Close Ad

The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Restaurant Tech

Video: Connected Robotics’ Restaurant Bots Prep, Cook and Clean

The last time we checked in with Japanese company Connected Robotics, it was primarily known for its OctoChef Tokoyaki robot, which creates fried octopus balls. Connected Robotics had also raised roughly $7.8 million to expand its robo-lineup, which it showed off at the Hotel Restaurant Show at the end of March.

We weren’t able to be at that convention, but came across video of Connected Robotics restaraunt bot lineup in action via a post on Linkedin over the weekend.

【2021ver.】HCJ出展概要ダイジェスト　＃ロボット​＃調理​＃AI

In the video you can see a variety of Connected Robotics’ robots performing different kitchen-related tasks: cooking noodles, grabbing food and placing it in a fryer, sliding cooked food into a display, washing dirty dishes and stacking them once they are cleaned. There’s even computer vision for what looks like inventory management and automated checkout.

Each system makes heavy use of articulating arms, and there appears to be the need for at least one set of human hands in the noodle-plating process. But overall, the robots whirr and swivel and do almost everything on their own.

Japan in particular is a burgeoning center for food-related robotics as the company has a greying population and is looking to automate parts of its labor force. Consumer electronics giant Sony is working on robot chefs and recently invested in Analytical Flavor Systems to help those robots combine flavors when cooking. Panasonic has also developed cooking robots in partnership with the Haidilao hotpot restaurant chain.

If you are interested in learning about — and seeing! — more food robots in action, be sure to attend our ArticulATE food robotics and automation virtual summit on May 18. We’ll have speakers from Karakuri, Mukunda Foods, Yo-Kai Express, Mezli and more! Get your ticket today!

Pizza: an Opportunity for Restaurant Tech Innovation

This is the web version of our weekly newsletter. Subscribe to get the latest food tech news in your inbox, and for content only available in the newsletter.

Recently, a restaurant technology company called Slice announced a $40 million fundraise, suggesting there’s a huge opportunity when it comes to making software specifically geared towards the independent pizzeria. 

Slice’s platform, developed by founders with a long history in the pizza space, includes online ordering capabilities, a pizza rewards program, a POS system, the option to build a branded website, and the option to offer delivery, among other things. From the consumer-facing view, Slice is a marketplace of local pizzerias (e.g., not Papa John’s) from which to order and build up reward points that eventually result in free food. Slice is currently up and running in businesses across all 50 U.S. states and serves over 15,000 shops. The potential market it could serve — that is, independent pizzerias — numbers in the tens of thousands at this point in the U.S.

Why, you ask, would an independent pizzeria need a pizza-specific platform to do business?

It’s all in that word “independent.”

As Slice’s Chief Product Officer, Preethy Vaidyanatha, explained to me recently, if you want to run a pizza business (or any restaurant, really), you basically have two options: open a Domino’s (or Pizza Hut, or Papa John’s) franchise or start your own business. The latter choice allows for more culinary creativity and freedom, but comes with the added stressors of running a type of business that’s low-margin even when there’s not a pandemic shutting down restaurants left and right. 

On top of that — and this is what Slice’s technology really aims to address — technology’s march on the restaurant business is unavoidable at this point for pretty much everyone. Digital ordering is a must for businesses large and small now. And after a year of shutdowns and ever-changing restrictions on restaurants, costs have to be reeled in, and digitizing the back of house (bookkeeping, inventory management, etc.) is one way to do that.

Add to this some elements very specific to pizzerias. The menu may be simple (pizza), but it has to accommodate requests like half-and-half toppings, extra cheese, and crust types. Some businesses sell both whole pies and individual slices. Digitally speaking, these choices need to be available with just a couple clicks on a phone or computer. Meanwhile, many pizzerias still handle their own delivery, which as to be accounted for when it comes to managing operations. 

Slice handles the technical logistics of all of those situations, and there is arguably plenty of room for other restaurant tech companies to also develop tools for these things.

If you’re Domino’s, you can just throw money at the problem and open an innovation center to tackle these issues. I can promise you that your average family-owned pizza shop does not have its own innovation center. Nonetheless, it and any other independent pizzeria needs the ability to also offer the kinds of digital conveniences consumers get from the big companies, and that’s where restaurant tech companies like Slice could prove hugely valuable. 

For its part, Slice’s tech offers independent shops the same digitization, process automation, and online ordering/payment tools you would get with Domino’s or a third-party delivery service, but at a far lower cost. The company did not divulge actual numbers, but did mention that restaurants pay a flat fee per transaction to use the platform, rather than the percentage-per-transaction model used by DoorDash et al.

Pizza has always been in its own class when it comes to delivery, from the food itself to the way it handles off-premises formats like delivery. Getting its own tech stack made for pizzerias by pizzerias seems like the natural next step in the segments evolution.

 

Starbucks has teamed up with Arizona State University to open a research and innovation facility that will test initiatives that support more sustainability in Starbucks stores. The facility is called the ASU-Starbucks Center for the Future of the People and the Planet, and will open at the end of 2021. 

Toast has made updates to its Order & Pay tool, including pre-authorization that lets customers start a tab, authorize a credit card, and enable group ordering, all from their own mobile device.

Atlanta-based pay-at-the-table startup sunday recently launched its QR code solution, following a $24 million fundraise. The Atlanta, Georgia-based company wants, like many others, to make it easier for guests to get and pay their bill in the restaurant.

Chipotle Diverting More Than Half Its Waste, Says Latest Company Sustainability Report

Chipotle has diverted 51 percent of its waste, the company said in its 2020 Sustainability Report released this week. The QSR chain said it was able to do much of this through recycling, composting, and waste-to-energy programs.

This is the third annual sustainability report from Chipotle, and it tracks the company’s progress on sustainability goals over time. For example, diverting 2,071,583 cubic yards of waste — or over half of all its waste — was a company goal laid out in the 2018 Sustainability Report. 

Waste-diverting efforts have so far included transforming used plastic gloves into trash bags, and the Avocado Dye Line, which involves dying clothing with the pits of avocados. Caitlin Leibert, Head of Sustainability for Chipotle, noted in a statement that keeping that much waste out of the landfills was “an extraordinary achievement” for a company of that size. Chipotle currently operates more than 2,500 locations.

The 2020 Sustainability report aligns with the company’s Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) metric, which ties some executive compensation to annual targets around diversity and sustainability. Chipotle breaks these objectives into three categories: food and animals, people, and the environment.

Across those three categories, some results from the 2021 sustainability report include:

  • Purchasing over 31 million pounds of local produce – an investment of more than $23.3 million into local food systems
  • Donated more than $5 million to local community organizations through 26,000 fundraisers in its restaurants
  • Offered industry-leading, debt-free degrees in business for employees and recently expanded the program to include Culinary, Hospitality and Agriculture majors
  • Setting up and maintaining a composting program at 25 percent of its locations 
  • Reducing 62,582 kWh of energy, which the company says is the emissions equivalent of 10,000 passenger vehicles driven for one year or 5,300 homes powered for one year
  • Launching Real Foodprint, a digital tool that calculates the environmental impact of Chipotle ingredients
  • Upcycling 60,000 avocados for the Dye Line

In a forward to the report, Chipotle CEO Brian Niccol said “more work can always be done,” and along those lines, the report outlines future goals for the company. Among those are, converting more than 400 acres of conventional farmland to organic farmland, developing a Minority Supplier Development program, reducing overall waste by 5 percent by 2025, and piloting at least one initiative in 2021 that reduces plastic.

Chipotle is one of those chains that, thanks to a focus on digital prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, has not just pulled through but thrived during the last year. The brand is big enough at this point that its sustainability practices can help influence the entire restaurant industry,

2Foods Launches Plant-Based Junk Food Chain in Tokyo

Veganism and flexitarianism are on the rise in Japan. According to an article by VegNews, there are currently 1,000 vegan restaurants in Japan, compared to just 400 two years ago. To address this increase in plant-forward eating in Japan, TWO inc. officially opened the first three locations of its “healthy junk food” cafe concept 2foods.

2foods is a cafe spin-off of TWO inc.’s FoodTech Park, an experimental store where consumers can experience food tech products from all over the world. (The company described it as a food-tech version of b8ta.) Currently, FoodTech Park is hosting exhibitions from companies like OmniMeat, Next Meat, and MAAHA Chocolate. It is located right next to the 2foods flagship cafe in Shibuya, Tokyo.

The café aims to merge the two worlds of familiar and comforting junk food with better-for-you plant-based ingredients. So far, its menu includes items like plant-based chicken sandwiches, sandwiches with a donut bun, ramen, curry, chocolate brownies, a variety of beverages, and donuts. All of the items are fully vegan, and some of the ingredients have a food tech twist.

For example, the vegan chocolate brownie is made from a base of brown rice flour. However, the rice is processed in a manner that the particles are broken down at a low temperature to be extra fine and retain nutrients. This allows the flour to absorb water and hold together the ingredients like eggs would, resulting in a fluffy, moist brownie with no animal-based ingredients. The same technique is used with brown rice flour to create the cafe’s gluten-free noodles.

The 2foods cafes will co-develop menu items with emerging food tech start-ups, which can also test new products and prototypes at the cafe locations. OmniMeat (previously OmniPork) and 2foods will soon be collaborating to launch an exclusive food product. Additionally, 2foods will partner with food tech start-ups to help commercialize their new products globally and distribute them to its physical stores, online store, and to other retailers at a wholesale price.

The 2foods online store and the concept’s first three physical locations are now open in different areas of Tokyo, Japan. The company plans to launch 100-150 worldwide within the next three years.

Slice Raises $40M to Digitize the Independent Pizzeria

Slice, a restaurant-tech platform for independent pizzerias, announced today it has raised $40 million in Series D funding. The round was led by Cross Creek with participation from existing investors including 01 Advisors, GGV Capital, KKR, and Primary Ventures. It brings Slice’s total funding to date to $165 million.

The Slice platform is a suite of tools, including online ordering, a rewards program, delivery facilitation, and a POS system, made specifically with independent pizzerias in mind. The company’s Chief Product Officer, Preethy Vaidyanathan, explained during an interview with The Spoon last week that the idea is to provide small and/or independent pizza shops and chains with the same digital advantages of a major chain like Domino’s.

Whereas most online ordering software is built to serve any type of restaurant business, Slice’s is, according to Vaidyanathan, geared towards the “specialized needs that a pizzeria has.” Menus are one simple example, since pizza shops have to accommodate for things like different crust styles, and half-and-half toppings. Via a Domino’s or Pizza Hut app, making these choices is a straightforward process that takes just a couple clicks. Slice is trying to provide the same ease of ordering for independent pizzerias.

Restaurants pay a fixed cost per order to use the Slice technology, as opposed to the percentage-per-transaction model used by most third-party delivery services.

On the consumer-facing side, Slice functions as an online marketplace for pizzerias and is available for both iOS and Android. Vaidyanathan said the marketplace is available across all 50 U.S. states and that there are “well over 15,0000 shops” in the Slice network currently.

The funding news comes on the heels of Slice’s new Rewards program, which is kind of like a Starbucks app for pizzerias. Users get points for every $15 spent at a participating shop. Once they have enough points, they receive a free pie. Meanwhile, the rewards program incentivizes consumers to support local businesses, many of which are still struggling from the last year’s shutdowns and restrictions.

Along those lines, Slice said in today’s press release that it will use the new funds to expand its product line as well as invest more in its Slice Accelerate program, which invests $15,000 into select pizzerias to help them digitize their businesses.

C3 and Lunchbox Launch a New App to Power Virtual Food Halls

Virtual restaurant company C3 and online order platform Lunchbox announced today the launch of a new restaurant app, CITIZENS GO. The app will provide ordering and delivery services for C3’s growing network of ghost kitchens, which number over 200 at this point, according to a press release sent to The Spoon.

Via CITIZENS GO, which is available for both iPhone and Android, users can access C3’s growing list of delivery-only brands, which the company fulfills in various ghost kitchen spaces around the country, including in residential buildings. To start, CITIZENS GO will be available in Los Angeles, Northern California, New York City, and Chicago. Miami, Austin, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle, and Atlanta are slated for the near future. 

Lunchbox’s tech powers the back end of the app when it comes to processing orders and facilitating delivery. The two companies first partnered in October of 2020 to create this virtual food hall, and the resulting CITIZENS GO app has been in the works ever since.  

Among other things, Lunchbox is known for its online order tech that lets restaurants process and fulfill off-premises orders without the need for third-party delivery services like DoorDash or Uber Eats.

A notable feature of the new CITIZENS GO app is its ability to bundle orders from multiple different restaurant brands into a single transaction for the user. For example, a customer might have a craving for both a Plant Nation burger and something from Sam’s Krispy Chicken. Rather than having to create a separate transaction for each virtual restaurant (which is still required of users on third-party delivery services), customers can put anything they want on the app into a single shopping basket and pay on one ticket. 

The bundling concept is actually quite complicated to enable from a technological standpoint, so it isn’t yet widespread in restaurant world. But as Lunchbox’s platform illustrates, more restaurant tech companies are starting to offer solutions to enable the concept. An Ontario, Canada-based company called Ghost Kitchens has its own tech to bundle orders from its kitchens, and Kitchen United developed its own in-house tech to do the same for its facilities. 

Most operations, however, will be most likely to do what C3 did and partner with a third-party restaurant tech company to enable this bundling capability. At some point in the not-so-distant future, said feature will become a de facto part of the restaurant tech stack, particularly in the ghost kitchen.

In the meanwhile, C3 said in its press release today that new restaurant brands will be added to the app “in the coming months” to the CITIZENS GO mobile app.

Domino’s and Nuro Begin Autonomous Pizza Delivery in Texas

Domino’s today announced the launch of its autonomous pizza delivery service done in partnership with self-driving delivery company Nuro. Starting this week, customers of the Woodland Heights Domino’s location in Houston, Texas can opt to have their pizza delivered by Nuro’s R2 robot.

The R2 is a low-speed, pod-like vehicle that’s about half the size of a regular car and completely autonomous. (There isn’t even room for a human being to sit in the vehicle.) Nuro got Federal permission in February of 2020 to start driving the R2 on public roads. In April of 2020, the state of California also gave Nuro the thumbs up to drive on its public roads.

For the Domino’s partnership, customers that order from the participating location via Domino’s digital properties can opt to get their order delivered by R2. As the vehicle makes its way along the route, customers receive alerts via texts. Once the ‘bot arrives, customers use a unique PIN to open R2’s doors and grab their order. 

Autonomous delivery is currently only available on certain days and at certain times at the Woodland Heights location. Today’s press announcement did not mention if or when the pilot would expand to other Domino’s locations.

Domino’s and Nuro first started testing autonomous delivery in Houston back in 2019. The pandemic has since increased the need for more contactless forms of food delivery, making autonomous delivery vehicles an attractive option. Underscoring this, Nuro raised $500 million in November of last year. To date, the company has made deliveries for Kroger, CVS, and Walmart, in addition to Domino’s.

Domino’s, of course, is no stranger to bringing tech into the restaurant delivery process — something it was doing long before the existence of third-party delivery. The company said in today’s press release that the Houston program will help them better understand autonomous delivery’s impact on both operations at Domino’s and customer relationships. 

If you are interested in the future of self-driving delivery vehicles, be sure to attend ArticulATE, our virtual food automation and robotics summit happening on May 18!

Restaurants’ Breakup With Single-Use Plastics Has Begun

This is the web version of our weekly Spoon newsletter. Subscribe now to get the latest food tech news delivered direct to your inbox.

From monstrous portions to excess packaging, restaurants have a super-sized waste problem on their hands right now, and single-use plastics are a major contributor to the issue.

But as I wrote a few newsletters ago, the most effective way to combat this is not necessarily by expecting every restaurant out there to develop its own sustainability strategy. Many restaurants are right now just trying to survive the fallout from the last year. Instead, the fight against food waste, the fight against plastic waste has to include businesses, innovators, activists, and lawmakers alike.

We took a step in that direction this week when fast-casual chain Just Salad released a sign-on letter for restaurants and food/bev businesses to show their support for the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act (BFFPPA) 2021, recently introduced legislation aimed to curbing our reliance on single-use plastics. 

BFFPPA 2021, which builds on an earlier version of the bill, calls for reduction of plastic production at the source, greater focus on reusable packaging and containers, and more protections for communities of color, low-income communities, and indigenous communities, which are disproportionately impacted by plastic pollution.

“The plastic pollution problem gets worse with each passing day,” Judith Enck, a former EPA Administrator and the President of Beyond Plastics, said in an email to The Spoon. “The Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act is the most comprehensive and sweeping Congressional bill that addresses this problem.”

BFFPPA 2021 addresses all plastics. To drive the point home for restaurants, Just Salad introduced its own sign-on letter, which is a call-to-action for restaurants of all sizes to support the BFFPPA 2021.

Because of costs, operational challenges, and differing regulations from state to state, getting rid of single-use plastic is an expensive, time-consuming prospect for many restaurants. As a result, the restaurant biz generates about 78 percent of all disposable packaging. Case in point: plastic cutlery. The United States uses more than 36 billion disposable utensils per year, which is enough to wrap the globe 139 times. Don’t please get me started on plastic-lined disposable cups.

Just Salad’s letter outlines how BFFPPA 2021 could help. To name just a few benefits listed in the letter: 

  • More and better reusable programs, such as those currently in operation from Loop, DeliverZero, and, of course, Just Salad
  • Fewer single-use plastics, which are a major problem in the restaurant industry because of to-go boxes, bags, and cutlery
  • More standardized recycling and composting across states

“The BFFPPA would accelerate our respective companies’ efforts to reduce the waste and carbon footprint of our industry and create dining experiences that are healthy for people and planet. Supported by this legislation, our sustainability efforts would have a much larger impact,” the letter says.

Enck, in her email to The Spoon, expressed equal enthusiasm for the bill’s potential impact on restaurants: “Restaurants don’t want to contribute to the plastic pollution problem. When it is adopted into a law, this bill will eliminate some of the worst plastic products and boost alternatives to plastics.”

Just Salad is in the process of collecting public support for BFFPPA 2021. Restaurants, foodservice organizations, and food and beverage companies can show theirs by signing the letter. 

Speaking to The Spoon recently, Just Salad’s Chief Sustainability Officer Sandra Noonan pointed out that our efforts will “remain fragmented” until a national policy puts regulations around things like single-use plastic cutlery and does more to enable reusable containers, the circular economy, and waste management infrastructure. BFFPPA 2021 seeks to end that fragmentation, and with it, our longstanding reliance on the concept of single-use plastic.

More Headlines

Slice, a restaurant tech company that recently launched a POS system for pizzerias, announced it is also launching a loyalty program for pizza-loving restaurant customers. Slice Rewards will give users pizza points for every pie they order at a participating restaurant. 

Restaurant reservations platform Opentable has opened a brick-and-mortar restaurant it says will serve as a kind of innovation testing ground for the company’s technology. Dubbed Layla, the restaurant is now open for business at Kayak Miami Beach.

Churchill Downs Racetrack has released its official menus for 147th Kentucky Derby. This year, it includes online components, including a virtual cooking class with Churchill Downs Executive Chef David Danielson. 

PAR Acquires Guest Loyalty Platform Punchh for $500M

Restaurant tech provider PAR Technology Corporation announced today it has acquired guest engagement platform Punchh for $500 million in cash and shares. The deal adds loyalty and guest engagement software to PAR’s existing arsenal of restaurant tech tools, which currently includes a wide range of hardware and software products for restaurants.

Punchh has for a long time promised to “take the guesswork out of marketing” for restaurants by helping them align their sales channels and marketing campaigns with what their customers actually want. It does this by collecting data on customers and using it to dictate the types of campaigns and promotions sent out. A high-level example of this would be sending deals on plant-based meals to vegans and never sending that group offers for burgers. Punchh, however, can get considerably more granular than this. 

To date, the company has raised $68.1 million. Its platform serves over 200 brands, including Pizza Hut, Denny’s, and El Pollo Loco.

PAR’s CEO and President Savneet Singh noted in today’s press release that integrating the Punchh platform into PAR’s existing offerings will allow restaurants to access more technology via a single system, rather than “juggling disjointed vendors,” as is fairly common nowadays. 

However, this idea of gluing together siloed technologies to run a restaurant will get increasingly harder as digital orders increase and customers demand more personalization. It follows, then, that we’ll see more deals like the PAR-Punchh one in the future as companies attempt to turn themselves into “one-stop-shop” systems for the restaurant industry. Other companies, including Square and Toast, are also building out unified restaurant management systems that are made up of hardware and software controlled from one centralized point. 

How Restaurants Can Get Involved With the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act 2021

Recently, federal lawmakers introduced the Break Free From Plastic Pollution Act 2021(BFFPPA 2021), which proposes sweeping changes in the U.S. in order to curb our reliance on plastics and in the process improve recycling and lower greenhouse gas emissions. 

Now restaurants are getting involved, too. In an email to The Spoon this week, Just Salad — a fast casual chain that’s also a champion for more sustainability in the restaurant biz — said it has publicly given its support to the legislation and enlisting other restaurants to do the same.

Supported by Beyond Plastics founder Judith Enck, who is also a former EPA Administrator, Just Salad has drafted a sign-on letter for members of the restaurant, food service, and food and beverage industries. The letter urges other restaurants to get involved with supporting the BFFPPA 2021. 

The BFFPPA 2021, introduced by Sen. Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and Rep. Alan Lowenthal (D-CA), expands on an earlier version of the bill. It retains provisions such as mandates on minimum recycled content for some products, more extended producer responsibility (EPR) programs in the U.S., and bans on single-use plastics. Additionally, the new version includes provisions that would reduce plastic production at the source and focus more on reusables. Finally, the bill calls for better protection for communities of color, low-income communities, and indigenous communities, which are disproportionately impacted by plastic pollution.

Additionally, the BFFPPA 2021 would test more reusable programs, reduce single-use plastics, incentivize good design, lessen pollution and toxins, and strengthen environmental justice. 

Restaurants, of course, are a major contributor to our plastic problem, accounting for almost 78 percent of all disposable packaging. Meanwhile, the United States uses more than 36 billion disposable utensils per year, which is enough to wrap the globe 139 times, and globally we use hundreds of billions of plastic-lined single-use cups annually.

Just Salad, of course, is a major trailblazer when it comes to making the restaurant industry free of packaging waste (and any other form of waste). Others, including major QSRs like McDonald’s and Starbucks, have various efforts in place to curb our reliance on disposable packaging. However, at the moment, these efforts are largely siloed between individual restaurants and restaurant-related companies (e.g., DeliverZero).

“Many conscientious restaurants and food industry leaders are trying to reduce single-use waste and offer packaging that is truly recyclable and compostable,” Sandra Noonan, Just Salad Chief Sustainability Officer, told The Spoon. “But our efforts will remain fragmented until we have a national policy that makes disposable utensils available upon request only, encourages reusable bag and container systems, supports the circular economy, and improves waste management infrastructure.” 

Those restaurants and food businesses interested in showing their support can sign the letter here.

Starbucks Trialing a ‘Borrow a Cup’ Program in Seattle

Starbucks announced this week that it is currently trialing a reusable cup program at five Seattle, Washington stores for a period of two months. Dubbed the “Borrow a Cup” program, the trial is a continuation of an earlier single-store pilot that took place this past fall and winter in Seattle.

To participate, customers can order a beverage in a reusable cup for both in-person and mobile orders at participating stores. There is a $1 deposit. Once a customer is done with their drink, they can return the cup to participating stores, all of which will have return kiosks where customers can drop the empty cup. Upon returning the cup, customers also scan their Starbucks app to receive 10 bonus points on their Rewards account. (They get their deposit back, too.)

To clean the cups, Starbucks has partnered with a company called GO Box, which collects cups daily for cleaning and sanitizing, then returns them to circulation within 48 hours. 

Starbucks has also partnered with Ridwell, which offers a home pickup service for hard-to-recycle items, in case a customer can’t actually get to a store to return their cup. Users will get a Ridwell bin in which they can place their reusable cups for pickup at the front door. Users must purchase a Ridwell membership to join the pilot. Pricing varies from $10 to $14 depending on the type of subscription.

Starbucks noted today that a major hurdle on the path towards more widespread use of reusables is convenience. “The challenge is how to make choosing reusables as convenient as you expect from Starbucks – no extra steps – especially with 80% of Starbucks beverages being enjoyed on the go,” the company said in a statement today.

It’s all too possible that the extra steps of having to return a cup to the store or set up service with Ridwell may prove too involved for some consumers. Given that, we can assume the “Borrow a Cup” program is just one small step on Starbucks’ journey towards a more earth-friendly coffee business, particularly where cups are concerned. 

Worldwide, we throw out about 264 billion paper cups per year. Because of their plastic lining, these cups are difficult to recycle and therefore wind up in the landfill more often than not. In the U.S., reusable programs aren’t yet widespread, though that is slowly changing. Fellow QSRs Burger King and McDonald’s have both partnered with LOOP, the circular packaging service from TerraCycle, to trial reusable containers, including cups.

Both Starbucks and McDonald’s worked with Closed Loop Partners’ NextGen Consortium, which aims to reduce packaging waste, prior to the pandemic. Starbucks also had a “bring your own” reusables program in which customers could bring their own cups to Starbucks cafes and receive a small discount in return. That program was suspended because of COVID-19, and has not yet been reinstated at any Starbucks cafe.

OpenTable: 91 Percent of Consumers Want Off-Premises Meals After the Pandemic

Ninety-one percent of consumers surveyed by OpenTable and the James Beard Foundation said they would like restaurants to offer takeout and delivery options even after the pandemic subsides. 

The figure is from new survey data OpenTable and James Beard recently released that features responses from over 21,000 diners and almost 300 restaurant industry professionals in the U.S. and Canada. 

Other findings in the survey indicate that restaurants are willing to meet that consumer demand. Of the restaurant respondents, 76 percent said they want to continue offering off-premises meal formats like delivery and takeaway after the pandemic. 

Another 86 percent of consumers said they were “willing or somewhat willing” to order more takeout in order to support off-premises initiatives at restaurants. OpenTable noted in its blog post that, “Tangible support is meaningful, restaurateurs say: Restaurants can’t keep these programs alive without it, because they’re expensive and time-consuming to implement and maintain.”

While 91 percent is a big number, it’s not terribly jaw-dropping news in the sense that we’ve seen this shift happening for more than a year. Long before COVID-19, the National Restaurant Association predicted that the bulk of restaurant sales would come from off-premises formats by 2030. The pandemic just accelerated that timeline.

The survey data comes at the same time OpenTable has released new features to aid in the restaurant reopening process currently happening throughout the U.S. The new releases include a bundle of consumer-facing tools as well as a new hub for restaurant owners/operators, according to an email sent to The Spoon.

The consumer-facing “Back to the Table” hub includes what OpenTable is calling a “Reopening Heat Map.” Said map is a state-by-state rundown of restaurants’ reopening statuses and any restrictions. The Back to the Table hub also offers customers includes a tool that will let customers find local restaurants according to meal format (dine-in, delivery, takeout, etc.). 

For restaurants, the new At Your Service feature will launch on Thursday, April 7, and include controls for restaurants to manage capacity, access guest feedback, and tips on reopening businesses.