The Restaurant Technology Guys Podcast brought to you by Custom Business Solutions
The Restaurant Technology Guys Podcast brought to you by Custom Business Solutions
Navigating the Future of Restaurant Technology: A Chat with NRN's Senior Tech reporter Joanna Fantozzi
Navigating the Evolving Landscape of Restaurant Technology with Joanna Fantozzi
In this episode of the Restaurant Technology Guys podcast, we are joined by Joanna Fantozzi, a senior editor at Nation's Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality. Joanna shares her journey in the restaurant tech space, discussing her role in covering tech, legislation, and specific companies within the industry. The conversation delves into the current state of restaurant technology, emphasizing the importance of mastering basic tech functionalities, such as digital ordering and payment solutions, before embracing advanced technologies like AI and robotics. Joanna also highlights the critical role of loyalty programs, data analytics, and personalized guest experiences in today's market. The episode concludes with insights into upcoming industry events and ways to stay informed about the latest trends in restaurant technology.
00:00 Introduction and Guest Introduction
00:33 Joanna's Background and Career Journey
01:22 Passion for Restaurants and Hospitality
02:57 State of Restaurant Technology
04:13 Challenges and Basics of Restaurant Tech
05:53 Importance of Seamless Customer Experience
17:59 Loyalty Programs and Customer Data
27:24 Future of Restaurant Technology
32:40 Events and Staying Connected
35:50 Conclusion and Final Thoughts
This is the Restaurant Technology Guys podcast. Helping you run your restaurant better.
Jeremy:Welcome back to the Restaurant Technology Guys podcast. I thank everyone out there for joining us. As I say, each and every time I know you guys got lots of choices. So thank you guys for hanging out with us this week. Today I am joined by a very special guest and I'm gonna let Joanna explain who she is and what she gets to do shortly. We actually haven't met in person. Hopefully we'll get a chance to meet, the week that we're recording this. But, Joanna, why don't you explain a little bit about your background and what you get to do for a living for our listeners that quite frankly, I am certain have all seen your columns, but maybe not necessarily heard your voice and or seen your face because, you write prolifically in, in the restaurant space.
Joanna Fantozzi:thank you so much for the introduction. I'm Joanna Fantozzi. I'm a senior editor with Nation's Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality. I've been here for about six years. and over the course of that time, over the past several years, I've become, the tech reporter for NRN. I wear a few different hats at NRN. Don't just cover tech, also cover a little bit, the legislation and legal beats, as well as, some of the. specific companies. I like to say I cover coffee and pizza, all the coffee and pizza brands. and then, before that, I've been covering food for quite some time, but before I came to NRN I was on the consumer side and I wrote for places like, business insider, the daily meal, New York daily news. and. Yeah, it's been a journey to get where I am and I'm excited to be covering the, the restaurant tech space
Jeremy:Yeah, I love it. share with our listeners, how, why restaurants, why did that strike you in such a way? Cause I, you and I have talked offline and I know how much you enjoy going out and creating experiences and I think it'll parlay into our conversation today, but, share, share with our listeners a little bit about why the passion for restaurants and the hospitality industry in general.
Joanna Fantozzi:It's so funny because I feel like I almost fell into this beat coverage, because I went to journalism school, journalism graduate school. and when I was there, I was in the arts and culture reporting beat. and, in like at the subsection or school within a school. and when I was in that class, they were basically saying you had to pick, a beat within arts and culture reporting and everyone had to pick a different thing. and I was trying to toy between, different There's fine art, literature, TV, movies, a lot of people wanted to be, film critics. and one of them was that you could choose this food and restaurants. And I was like, I like going out to eat and I like watching food network.
Jeremy:That's hilarious.
Joanna Fantozzi:So I could try. And then I interned at the daily news, and got to write a lot of food content. There. And just fell in love with it, and I've been mostly doing it ever since. Actually, my first job out of grad school was I was, a local newspaper reporter, as I feel like a lot of cub reporters are. but I've been mostly covering, the food and hospitality space ever
Jeremy:I love that. and funny enough, we used to sell technology to retail, to grocery, to C stores and restaurants and similar story. We were like, Oh, everybody's going to always need to go out some, find someplace to eat number one. And we like going out to eat, so we might as well, focus on restaurant tech is what we ended up doing. So that's how CBS ended up being more on the restaurant side. we were talking pre show about kind of topics, talk to us a little bit about even the, just the state of the industry as you're writing these things, because I think all too often, and long time listeners hear me say this often, tech for tech sake is worthless, tech that's solving true business problems is critical, but all too often, I think there's so many different choices. You and I have talked in multiple times over the last 18 months or so about how much tech continues to come out and how little of it. Is actually done properly. Can you just give an, a broad overview from your seat because you get to cover some of the biggest brands in the country all the way to some of the smaller brands, monitoring panels, all of those kinds of things. But as far as what you are seeing, talk to me about really the state of tech evolution and where things are at today before we dig into kind of why we think it's working or not working for different brands. Growing your business can mean big time logistical questions like, how am I going to keep up with all these local deliveries? Let UberDirect offer you a helping hand. With UberDirect, you can take orders on your website, via app, or by phone. Then drivers who are part of the Uber courier network will pick them up from your store and deliver them to your customer's doorsteps. Sounds simple, right? Delivery just got better with UberDirect. Check out uberdirect. com to learn more.
Joanna Fantozzi:I think that the, the problem is, I don't want to necessarily start with a problem, but the issue is, I think it's really fun to talk about the exciting, sexy tech. so that would be the AI automation robots. And I think that if you, Spoke to someone that's just observing, the state of technology and food service industry, they would be like, AI is the big thing and it is the future. That might be the case. but I think for a lot of brands, they are not putting in voice AI, and automation, whether it's front or backup house, because they're just still trying to get the basics down, especially if you are an emerging brand. and so that's something that I think is. important to do. And so I think that rather than saying that, AI is the most important thing that we'll be talking about, as for the current state of and future of food service technology, I think that it's really more the, the lifeblood and sort of bare bones of what people should be focusing on is things like data Loyalty and digital infrastructure and just making sure that your stuff works correctly and is a good experience both on the consumer end and on the employee end And that it just isn't frustrating a frustrating experience from either employee or consumer and or franchisee end and sometimes that it doesn't necessarily mean that you need You Robots, doesn't necessarily mean that you need to, add, voice AI in your drive through lane. A lot of folks, a lot of the much bigger companies are doing that, but I do think it's really important to get the basics down. First,
Jeremy:and I want to dig in a little bit deeper to what that means to you and what restaurant brands saying the basics are, but I would say that all too often the food experience, the dining experience, the takeout experience, the third party experience. Adding robotics, adding voice AI, adding some other piece of tech. If you don't know how to make a burger properly, if you don't know how to put it in the bag properly with, ketchup and mustard, because that's what the guest asked for it. None of that matters. Tech can never trump the experience that your restaurant is going to deliver in the way of food service. And I think all too often. brands will think, Oh, the tech is just going to solve this. I guess I'd love your opinion on that because I do think unless you, and part of why I think that big brands are at a place where they're investing in these types of things is they do believe they've got it figured out. They do believe they've figured out how online ordering is going to work and how third party delivery is going to work and how drive through is going to work and how all of those items are going to work. Whereas. Some of the brands, as you talk about with emerging brands, they don't have it figured out. They don't have their supply chain figured out. They don't have their kitchens layout figured out. They don't have their takeout areas figured out. So I'd love kind of your opinion on that. And then we can talk about what you consider the basics or what you think most restaurants consider the basics.
Joanna Fantozzi:so interestingly enough, and I don't want to sound too negative or anything like that, but I actually think that some of the larger brands don't even have some of the basics figured out. I am never going to call anybody out by name, but I feel like we've experienced when you download a restaurant's app or, and or brands up and you're just like, I can't figure this out. or it crashes or it's down. or it's hacked. And so maybe one of the basics I might talk about is making sure that your security is up to snuff. and these things are not the ones that are fun to talk about. It's much more fun to talk about a robot that, that can make a latte and serve it to you. I feel like we see a lot of times on the National Restaurant Association show floor, other show floors. that's just so important to get things like, so in, in saying that the specific, basics I think people should get is just. The security, making sure that you have digital ordering down pat in a way that makes sense both to employees and to customers that they know how to place an order. And that's not difficult, whether you have an app or not, loyalty and making sure that you are making use of, Every single piece of data that you can possibly collect. And then the final thing, and I actually wrote about this in my, tech tracker column today is payment solutions. and so it's actually really interesting. Cause I, I spoke to a couple of companies that are coming out with these payment solutions that to me don't really sound new. but like things like, tap to go and, just iOS payment. And it's just things that you might take for granted in other retail experiences. but a lot of restaurants out there don't have just, tap and pay. And, I, when I was speaking with, one of the companies, Ansa, who has this, mobile digital wallet, they were saying, the CEO, she was saying that even Starbucks, when you go to pay in person, you have to say, oh, are you paying through your app or how are you paying? whereas yeah, a lot of experience, you don't have that experience of just tapping and going. so all that being said is I do think that. Restaurants historically have had this reputation of being behind when it comes to technology. And I think that we had the opportunity of catching up and getting
Jeremy:and I know you and I've talked on, you wrote an article probably six months ago about the fact that oftentimes the core system, the quarter and order management system, the point of sale needs to be able to deal with these interfaces and many of the, those late laggard adopters don't have the capability to get those digital orders into the system because they weren't designed with digital orders. Many of them weren't even designed with drive thru in mind. And so they were designed with, somebody standing in line or somebody sitting at a table and ordering these things. And. Now guests are expecting, because when we go to the Apple store, they walk over with a tablet, they walk over and do the transaction. Amazon has made things, I call it the Amazon effect. People want to be able to get on their phone and have something delivered today or tomorrow for them in the food service world, which is great. That creates a lot of complexity. And even the early days of Amazon, I just bought something earlier this week and it didn't work, so I returned it. That process, even five years ago was awful. You would return it and you'd have to figure it out. Now it's here's three different places. You can go drop it back off and here's a QR code. And when you go to the UPS store, they go through all of that. And I think. Restaurant, operators are going through that same evolution to try and understand what does it look like? What does it look like when you're driving home from work one day and are driving to a friend's house and you order online at the house, you're going to go pick it up to go to a party and then you get there and they call and say, Hey, three more people showed up. Can you add to that order? How does that experience look if you're not understanding digital? What are you seeing that brands are, even investing in and how are they thinking about the holistic guest experience? Cause one of the things I just heard you say is you've got to consider all of the different channels that people are coming into them, into the brand and what does it look like big brand or small brand, what are people considering, or even thinking about as it relates to that, the multiple digital channels and channels, in person channels, online channels, third party channels, as it relates to the order management experience, first and foremost.
Joanna Fantozzi:Yeah. I mean that on demand culture has really created a difficult, it's a problem for restaurants. it's a problem that can be solved. and I think that more and more operators are looking to invest in technology that can do two things, maybe automate, a lot of these processes and, also bundle them all together so you don't have, gone are, thankfully, gone are the days when you had multiple iPads in the back with, one's a DoorDash,
Jeremy:yeah, just yesterday I had dinner with my wife at a restaurant up the street and they still had, I was sitting next to the dinging of the stupid iPads and they had five of them and it was making me crazy because they weren't addressing them. I apologize for cutting you off, but you say it's gone, but I think even today they still exist because their tech isn't available to do it. They don't want to pay the fees to get those things integrated or they haven't found them to be useful or they don't work for them. sorry, I'll let you keep going, but I,
Joanna Fantozzi:No, it's, and it's true. And even going worse than that, I was at a restaurant recently. I don't remember where it was, but, where are they? And it was an independent restaurant where they had the tickets taped up in the kitchen. And, so right. We, that's, I think it's so important to, to realize that for a lot of people, this isn't figuring out digital payments. or contactless payments is not basic. You might go into, let's say if you go to a store or whatever, oftentimes, especially if it's a chain, you'll just tap it, think about, for example, even grocery shopping. It's so easy to just like tap and go, self checkout. And I think that we take that for advantage so that when it comes to restaurants and we don't experience that, it feels behind. And I think that's because oftentimes restaurants have much more complexities than maybe other types of, than other types of retail or businesses. And so they have omnichannel, this omnichannel accessibility. They have to be juggling, if they're a quick service restaurant, they'll have to juggle, let's say like a drive thru lane, delivery, pickup, and, contactless pickup and, mobile order and pay. And they're just like figuring it and people maybe that want to dine in and figuring all of that out. Is challenging and I think that's why historically maybe restaurants have been a little bit behind and so that's why I just it's just so incredibly important I think to make sure to, perfect those basics not even just so that you have them, but so that the experience on the customer end especially is not frustrating. and so it's, so it's technology that works. even I'm not going to pick on just restaurants, but, if a lot of times I have been at a grocery store and done the self checkout and it doesn't work
Jeremy:Yeah. And you
Joanna Fantozzi:and you have to have someone call over and it takes you much longer to self checkout than it would if you'd just gone to a cashier. And so yes, that, that's a little bit of a curmudgeonly way to say that sometimes technology can create a headache, but it, what it should be doing if you invest in it in the right way is it should be eliminating the friction and headaches, even if there are no bells and whistles attached.
Jeremy:and I think that's a core basic tenant of that guest management. You talked about though, the flip side of that is, is the staff. So in this restaurant that I happen to be having dinner with my wife the other night, at this tablet is dinging and this, the service staff is trying to figure out toys. Service the tablet. Do I go get this guest food that's sitting in the window? What do I do? And so back to having that, that your staff member be able to operate the technology in a seamless way to figure out where those friction points are. Why do you think people don't do this? what, why don't you think, why is this Chinese restaurant? And again, I'm not picking on, it's just a local restaurant, single unit operator, but they're struggling. I shouldn't say they're struggling. But the guest experience wasn't as good as it could be because they're not willing to spend the money to get those tablets integrated to their point of sale for whatever reason. I don't know why, but that created friction for that staff member. And I've seen pretty high turnover. The restaurant's only been around 18 months and they've held one staff member the whole time. And every other time I go in there, it's new staff members in the front of the house. And I wouldn't, I would venture to guess that creating friction for them also creates problems. And now a word from one of our sponsors. Every restaurant operator understands the chaos of a Restaurant kitchen during the meal rush restaurant technologies, oil, total oil management solutions, and end to end automated oil management system that delivers filters, monitors, and recycles your cooking oil, taking the dirtiest jobs out of your kitchen and letting your employees focus on more important tasks. Control the kitchen chaos with restaurant technologies and make your kitchen safer. No upfront costs to learn more, check out rti inc. com or call 888 796 4997.
Joanna Fantozzi:Yeah, I think that, fortunately, I do think that more and more smaller businesses are getting on board this train of, that you can't just, gone are the days when, even honestly, five years ago, think about how five years ago, I feel like I was writing stories five years ago of people, of operators saying I am, I'm a food person, not a tech person, and it was a novelty to come across a restaurant that would say, we're doing both. Ooh, that's very exciting. And now it's just become, it's table stakes, I think, that to be able to be a food person and a tech person. But the thing is, it doesn't need to be scary, right? because the re, part of the reason it's scary, and this is what you were saying in the beginning, is that there's so much to choose from. There's so much technology out there. There's so much buzz about AI and automation and all of these million and one different vendors. I feel like there's more and more tech vendors out there than there have ever been. and so it can be confusing. And so I get it. but I do think that it's. It's become, I think, easier to, if you just tune out the noise, to at least be good at the basic, the basic technology. And in having, let's say a dashboard, that has for your employees to have this dashboard in front of them that it has, okay, here are the orders that are coming in through DoorDash. Here are the orders that are coming in through our native website. And, and here are the orders that are coming in from front of house. and to have that kind of all in one place and to be able to organize it. I feel like that's incredibly. That's incredibly important. it's not sexy. It's not fun to talk. It's fun to talk about, but it does make restaurants work faster. It probably lowers turnover rates. and it probably makes the customer experience
Jeremy:Yep. No, I 100 percent agree. And I think that all too often people don't think about that. and I think it's sad because the tech is there to be able to automate those things and it's not that expensive. it's not that expensive to do that, to create a better guest experience as well as create a better back of the house experience, employee experience and the like. And I'm going to pivot real quick. You mentioned loyalty being the table stakes. Define for me what you would say brands think of as loyalty because traditional loyalty. years ago, 20 years ago was a punch card, or it was, I was going to the same coffee shop and they knew who I was and they might bring me a, a free cup of coffee or whatever that might look like. That might've been traditional loyalty, but with the advent of data and being able to track people online, offline, loyalty continues to pivot and continues to change, how would you say that you and even the brands that you talk to define loyalty, because I think there's lots of different schools of thought. And I'd love kind of your opinion and what you're hearing out in the industry.
Joanna Fantozzi:I think that loyalty programs have come to encompass a lot more than they previously had. Like you said, like 10, 20 years ago was the punch card. And then I feel like for a while, people were thinking. It's it means that you have an app. and but that doesn't I mean you can have an app but have a Not so great rewards or loyalty program and I think that really what it means is that you know who your Regular customers are let's say whether it's through an app whether it's through Texting or email, based marketing, and what, whatever I guess works for your brand, you know who they are, and, you are able to offer rewards for them, that are oftentimes personalized. And You are able to utilize that data to make decisions based on who your customer base is. and I think that's intentionally vague because I don't necessarily think that you have to have an app in order to have a good loyalty program. I will say an example of, Or rather something that I noticed is really interesting is that, in my inbox pretty much every week for the past, like six months or so, there are so many, restaurant operators that are redoing their loyalty apps or their rewards programs. this is just become everybody is redoing it. I feel like from, from Domino's, to Potbelly. There's just, it just feels like everybody is redoing it. Krispy Kreme. I'm just like trying to think of people off the top of my head. Starbucks did a little while back. and I just, I do think that what they're trying to do and I actually, I spoke to a couple of them. I can't cover them all because if I covered All of the loyalty program makeovers, I would do nothing else. I would just become the, that loyalty would be my, my beat and that's it. but I, one of the ones that really sticks out in my head is I really did enjoy speaking with, Potbelly about their app and how they, one of the things that they did was simplify the user interface. back to that simplification of technology and making sure it's easier to, to, to get points and to cash in for rewards and to know exactly how many points you have and just to be able to navigate that app, honestly. and it just seems like that is what a lot of people are going for. But on the other hand, there are. Other people who are or other operators that aren't as much into the apps. And, an example is that I, I spoke with duck donuts, at RLC and they decided to get rid of their app and just went to a texting based loyalty program. And that honestly might work for a lot of, smaller brands because. not everyone wants to have 101 apps on their
Jeremy:Not all of the, not everybody's in the same, in the industry that we're in, so they don't want all of these apps on their phone. I've got a whole folder of restaurant apps to be able to test these things and figure those things out. But I think you're a hundred percent right.
Joanna Fantozzi:So I just, I do think it's just so incredibly important that the restaurants are able to do two things with their loyalty program, however they do it. one is that they utilize every, or they, they squeeze every ounce of data that they can out of this, and two is that they just make it easier to use for customers because if they download your app and they can't figure out how to place an order, then they're just going to delete
Jeremy:Yep. and I have, we've all had bad experiences with an app. We've all had bad experiences with digital. We've all had great experiences with an app. and we talked about the consumerization of. IT and technology, Amazon, again, they are a leader in just the tech space in general. We, my wife orders more on Amazon than she should, because it's just easy. It's easier than putting it on the list and going to Walmart or target or, the grocery store or whatever else she's ah, I'm just going to go on Amazon and it'll be here in a day or two. And I, they've gotten accustomed to it. And quite frankly, when. Amazon doesn't get the product to us within two days as an Amazon prime member. We're like, ah, what happened? What's going on? the thing that I do want to, dig back in and it was something early you said in loyalty, which is knowing who your guests are and being able to communicate with them, whatever that method is, text. Email, smoke signals, making sure that you know who they are. And then really, I think the use of data, and I'd love to dig in a little bit more on that, join us is use of data to get customized offers. Again, I tell a funny story and any of those long time listeners that listen to every episode will laugh at me because I went away, we were on a college recruiting trip with my son. He had forgotten to turn in some homework for his high school. He asked for my laptop. He logged out of my Google Chrome. Chrome and logged in under his profile, did whatever he needed to do for school and then handed me back my laptop and my homepage and my laptop felt like a different machine because my screen didn't look anything like what I was used to. And I think all too often, whether it's Amazon or it's Facebook or it's Twitter, like my feed is my feed. It's very personalized. My homepage is my homepage. My laptop is my laptop. It is the way that I want it to be. Unfortunately, restaurants all too often. Put out general offers to all of their guests come in and get the sandwich. I may have never ordered this sandwich. If I'm a vegetarian and I'm a potbelly user, I should not be giving me the beef eater sandwich in my, and I'm not picking on potbelly and I don't necessarily, I don't necessarily think they do that, but I think all too often. The loyalty programs will put out these generalized offers when they don't even know who their guests are. They've captured data, but they've not necessarily used the data to make better decisions. I'd love for you to talk a little bit about that and why it's so critical to personalize your offers to those guests, because they get turned off really fast if you're not doing that. Cause everybody else is.
Joanna Fantozzi:it is so easy to turn customers off, especially just like now everybody is with the on demand culture. people will, and I feel like their attention spans are shorter. And so they just don't have patience for that kind of generalized offer. And it just becomes Easier to interact with a brand that knows you well. if I log into my Amazon account, I can look and see what I ordered. And my homepage, my Amazon page is just things related to things that I've ordered. They don't have anything. I've never ordered electronics from Amazon. I don't think before. And I don't see that anywhere. For example, But I do feel like, a lot of other industries and restaurants included are behind that and aren't really getting that this is what customers want. Now, I think that the third party delivery apps almost have this pretty well. at the same time, you so you want those personalized offers. You want to be able to use data to be able to know, that so and has Yes. To order a vegetarian sandwich or that, maybe I prefer, like for, I'm using me as an example that for, if I have the Starbucks app, Starbucks, I guess knows that I, they don't, they actually don't send me personalized offers, but, maybe that's something they should do. Maybe they will do that under Brian nickel. We'll see. but, I only, I actually am not a coffee drinker weirdly enough. And. That's a funny question. I know. but I love, I like ordering their tea drinks sometimes and that is what I should see on my page. at the same time, something you do want to make sure that you are doing is you don't want to, even if you do get this right and send out personalized offers, you do not want to annoy people. and that's something I think that's really important as well. it's, everybody's a little bit different. But, for example, I have all the third party delivery apps downloaded, but I tend to usually not really for any particular reason, but I feel like I gravitate toward using DoorDash. I used, when I lived in New York City, I used Grubhub more. and I, but I do have Uber Eats on there. I just don't use it as much. And I feel like sometimes I'll get a pop up notification from them being like, Hey, you have an order from us in a while. And I'm like, that's annoying.
Jeremy:I have never ordered from you. and it's funny that you say that. Cause I, I saw some statistics about third party delivery and I know DoorDash has become, greater percentage of people spend and how they've done that. I think you guys, it might've been an article that you wrote or something I saw online that was like, Hey, DoorDash continues to eat market share, which is great, which is great. And at the end of the day, they are figuring out how to get into my feed. They know that I like to DoorDash Indian food in the wintertime when it's cold, because I don't want to drive to go get Indian food. And Indian food fills my soul when I'm, when it's cold. And so Hey, you haven't ordered from this Indian restaurant in a while. And then they're, they try and move my spend from time to time. Hey, you haven't ordered in a while. But they'll give me offers that are relevant to me because they are truly a data and a tech company. Whereas a lot of these restaurants, unfortunately don't have not yet embraced that they're getting there. And I think that to your point, they're continuing to do that. Where is it going? Where is it going? Because I think, there's the basics, there's this AI, but. AI is, it's there. And I think it can help accelerate some brands. I think it can hurt some brands, but where is it going? What are consumers expecting and what are brands expecting to invest in over the next few years to get themselves ahead, ahead to be able to compete and quite frankly, a very difficult market space.
Joanna Fantozzi:think that where it's going is more of this. It's more of this hyper personalization, more of this extremely easy, super simple experience so that it just looks easy and seamless, but behind the scenes, maybe working behind the scenes is AI. maybe AI doesn't really necessarily look like, when you know, Place in order to like Papa John's or Domino's you and then you call them on the phone And it's you're talking to a robot. Maybe it doesn't necessarily look like a robot. That's serving your food or drinks, but maybe AI is just quietly working in the background, to create that kind of super seamless experience. And I think that's more and more where we really need to go. where I think that this Amazon to take your point on this Amazon application of, which is just where that I made
Jeremy:Yeah,
Joanna Fantozzi:Amazon.
Jeremy:up in an article. You can give me a reference on that one. But, no, I'm teasing,
Joanna Fantozzi:but I think that this Amazon notification of. of restaurants and food service needs to keep happening and I think that, the workhorses behind the scenes making everything simple, super simple to use, flexible, and, fast, personalized. I think the tools behind the scenes are going to be things like data analytics and it's going to be things like, Like A. I. And automation. I just don't. I think that this kind of I've written about. I think we've even spoken about this in the past. It's like that invisible technology. And I think that's really what you're going to be, because I think that technology is at its best when you don't notice it, if that
Jeremy:a hundred percent. And I know you were just on, on a different podcast that I happened to listen to, which is what I said, Oh, I should have tried it on. I didn't know she did podcasts, which is why we're here. I'm going to ask one last thing about AI before we talk about how do people stay up to speed with you is one of the biggest challenges. And we talk about the guest experience. Is managing the guest experience takes a lot of human behavior, a lot of energy, a lot of time managing people. How can tech help with that? And I'll give you a couple examples of places that I've seen some stuff working and I'd love your opinion. The first is understanding attrition within the brand. So cameras that see a long line and see how many people come and go and how could I have kept that guest. Other ones are I'm in a casual dining environment. I see drinks that need to be refilled and alerting a service staff member that drinks need to be filled at table 32. So if they're not walking in the dining room, they can know that. The last is in the kitchen, knowing that the pizza got prepared properly, they said light sauce and you put regular sauce on it and making sure that the items get in the bag. And see, these are pieces of tech that can help create the guest experience that we talked about early in the show. Have you seen anybody? Working towards these things. I've talked to a lot of tech companies that are doing this, but I think creating that guest experience and having technology ensure it rather than having some overlord standing at the expo window, making sure that you put the ketchup in the bag is really the end result of having tech that's invisible, but does what you're asking about.
Joanna Fantozzi:Yeah. I love that type of technology and I've spoken to companies that are doing that, where they have cameras attached that they are able to see if, like you said, if they, if they're making the sandwich wrong and they'll be able to put that, there's another, there, there's another company that I'm talking to that, it's, I forget the name of the company because it's brand new. They're literally just looking for funding now, and still perfecting the technology is that they're creating technology that, that perfects the pickup area. And I am all for that because I feel like the pickup area of, I don't care if you are Starbucks or the tiny coffee shop down the street, it is always chaos. they just basically have the, some people have done the coffee holes with names, or the, a lot of times we'll just. Baristas or, restaurant operators or rather, employees might find it easier just to shout out your name. and so this technology attaches, I don't really know how it works, but it has, a digital name attached to the bag. And so when you place it on the counter, it comes up It comes up Joanna or Jeremy. and it's able to know if you put the wrong thing in there, if you, if they ask for two drinks and you only put one, which is pretty cool. It's using this like camera scanning technology, but I do think that's a little bit further in the future because these companies that are starting to work on this, it is pricey. Right now. and I think that most operators won't be able to afford that. but I do think that's the type of technology that's incredibly important. because it is making employees lives so much easier. And that consumer experience, is better too. Because imagine, being able to almost guarantee that, that they won't get your order wrong.
Jeremy:you talked about Brian Nichols. one of the big things that everybody's trying to get him to figure out is how does he figure out the guest experience at Starbucks? Because at one point it used to, I was at Starbucks this weekend because my daughter had softball practice and I sat in a Starbucks for almost three hours and I watched this whole thing. I had driven her to the practice. I went to Starbucks to work for a couple of hours because it was an hour plus away from home. And I was sitting there and I was just watching this digital order experience and the guest experience, and just, it was rough and I'm not picking on Starbucks. They, their business has changed faster than they were able to adopt and adapt some of the things that they need to do. Starbucks used to be a place that the place was full while I was there for three hours. I think there was four other guests that sat in and had an experience there besides me, whereas there was dozens and dozens of people coming in and coming through. And I'm not picking on Starbucks, but I think everybody needs to figure these things out. And I think tech is getting there. Yeah. Any listener that listens to the show is obviously trying to grow themselves, grow their business. They, they wouldn't do that, but there's lots of other ways that I learn, and I know that there's lots of other things that you do and your business does to help people, stay up to speed. Can you talk through some of the different ways that people should stay connected to learn more? I know you guys have got events all over the place. You guys have got, you guys have grown over the last 18 months. So you've got events, you've got, activities you write constantly and have some fantastic articles. how do they connect? How do they learn more? How do they stay up to speed?
Joanna Fantozzi:Yeah. So we, my company, like you said, has grown. We've added, we've added new brands and, new events. I think that what we're trying to do more is we're trying to do more videos, social media content. so people can connect with us there. we have a couple of different podcasts, including a brand new podcast that we, came out with called restaurant daily. and that's where we just read the headlines. and that's a collaboration with us. and I think that, coming up as long as you mentioned it coming up, we have a couple of events. probably by the time this airs, the FS tech will be over. that is
Jeremy:or three days, but yeah.
Joanna Fantozzi:coming up for us in the here and now. and so there's that, but then in the next month in a little less than a month from now, we have create, which is our conference specifically for emerging operators, and that is going to be in Nashville for the first time. and it's really cool because we have a bunch of different things that are new as we're getting this conference up to speed, it used to be called years and years ago, it used to be called muff. and
Jeremy:was what you guys rebranded it. I had no idea.
Joanna Fantozzi:We
Jeremy:about that. I would, I had, I have been to Mufso before, but I had no idea that create was, was another iteration of that. I apologize for cutting you off, but I,
Joanna Fantozzi:I feel like a lot of people don't really realize that. but it's just evolved to be really about emerging operators. and just, it's more of a, don't like to call it a conference. It's just a fun event. that there's not really a traditional show floor. but there's, it's a lot of focus on networking and just Lots and lots of food. I feel like sometimes when you go to, I hate when you go to conferences, especially restaurant conferences, and you have, these like hotel buffet lines that are just really not great food.
Jeremy:Or you have the box lunches and you're like, Oh, come on, really? We're all a bunch of restaurant operators and we're going to eat this, two day old turkey sandwich that got thrown in a box. So
Joanna Fantozzi:Yeah. Yeah. and so it's, one of the newer things that we're doing for the second time now we started last year in Palm Springs, is the investment summit. We're doing that again. And so that specifically is to, to get emerging. Operas are looking for funding in the same room as, private equity investors and a bunch of other different. Money sources, and getting them in the same room to talk to each other and learn from each other. and so that's what we're doing for the second time. and yeah, it's just a really cool experience. and so that's definitely, a place that you can, check us out. but if you can't get to Nashville this year, which you should, but if you can't get there, then definitely, obviously check out NRN. com, sign up for our newsletters, and, and listen to our podcasts.
Jeremy:you said you're not a salesperson when we're going into the prep, but I think I'm sold on trying to figure out how to get to create this year.
Joanna Fantozzi:especially, it's fun being in Nashville. We're gonna have lots of, there's gonna be some live country music, I think, throughout the
Jeremy:Awesome. Joanna, thank you so much for sharing, your wisdom with the audience. I'd love to have you on at a future date. I know that, that, starting to get into this digital video space, cause I do think that, it communicates quite a bit. So I appreciate, you hanging out. I look forward to seeing you, this week at FS tech to our listeners, guys. thank you guys for hanging out and make it a great day.
Thanks for listening to the Restaurant Technology Guys podcast. Visit www. RestaurantTechnologyGuys. com for tips, industry insights, and more to help you run your restaurant better.
