Drawing Customers in Through Digital Doors
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MARCH 2014 | VOL.2, ISSUE: 1 HOW TECHNOLOGY MOVES YOU AND YOUR CUSTOMER Screen Capture: Drawing Customers in through Digital Doors YOU AND YOUR SELF-ORDERING KIOSKS Q AND A: INDUSTRY IT STAFF NEED MOVE FROM AIRPORT MARKETERS WEIGH IN TO KNOW ABOUT AND MOVIE THEATER TO ON GOOD RESTAURANT WEB PRESENCE FAST CASUAL AND QSR WEBSITES First Look: leap into tableside tablets with HubWorks PAGE 5 All the power of e*Restaurant, now available for carry-out. Ever since its groundbreaking introduction, e*Restaurant has become the choice of four of America’s top ten restaurant chains, including the #1 operator in the world. And now, with the new e*Restaurant User Interface and Mobile App, managers and end users have seamless anytime/anywhere access to every critical restaurant back office operation. To find out how easy it is to take the most scalable, adaptable, end-to-end restaurant management system into any environment, request a demo today. do what others dream™ WORKFORCE + INVENTORY + SUPPLY CHAIN + BUSINESS INTELLIGENCE Learn more at 800-676-1281 (Ext. 2) or altametrics.com March 2014 In is Issue visit www.RestaurantTechnologyMagazine.com for exclusive online content 8 Cover Story Beyond Pizza: Online Ordering Catches On Accuracy and ease of use, combined with Internet-in-your-pocket ubiquity, are encouraging more restaurant categories to open online channels to takeout and delivery orders. 10 Online Ordering Case Study Señor Grandes’ “No-Park Curb Service,” an inspired mashup of SMS and online technologies, was the owner’s answer to his sudden parking scarcity. FEATURE DEPARTMENTS 4 6 24 Editor’s Letter Front of House Then, Now, Next Your restaurant’s on- A Bluetooth beacon that tells A look behind, ahead screen presence takes you who’s arrived, another and in the moment many forms today. app that sniff s out fake IDs. at what we mean by... Of these, maybe two Offi ce Lunch Orders. (kiosks and tableside 14 tablets) are still 25 optional. Four Walls Restaurants prep for Back of House Raising Revenue 20 tablet deployments. Knowing where your Q and A: 5 fi sh last swam, site Good Restaurant First Look selection intelligence, Website Ingredients: e iPads and SaaS off ering 18 preventing unpleasant ings like menus, of Altametrics’ new Knowing Your surprises in power/ reservations, online HubWorks division make it Customer plumbing/HVAC ordering and easier to take the leap into Self-ordering consumption or failure. nutrition info make tableside tablets for self- kiosks move restaurant website service menus and games. from airport 26 design a specialty all and movie its own. theater to Ten Things fast casual About Establishing a Related: Anatomy and QSR. Robust Web Presence. 22 of a Restaurant Website www.RestaurantTechnologyMagazine.com March 2014 3 Editor’s Letter One Restaurant, MARCH 2014 Many Screens VOL.2, ISSUE: 1 EDITORIAL & ART or Restaurant Technology worker reducing that order to one click Magazine’s third issue, we de- the following week, when she logs on to Editorial Director: cided to investigate your restau- the same site, while on the train going to Ellen Muraskin rant’s online presence—perhaps work. See Jennifer Zaino’s story, p. 8, for [email protected] more accurately, its on-screen presence. more. Since we’ve been taking a primer-like Screens that may seem to be mere Publisher: Restaurant Technology approach to every subject we tackle thus menu replacements—tableside tablets— Magazine far, we divided this up into what we see as can take on other roles as well. They also constituent categories. can turn into game consoles—during Creative Director: There are websites, in desktop, tablet hours where table turns aren’t para- Cavedweller Studio and smartphone formats. There are mount, or to keep kids who are too cool mail@cavedwellerstudio. com kiosks, both in-store and out-of-store, for crayons occupied, or adults who perhaps on college campuses or army like (and will pay to play) trivia contests. Project Manager: barracks. Then there are tablets bolted They can gather market intelligence by Kelly Lambert to every table; we profiled the ground- presenting quick surveys, or serve as a [email protected] breaker in this category, Stacked, in our customer’s window into his loyalty pro- Restaurant Technnology first issue back in September. As per Fall gram status. While they’re at it, they also Magazine is published by 2013 announcements, tableside tablets will make painlessly changeable menus. Restaurant Technology will soon be at a major casual dining See John Moore’s story, p. 14. Magazine LLC and property near you. Kiosks are another self-service device, produced by Penton For a general overview of what goes in self-service establishments. As order- Marketing Services. into today’s restaurant’s web presence, ing sites, they are line-busters and up- we tapped Nora Caley, who also writes sellers. As menus, they can offer endless for mother ship Nation’s Restaurant combinations of add-ons without forget- News. See p. 20. ting any. And like tablets and websites, AD INDEX While menus have been a common they can take credit card payments. See feature of restaurant sites for years, Andrea Muraskin’s story, p. 18. IFC E*Restaurant along with directions, maps and hours of In the coming years, it will be interest- altametrics.com operation, all of the “screen” categories ing to see how the online ordering story 7 Xformity mentioned are beginning to take on or- evolves alongside the payment story. altametrics.com dering as well. It may start with a cater- Will Paypal eclipse credit cards? Will 13 EMN8 ing order, from a special catering menu, chip-and-pin eclipse magnetic stripe? emn8.com with a 24-hour advance notice and one Will restaurants look to their POS ven- 17 Hula pre-paid account. It’s easy to picture the dors, their third-party loyalty programs, hulapos.com convenience of clicking through a menu, their digital marketing agencies or their IBC Comcast perhaps while sharing a screen with a online ordering specialists to incorpo- Business. comcast.com/ coworker, agreeing on bagels and flavors rate this function, if they bring it on at restaurants of cream cheese, cartons of coffee and all? And how far up the food service BC e*SmartClock decaf. It’s also easy to picture that office chain will it spread? Stay logged in... esmartclock.com Ellen Muraskin • Editorial Director • [email protected] WOULD YOU LIKE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT ADVERTISING OPPORTUNITIES WITH RESTAURANT TECHNOLOGY MAGAZINE? EMAIL US AT [email protected] 4 March 2014 www.RestaurantTechnologyMagazine.com By Ellen Muraskin First Look HubWorks Hardware and software-as-a-service make it easier to take the leap into tableside tablet menus, self-service ordering and payment, and higher checks. HubWorks’ admin app lets operators change menu items and prices chain-wide, via browser. company called HubWorks, acquired this went up 23 percent there, he says. “People spend more January by Altametrics (altametrics.com), when they can order on demand,” he notes. “ ey get has made it easier for bars and restaurants dessert; they add bacon to their cheeseburgers.” to take the leap into tableside tablets with a Key to the system is a purpose-built content manage- combination of on-site iPads and software-as-a-service ment back-end that takes in the core menu data from (SaaS). Bolted down in restaurant-hardy Kensington en- the restaurant POS and presents it within a layered closures, HubWorks’ iPads hold the menu items, photos, menu interface. While system integrator partners (or a descriptions, calorie counts, ingredients and all kinds of restaurant company’s IT department) do the initial in- detailed descriptions that won’t fi t on laminated paper stallation and confi guration, operators can easily add or menus but are easily tapped forth on screen. And easily change text, pictures and prices. HubWorks’ administra- changed, chain-wide. (For more on the emerging table- tion app runs off a browser, letting restaurateurs change side tablet category, see Restaurants Prep For Tablet that menu—or several menus, depending on time of Deployments, p. 14.) day, individual property or concept—whenever and e SaaS part is the service that actually sends your wherever they like. ey also can upload ads for display. customer’s order, along with encrypted credit card Tablet menus’ appearances are branded and custom- information, up to HubWorks’ cloud and down again ized. Users can fi nd Facebook and Twitter for promotion- into your POS, in (so far) fi ve integrations: Altametrics’ al sharing purposes, but HubWorks walls off the rest of Hula, NCR’s Aloha, Micros, Agilysis and POSitouch. the Internet. After customers have concluded their meals Your menu also is stored in the cloud; the iPads resync and paid, they can be presented with customizable sur- to it every day, at startup. veys. Receipts can be printed or emailed home. Should a Rob Berger, who started the company, says the system customer carry cash, the system will summon waitstaff . was fi rst deployed in bars, where it typically takes too You can set the system to automatically switch to din- long to get a waiter to take your order for another round. ner or late-night menus at specifi ed hours. e actual en it was “discovered” by Buff alo Wild Wings. After day-to-day data load is light, as the iPads only send extending the app out to table-service, average orders order information, and pictures are stored locally. www.RestaurantTechnologyMagazine.com March 2014 5 Front of House By Ellen Muraskin Bluetooth LE Knows OUTSMART (PHONE) Who’s In the House FAKE IDS A new service from Connected Merchant can tell, by detecting the presence of an app on a smartphone, when specifi c guests enter or leave a restaurant.