know the status of an order – received by the chief, being prepared, or ready to serve – by looking at the kitchen display screen.

How does it help the restaurant?

1. The kitchen display screen allows waiters and chefs to know when the order was placed, dishes are served, whether an order was canceled or completed.
2. The restaurant can offer better customer service by serving the dishes on time.
3. It also makes it easy for restaurants to know the orders made from each table.

Wrapping up

The evolution in technology has benefited the restaurant industry a great deal and this makes the owners provide better customer service to people.

The technology has made both the customer’s and restaurant owners’ interaction simpler, decreasing the restaurant’s turn-around-time, and eliminates any error in food orders.

I hope this blog is informative and interesting.

Author Bio:I’m Divya working as a digital marketing executive at RentALLScript, we are a promising marketplace mobile apps developers in the market.  Our top selling products are WooberlyEats, Wooberly, RentALL, RentALL Cars, RentALLSpace