Take one look at the ecommerce marketing world and you’ll see a frightening amount of data at work. One search for socks follows you to the very ends of the earth. The restaurant industry is playing catch-up on big consumer data, but the massive shift to digital ordering has accelerated that dramatically. During a panel discussion with Food On Demand, two marketing vendors with a handle on big, big data discussed how the marketing end of the restaurant sales funnel is getting digitized. “Hospitality at its core is understating who […]
High-touch, hospitality-minded restaurant folks are more than ready to bring people back into restaurants. But the founders behind delivery-only virtual restaurant brand Stay’d are looking to bring some of that high-touch hospitality to the delivery experience. Compared to a great restaurant, delivery can be a bit of a hollow experience no matter how good the food is. As many restaurant operators lament, it’s an experience largely dictated by whoever shows up to take the delivery. “I don’t necessarily like not controlling the whole process,” said Jeff Castillo, CEO of Maadaadizi […]
Ghoster is the latest early-stage virtual restaurant provider promising that a focus on operations and technology will make the difference for restaurants bringing new brands into their kitchens.
Fast-casual franchise Saladworks is partnering with Ghost Kitchen Brands to open in dozens of non-traditional locations by the end of 2021, many of which will be inside Walmart stores.
Tock, the restaurant reservation platform that moved into carryout and events, has been acquired by website and ecommerce platform Squarespace in a $400 million mix of cash and stock.
Chipotle has invested in Nuro, a California-based autonomous vehicle manufacturer that’s been making news ever since its founding in 2016. Known for delivery vehicles that are similar to Smart cars, it has tested deliveries with Domino’s, grocery stores and others, and it’s also among the few road-based autonomous vehicle companies with regulatory approval to operate on roads and, in some cases, on bike lanes in the United States Nuro’s vehicles typically drive right up to the customer’s curb, alert them upon arrival and make their goods available by opening a […]
Self-delivery remains a tricky concept for the majority of restaurant operators. Many, especially independents, are reluctant to hire drivers, deal with the overhead and manage the technology layer necessary to give consumers what they’re used to from ecommerce. It was something we admittedly glossed over in our February exploration of the delivery balance sheet. For much of the industry, a true in-house delivery program can be more headache than it’s worth. Even after the pandemic surge, there’s not enough delivery to support it. Blum pointed to a lot of new […]
As the parent company of Famous Dave’s gradually transitions away from table service and large-format restaurants, BBQ Holdings is distilling what it’s learned from years of delivery-focused experiments to come out of the pandemic swinging as it shifts into growth mode.
During the final session of FOD’s Building Your Off-Premises Tech Stack event, Grubhub’s Liz Bosone joined OrderB4’s Randy Murphy and Leah Willis, digital systems and technology manager at Flour Bakery + Cafe, to discuss whether restaurants should go it alone or outsource their delivery programs.
During its annual Make Conference, Slice unveiled a proprietary point-of-sale system called Slice Register for the more than 15,000 independent pizzerias on its platform.
