Inspire Brands unveiled plans for its first multi-brand ghost kitchen in its home city of Atlanta.
Read More
Savvy operators may have a trickle or torrent of data coming in through increasingly digital restaurant sales and loyalty channels, and using that data to really drive performance is the next trick. How to get there was a key topic of a Food On Demand Conference panel titled “Capitalizing on the Newly Digitized Customer.” The panel was stacked with loyalty and data heavyweights including Zack Oates, CEO of Ovation; Niko Papademetriou, SVP sales at Qu; Mike Vichich, co-founder and CEO of Wisely; and Kinesh Patel, co-founder and CTO at SevenRooms. […]
Read More
There’s another new robot kid on the block: Nommi, a fully autonomous robotic kitchen designed to make Michelin-star-quality meals for a fraction of the cost. The promise has grabbed some big attention from Michelin star- and James Beard-winning chef Masaharu Morimoto as well as hospitality guru Sam Nazarian’s C3. On the culinary side, Morimoto—one of the classic chefs from the campier era of competitive cooking television—is lending his culinary prowess in the form of recipes from his elevated Japanese restaurant Sa’Moto. The concept happens to be inside C3’s Citizens food […]
Read More
“Attention is great. We have to be sure to be ready for that attention,” said Black & Mobile co-founder David Cabello, right, with Tom Kaiser, Editor of Food On Demand. David Cabello is co-founder with his twin brother of Black & Mobile, the first food delivery service catering exclusively to Black restaurant owners. He’s appeared in a video with Jay-Z, been featured in People and Fortune magazines, and even got a call from rapper Waka Flocka looking to invest. But he puts the attention in perspective. “You get an email […]
Read More
Citizens New York food hall is the creation of C3 and described as “a flagship shopping center of all our brands,” said C3’s Joey Simons at the Food On Demand Conference. C3 showed off its new Citizens New York food hall, which combines brick-and-mortar operations with virtual restaurants from C3’s collection of digital brands, including Umami Burger, Sam’s Crispy Chicken and the wildly popular Krispy Rice. “Krispy Rice just launched with all the TGI Fridays locations,” added Joey Simons, SVP of operations for C3, on a panel yesterday exploring the […]
Read More
Delivery executives, an operator and a corporate buyer talk discuss the challenges that faced corporate meal delivery during COVID-19.
Read More
Restaurant industry veterans shared what works and what doesn’t at the Enterprise VR/Ghost Kitchens Strategies Panel at FODC.
Read More
As third-party delivery continues to grow and evolve, many big questions remain and many more have emerged as business-critical topics the industry struggles to understand. Seeking to answer some of those questions, a Food On Demand conference panel tapped into the massive amount of data for answers. Moderated by Carl Orsbourn, the author on the recent book exploring the industry, Delivering the Digital Restaurant (and a recent FOD podcast guest). “This past year has taken us to a whole new level,” said Orsbourn. Digging into the graphs and spreadsheets, he […]
Read More
“If I may say, we’re here to disrupt the food delivery industry,” said Ben Thein, left, of Flytrex, which makes food delivery drones. Andy Rebhun, El Pollo Loco, is one of Flytrex’s first customers in the United States. “Food delivery has reached new heights” intoned the video played with dramatic music at the Food On Demand Conference today. People look skyward, gasping, from atop a horse or in their car, then customers make a mad dash to their backyard as an El Pollo Loco-branded drone lowers their food via a […]
Read More
Michael Beacham of REEF Technology, Corey Manicone of Kitchen United and Alex Canter of Nextbite discussed the future of virtual and ghost kitchens with moderator Tom Kaiser at the Food On Demand Conference. The young virtual restaurant and ghost kitchen business is in a “huge experimental phase,” said Alex Canter, CEO of Nextbite, on opening day of the Food On Demand Conference. He considers that a good thing. “We’re seeing lots of restaurants try to do their own brands, lots of restaurants partnering with other people’s brands. It’s not a […]
Read More