MAY EDITION

BOT SPOT SECTION STORY

HED: Why This Hospitality Tech Trend is The Permanent Future for Restaurants

Although restaurants hesitated pre-pandemic, now they’re div- ing in full force to the hospitality tech trend that’s destined to stay as part of their operations dynamic: automation. After the not-so-gentle push from COVID-19 and health restrictions, you may have had to come up to speed fast on technology. But the good news is that all those implementations and automa- tions you’ve added in recent months are definitely part and parcel to the future of dining. A recent Lightspeed study found that 50 percent of hospitality operators plan to utilize automation technology in the next two to three years, and 43 percent of study respondents agreed that new tech adoption over the last two years has been critical for their business survival. Even before COVID, dips into digital were slowly rising, but the pandemic threw automation and tech into overdrive. With

the same Lightspeed report, 90 percent of industry operators, owners, and managers said technology adop- tion was critical for their pandemic survival, and 47 percent of full-service and 37 percent of quick-service operators felt new technology was key for their businesses. Forward-thinking restaurant owners saw technology pro- viding ways to become more efficient, simplify processes, lower labor costs and human errors, and raise profits. Plus, the National Restaurant Association recently found that four in five operators are understaffed including 81 percent of full-service operators and 75 percent of limited-service operators meaning automation and hospitality technology can help with some heavy lifting. With Research and Markets predicting the global food au- tomation market is poised to reach $14 billion by 2025, restaurateurs and foodservice operators are turning to tech, automation, and robotics to handle challenges and help improve their business. Because automation can shift the flow of online ordering to loyalty programs, accounting to inventory management, and analytics to customer relations, here are a few reasons why this isn’t so much a trend, but the continuously evolving future for restaurants who want to increase efficiencies and check values while decreasing costs. Labor Woes are Still A Problem Labor costs are always one of the highest expenses of running a restaurant or foodservice business, but with the wild ride of the pandemic, it’s even more rocky. Hiring and firing have been rampant, and it’s become nonnegotiable for restaurants to use automation and technology to spackle the gaps forming in their opera- tions.