Close Ad

The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

contactless payments

Uber Eats Adds Contactless Order and Payment Methods for Dine-In and Takeout

Uber Eats has turned on some new contactless ordering and payment methods according to a story out today in USA Today. The new “Uber Eats Contactless Order Feature” aims to reduce the amount of human-to-human contact for people dining in restaurants or picking up their food.

Customers can either scan a special QR code at participating restaurants or find the restaurant in the Uber Eats app to order and pay for meals. For those eating at the restaurant, the food will be brought out to your table. Those choosing takeout can schedule a time to pick up their food.

The food pickup option is available nationally starting today, and the food delivery to your table for dine-in customers is available at now in Indianapolis, Boston, Chicago, Philadelphia, Vermont, Atlanta, New York City and Washington, D.C.

Adding these types of contactless features is the latest in a series of moves Uber has made to adapt to the new normal caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. In addition to implementing contactless delivery, Uber also launched a pilot program that lets its restaurants accept pickup and delivery orders directly through their own websites with no added commission fee for the rest of the year, created a voucher program so companies can buy remote workers lunch during meetings, and developed a mask verification feature for its delivery drivers.

Uber is far from alone in adapting its product to support and accelerate a more contactless meal journey. In fact, any business that has any sort of relationship with a restaurant is getting into the contactless game. Holo Lens makes holographic interactive menus. Order for Me, BBot and even Apple are just three of the many companies with mobile payment solutions, while Keenon Robotics and Bear Robotics are creating robot servers to bring you your food.

As the pandemic continues, contactless payments and delivery will just become table stakes for any restaurant, and we are bound to see even more announcements like this from Uber and others in this space to accommodate.

Survey: Restaurants Should Expect to Serve 4 Types of Customers in the Coming Months

Roughly one in three Americans look forward to dining in restaurants again over the next three months, but different customers have different standards for what the new era of eating out should look like. So says restaurant tech company Sevenrooms, which today released a new survey entitled “Restaurant Reckoning: Dynamic Diner.”

The survey, conducted with third-party research firm YouGov PLC, polled 1,327 U.S. restaurant customers at the end of July. As its title suggests, the pandemic has created new types of diners with different sets of priorities. Sevenrooms has divvied these up into four categories:

  • “The Pick-Up Patron:” More than one in four survey respondents, or 27 percent, said they will not feel comfortable eating in a restaurant dining room until a vaccine for COVID-19 is found. Nearly one in four, 23 percent, will stick to takeout orders for the rest of 2020. 
  • “The Safety-Savvy Consumer:” More than one in five, or 22 percent, of those surveyed want a detailed outline of a restaurant’s safety protocols, including physical barriers between tables, at-table hand sanitizer, and having their food covered when brought to the table.
  • “The Tech-Conscious Contactless Diner:” A smaller percentage, 13 percent, said they would only dine in a restaurant that uses contactless dining solutions like virtual waitlists, QR code-enabled order and payments, and contact tracing technology.
  • “The Carefree Guest:” Despite nationwide restrictions around indoor dining, a healthy number of respondents, 29 percent, said they are comfortable with the format. Another 42 percent said they are comfortable with outdoor dining.

The outdoor dining stat, though, is an important reminder of a situation most restaurants around the U.S. will soon face: winter is on its way, and once it arrives, outdoor dining will be uncomfortable in some locations, impossible in many more. It may very well be that colder weather will mean the Pick-Up Patron category gets a lot larger and the number of “carefree” guests lowers alongside the temperature.

The survey also recommends that restaurants double-down on collecting customer data that can better tell them which of the above customer types they serve most. That directive makes sense, given that Sevenrooms is a guest management platform that emphasizes the value of restaurant customer data. But it brings up a good point: with the restaurant experience going more and more digital, it’s time for restaurants to rethink their relationship to customer data.

Speaking in today’s press release, Sevenrooms CEO Joel Montaniel also suggested that agility is crucial for restaurant operators right now: “Our research has made one thing clear: operators need to be flexible,” he said. “Whether it’s in regard to outdoor dining, virtual waitlists or contactless order and pay – every guest has different needs.”

With colder temperatures and a lot of uncertainty around both the pandemic and the future of the restaurant industry, that flexibility will remain a must-have for restaurants for the foreseeable future. The good news is, since restaurants were allowed to slowly reopen their dining rooms, we’ve seen no end of creativity when it comes to serving guests while keeping them socially distanced. No doubt we’ll see even more of that as the restaurant industry transitions into a new season.

Order for Me’s Contactless Restaurant Tech Lets You Split the Check — Among Other New Features

If there was an official buzzword of the pandemic-era restaurant, it would be “contactless.” But as is the case with any technology that becomes an overnight trend, there are now so many contactless restaurant tech solutions available it is getting hard to tell them apart. That means the next few months will see these companies introducing new features in a bid to make their products stand out. One such is Order for Me, a Los Angeles-based company that offers contactless tech for dine-in and takeout service.

The system uses QR code technology, where users can enter the table code or scan it with their own device and subsequently pull up the menu. Like other contactless systems out there, Order for Me lets customers view that menu, order items, and pay for them from their own mobile devices. 

At this point, such features are table stakes in the contactless dining room game, and so Order for Me has taken its system one step further. Users can also keep the bill open — the virtual equivalent of a “tab” — until they are ready to pay for the entire meal, which might include an impulse purchase like dessert or a second (or fifth) cocktail partway through the meal. Order for Me also lets guests split the check and tip, so that each person can pay their share via their own mobile device. All of this is done through a patent-pending ordering technology, according to an email sent to The Spoon. 

While the ability to wait until the end of the meal to pay and tip might at first seem a small development in the world of the contactless restaurant, it actually has huge implications, especially in the dining room. The features allow for potentially bigger tickets for restaurants, which need all the help they can get right now in this time of reduced dining room capacity.

For servers, these features could also lead to higher tips. While anecdotal evidence, a server I know commented recently that he rarely gets anything above 15 percent with his restaurant’s contactless payment system because guests are tipping before the meal actually arrives or they’ve had any real chance to interact with him. That’s a rough lot for servers if they’re getting 15 percent no matter how well they do their jobs — jobs that might disappear if the restaurant closes because of a pandemic.

The other notable restaurant tech company offering customers the ability to keep a tab open is Paytronix, which raised $10 million earlier this year and announced its contactless software for the dining room in June. 

So far, Order for Me is the only system we know of that also allows guests to split the bill. But given the way tech trends evolve, it’s only a matter of time before other restaurant tech systems incorporate that feature into their own systems. 

Can Ghost Kitchens Save the Vanishing Restaurant Biz?

“Perhaps we should stop using the term ghost kitchen. Ghosts are rarely seen, but ghost kitchens? Well, they are popping up everywhere.”

Spoon Editor Chris Albrecht was half-kidding when he wrote that line earlier this week, but he might have been onto something. Ghost kitchens, a concept that only really started turning heads one year ago, are practically unavoidable these days in a conversation about the restaurant industry. 

In the past few weeks alone:

  • Foodservice distribution giant US Foods launched its own ghost kitchen service that will provide restaurants “guidance and resources” to open their own kitchens.
  • Gig economy engagement platform ShiftPixy unveiled a ghost kitchen incubator that connects restaurants with physical kitchen space and the tech to run a ghost kitchen.
  • Dubai-based iKcon, raised $5 million to expand its kitchen network and the proprietary tech stack that goes with it.
  • Fat Brands announced that Johnny Rockets, a brand it intends to purchase for $25 million, will expand via ghost kitchens, many of them inside the kitchens of other Fat Brands restaurants.
  • Sweetgreen said it is testing the ghost kitchen concept out by working from a Zuul kitchen in NYC.

And those are just the highlights.

What’s noteworthy here is not that a bunch more restaurants and food industry companies have hopped aboard the ghost kitchen train. It’s that there are a fast-growing number of options when it comes to where and how a restaurant can open a ghost kitchen. With a company like iKcon, for example, a restaurant’s ghost kitchen essentially becomes a franchisee. Renting space from Zuul or another third-party kitchen provider is another way. Operating one brand out of the kitchen of a sister brand is perhaps the most intriguing concept on this list, and one we’ll see a lot more of in the future.

Add to all that choices around location, technology, and figuring out if they even have enough demand to warrant a ghost kitchen, and restaurants have a lot to consider in today’s off-premises-centric world.

What’s more, those restaurants are being forced to consider their choices when it comes to ghost kitchens. The pandemic has decimated the dine-in business for both large restaurant chains and smaller independent businesses. Recovery from the fallout will be slow, and the idea of most customers returning to brick-and-mortar restaurants seems less possible each week. Given those factors, more restaurants will have to consider either supplementing their existing operations with ghost kitchens or pivoting their entire model to a virtual, delivery-only one.

I suspect this is just the beginning when it comes to types of ghost kitchens that rise out of the ashes of the on-premises restaurant experience. We’ve already seen restaurants employ countless amounts of creativity when it comes to running a restaurant during a pandemic and trying to create a concrete restaurant experience out of virtual tools. With the pandemic still very much a part of our lives, we will now see that creativity head for the ghost kitchen.

SipScience Raises Money to Reinvent the Bar

SipScience, a data analytics company specifically for the hospitality industry, is preparing to launch itself into the contactless payments realm by launching a new platform, Sip. 

According to a press release sent to The Spoon this week, there are two sides to Sip. The consumer-facing one comes in the form of an app that connects to a user’s digital wallet. The app lets said user find nearby bars and open a tab from their own mobile device, through which they can order and pay for drinks. When it launches, Sip will be available at participating bars and venues across the U.S. Bonus: those who sign up for a subscription will get half off their first 50 drinks ordered through the app.

For venues, such as bars and restaurants, the app is a new way to drive more traffic, and the accompanying SipSync analytics engine gives these places more data on in-venue customers. Brands, too, are provided with real-time purchasing data, which is not something a payments app normally provides.

The company said this week it had raised $1.3 million in SAFE notes. There is no official launch date yet for the app, which makes sense, given the state of in-person hospitality venues. Bars in many states remain closed, as to venues built to hold hundreds of people. 

Granted, no sane person would spend much time in a bar right now. But SipScience’s news suggests that folks start flocking back to their local watering holes, they’ll find a far more tech-driven experience waiting.

Restaurant Tech ‘Round the Web

Starbucks launched a digital traceability tool this week that lets customers learn more about their coffee, including where it came from and traveled, and the farmers and roasters involved in production.

Domino’s is hiring 20,000 more employees. That’s on top of the 10,000 the pizza chain said it was hiring right after the pandemic hit, and just goes to show you that the company’s delivery-centric business is alive and thriving. 

Grubhub has launched an online petition to commission fee caps and is reportedly going to run an ad campaign that calls the fee caps “food delivery taxes.” Grubhub says fee caps result in higher costs for consumers and ultimately hurt restaurants. 

This is the web version of our newsletter. Sign up today to get updates on the rapidly changing nature of the food tech industry.

Restaurants, Retailers Launch a ‘Pay-by-Face’ Network Powered by PopID

At the tail-end of last week, a number of Pasadena, CA-based restaurants and retailers announced they had established the first pay-by-face network in the U.S. According to a press release sent to The Spoon, a growing list of businesses in the Southern California city have deployed tech from PopID to let customers make purchases via facial recognition without even having to touch their own mobile phones.

To use PopID’s facial recognition system, customers create a PopID account, which the company says users can now link their credit or debit card to in addition to their face. Then, at participating restaurants, those customers will be able to log into their account not only on their own mobile devices but also at restaurant-operated kiosks at the counter, drive-thru, and other areas of the business. Once the system scans the customer’s face, it automatically pulls up their account where past orders, loyalty points, and payment information are already stored.

What’s especially noteworthy about this news is that the technology enables some restaurant settings to be more contactless than many offerings out there that claim the same. Practically unheard of six months ago, so-called contactless technologies are now one of the most popular topics in the restaurant biz. Thing is, many of these systems, while they minimize or eliminate human-to-human contact, still require a customer to touch a kiosk, credit card machine, or other device handled by other customers. 

Some of PopID’s new deployments at these Pasadena restaurants will still require customers to touch a public-facing screen. Think walk-up or drive-thru kiosks. Others, however, will eliminate the need for customers to touch any device at all. Today’s press release mentions tableside order and payments that can happen with a server scanning a customer’s face with a handheld device. Creepy? Probably, but it still gets closest to providing actual “hands-free” order and payment methods for restaurant customers. 

PopID said the Pasadena launch of this pay-by-face network is the first of “a city-by-city rollout of the contactless payment service.” CEO John Miller said in each new city, the company initially focuses on college campuses and office buildings — which, given the state of the world, may or may not work as a long-term strategy. “As these communities grow comfortable using PopID to check-in, we enlist area restaurants and retailers to offer PopPay for transactions,” he said.

The popularity of Pasadena’s new pay-by-face network as well as subsequent deployments in other cities will tell us how much biometric data users are willing to swap in exchange for the promise of safety. If it turns out to be a lot, the nature of transactions could change must faster than anyone anticipated before the pandemic hit.

Survey: Drive-Thru Orders and Mobile App Usage at Restaurants Are Up

Consumers are using a mobile app more often than just a few months ago to order restaurant food, according to new survey data from Bluedot and research firm SeeLevel HX.

The survey, based on responses from 1,501 U.S. adults between June 23 and July 2, 2020, found that 50 percent of consumers are using restaurant mobile apps “more often or much more often” than they were before the pandemic, up from 42 percent in April. Meanwhile, 64 percent of respondents said they have downloaded at least one or more new apps to purchase restaurant food, up from 51 percent in April.

The spike makes sense, given the rise in off-premises restaurant formats, the push for so-called “contactless” ordering and payments platforms, and widespread consumer concerns around safety and social distancing. 

The report also examines the popularity of off-premises formats among consumers. The drive-thru is far and away the most popular. Seventy-four percent of respondents said they have visited the drive-thru “the same amount or more often than usual” compared to 43 percent in April. Respondents also named drive-thru the “safest” of the to-go formats, which also include curbside pickup and in-store pickup. 

Responses around both mobile app usage and drive-thru visits are in line with developments by restaurants over the last few months. Chains like Chipotle and Shake Shack are reformatting many of their stores to include drive-thru lanes. In many cases, those lanes are dedicated to customers ordering via the restaurants’ mobile apps. 

In many cases, these drive-thrus are one of the main reasons QSRs have fared much better in terms of sales so far during the pandemic.

All that said, the Bluedot and SeeLevel HX report also suggests that drive-thru lines are still frustratingly slow. Of the consumers surveyed, 81 percent said waiting more than 10 minutes in the drive-thru is too long. If you’ve been to a drive-thru recently, you don’t need data to tell you wait times are stretching far beyond that number oftentimes. 

Cutting down wait time in the drive-thru is an old story that pre-dates the pandemic. Making that particular restaurant format more efficient will continue to be a priority for QSRs going forward. 

PayJunction Launches Its ZeroTouch Terminal to Help Restaurants Go Contactless

Joining the list of restaurant tech solutions aiming to bring contactless everything into the restaurant dining room, PayJunction today announced the launch of its ZeroTouch terminal system.

The device combines contactless pay functionality with a traditional credit card swiper, leaving customers the choice of paying with their phones or with a credit card. The cashier controls the transaction via a web interface on the store’s own computer, eliminating the physical act of passing a credit card back and forth. All receipts are digital, getting rid of the need for paper to be handed from cashier to customer, too.

All that said, the device is only truly contactless for those using their phones to pay. Judging from the keypad on the machine, as well as the fact that ZeroTouch accepts both chip and swipe payments, it looks like those who opt to pay with a card still have to key in a PIN. While the aforementioned web browser still eradicates cashier-to-customer interactions from the process, customers will still have to share a keypad with other guests. 

The most compelling aspect of ZeroTerminal is the device’s all-in-one approach to payments. Not everyone can or wants to pay with their phone, and despite some folks believing credit cards will soon be a thing of the past, a good many people continue to pay with them. Having a device that can process both could cut down on the number of devices a restaurant has to juggle. 

PayJunction will find a lot of competition when it comes to making the restaurant dining room contactless. Since the start of the pandemic, contactless order and pay solutions, along with digital menu tools, have swarmed the market. Paytronix, Sevenrooms, Presto, and many, many others now offer such products. Granted, those solutions are geared more for table service, whereas PayJunction’s terminal would work better for counter service, or even somewhere like the self-checkout aisle of a grocery store. 

How the device stacks up to the competition remains to seen, but it’s yet-another option for restaurants to consider as they grapple with the task of going permanently contactless.

Bbot Raises $3M for Its Contactless Restaurant Tech Solution

NYC-based restaurant tech company Bbot today announced a $3 million seed funding round led by Craft Ventures. The company says it will use the new funds to hire up and expand its reach and product capabilities, according to a press release sent to The Spoon.

Bbot, which was founded in 2017, was ahead of the times when it originally launched its mobile order and pay platform that emphasizes contactless functionality and minimizes human-to-human contact in restaurants and bars. The system integrates directly with a restaurant or bar’s existing tech setup. Customers use their own phones to scan a QR code (usually placed on a decal on the table) and browse the menu, as well as order and pay for food. 

Bbot points to a number of different advantages with this setup. Most obviously, contactless features in the dining room makes it easier for restaurants to foster social distancing among customers and staff. It also more or less forces restaurants to have at least some digital presence, which is becoming increasingly mandatory these days. Bbot also says the system can increase revenue for the restaurant, and that some of its existing clients have seen a 15 percent lift thanks to the system.

While that’s an encouraging figure, the challenge right now for any restaurant tech is two-fold. First is the sheer amount of competition in the restaurant tech space — particularly when it comes to the consumer-facing side of things. As I said earlier, companies that formerly served the front of house are now racing to find new ways to stay relevant. So far, that’s been through contactless dining kits a la Paytronix, Zuppler, Presto, and many others. 

The other part of the challenge is that the state of restaurant dining rooms remains uncertain, to put it mildly. Some states and/or individual businesses are halting or reversing their reopening plans, thanks to a rapid rise in COVID-19 cases, and businesses are being encouraged to continue their focus off-premises orders.

On that latter note, Bbot has an advantage in that its system is designed to work for any type of restaurant setting, including the off-premises ones. That ability to translate across restaurant formats plus its early entry into the contactless space may give Bbot a greater advantage over the competition, even if dining rooms don’t reopen the way we thought they would.

The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly of Deliveroo’s New Table Service Feature

U.K.-based food delivery service Deliveroo launched a new feature this week that sounds convenient on the surface but could cause some problems for more than one party in the restaurant biz. This “Table Service” feature, as it’s dubbed, is meant “to help restaurants reopen safely to dine-in customers and help the recovery of the sector,” according to a company blog post. The feature is available on July 15.

In terms of how it works, the feature is simple: Customers sit down at the cafe, restaurant, or bar, pull up the existing Deliveroo app, and order their food with the Table Service feature, rather than directly interfacing with a server. Payment also happens in the app, so that all the restaurant staff (theoretically) have to do is cook the food and bring it out to the table.

Here’s the good of this new way of operating dining rooms:

If you’re an existing Deliveroo user, it’s convenient. You don’t have to download yet-another mobile ordering app, and since this is table service, not delivery, the extra fees third-party services tack onto orders should be minimal. Deliveroo also said in its blog post it will charge zero commission fee to the restaurant on these orders.

Without a doubt, there is also a level of social distancing built into this concept that will be safer for both restaurants and customers. Being able to sit down and order a meal from your phone gets rid of long lines and crowding near a cash register, and it does, to a degree, minimize customer-to-server interactions.

But on that note, here’s what’s less awesome about Deliveroo’s new feature:

It’s not as socially distanced as the hype would have you believe. Someone has to run the food and be available to refill drinks or assist if there is a problem with the meal. (“I said fries, not salad!”)

This isn’t a Deliveroo-specific problem. All restaurants and restaurant tech solutions have to account for the fact that in any sit-down dining experience, you can’t get away from at least some customer-to-staff interactions. I don’t think Deliveroo, or any company, is promising to completely eradicate those interactions. The company blog post specifically says “minimising in-person contact.” Even so, it’s something to keep in mind as more companies come to market with these contactless solutions for dining rooms. 

More worrying is what a feature like Deliveroo’s Table Service means for restaurant tech companies. Like I said, tech companies, and even non-tech companies, offering contactless dining room solutions have multiplied in the last several weeks. Sevenrooms, Presto, Zuppler, this signage company, and many others offer restaurants the technical means to let guests order and pay from their phones in the dining room. Paytronix has a system that even lets you keep your virtual “tab” — that is, ticket — open so you can order another round of drinks or dessert without making multiple transactions.

If third-party delivery starts offering order and pay features for the dining room en masse, it could be a serious competitive threat for these companies. 

Most alarming about this new feature is what it means for customer data. Ownership of customer data is already seen as a huge issue with third-party delivery services. If restaurants can’t see data about what their customers are ordering, when they’re doing it, etc., they’re less able to cater to exactly what those customers want when it comes to food. 

Deliveroo owning the customer data in the dining room could potentially mean restaurants wouldn’t get the feedback they need to deliver good service that’s enjoyable and simultaneously safe in this pandemic-stricken era. 

A while back, one restaurant tech CEO told me that the COVID-19 pandemic should be treated as “a wakeup call” for restaurants when it comes to their data. In his view, these restaurants need to “to rethink how they’re connecting digitally with their customers.” This is likely to become even more important going forward as governments encourage contactless technologies in restaurants and more customers gravitate towards using their phones for browsing and buying from restaurant menus.

So before you restaurants go signing up for Deliveroo’s new model for the dining room, consider first your digital relationship to your customers, how you treat your customer data, and, most important, how willing you are to part with it when it comes to the newly reopened dining room. 

Six Flags Adds Mobile Food Ordering to Its Theme Parks

There is no way you could get me to go to a theme park right now. Too many people in one place, too much complacency and too many unknowns about where we are at with this pandemic.

However, theme parks across the country are pushing past their COVID-19 concerns to re-open. As they do, they are implementing new procedures to create social distancing and minimize viral transmission as much as possible. Part of those procedures is mobile food ordering.

Six Flags announced last week that it was rolling out mobile food ordering and contactless payment across all of its parks. Guests just need to download the Six Flags mobile app, which allows them to choose their restaurant, place their order and pay. The app then gives them pickup instructions.

Six Flags isn’t the first to offer mobile ordering. Disney theme parks, which haven’t opened to the public yet, have reportedly expanded their mobile ordering and contactless payment options as well. And for a while there, it looked like Disney was even thinking about delivering its food to the front door of annual passholders.

Beyond theme parks, mobile ordering and contactless payment are quickly becoming table stakes for any restaurant. Fears of becoming a coronavirus hot spot have restaurants doing extra scrubbing and removing contact points that lots of people touch.

In places like theme parks, which involve masses of people and lines, I also wouldn’t be surprised to see the implementation of something like WaitTime. WaitTime uses computer vision and AI to monitor room occupancy (so there aren’t too many people in one room), and can measure crowd densities so establishments can map out where they need to thin people out.

Despite mobile ordering and contactless payments, studies show people are still wary about going back to restaurants (I get it!). If they do go back to theme parks, it won’t be because they can suddenly order a churro from their phones. But if they can’t resist the siren song of roller coasters this summer, perhaps it will get more people more to adopt mobile ordering and use it across more restaurants.

Paytronix Puts a New Spin on Contactless Tech in Restaurant Dining Rooms

Guest management platform Paytronix Systems today announced its version of the contactless dining kit for restaurants, simply called Paytronix Contactless Dining. With it, restaurants can offer guests touch-free ways to browse menus, order, and pay for meals while in the restaurant dining room, according to a press release sent to The Spoon.

While the motivation behind Paytronix’ new offering is similar to other contactless dining kits out there — minimize human-to-human contact in the restaurant — the tech itself offers some features we haven’t yet seen on other platforms.

Most notably, Paytronix’ system allows guests to keep their virtual “tab” — that is, ticket — throughout the entire meal.

Right now with most mobile apps, a customer has to order and pay to complete the transaction and get that order sent to the restaurant kitchen. That works fine for takeout or delivery orders, which are inherently meant to be one-off transactions. For dine-in service, however, a customer might want to order a second drink partway through their meal. Or they may decide at last minute to get dessert. For each of those extra items, a new transaction, or “tab,” would have to be made, which means more transaction fees for restaurants that they may or may not pass on to the customer via higher menu prices. It’s also just a messy scenario to have to pay multiple transactions for each course at a single meal.

That mess and expense is what Paytronix is trying to eliminate with this Contactless Dining kit. The platform connects directly to the restaurant’s POS system. Customers then use their mobile devices to browse the menu, order items, and make a single payment (the virtual equivalent of “closing the tab”) at the end of the meal. 

Tim Ridgely, head of development for Contactless Dining, got to the heart of the matter when he noted in today’s press release that, “When it comes to on-premises dining, guests want the freedom to peruse a menu, order what they want when they want it, open tabs, and ultimately, pay for that experience at the end.”

Offering more flexibility in terms of this open tab feature also means restaurants could potentially sell more per ticket, whether that’s a second martini or a slice of cake at the end of the meal. That boost in sales will be much needed for most restaurants, since dining rooms across the U.S. are still operating at reduced capacity and, depending on how the pandemic wave falls, will be doing so for quite some time.

Paytronix joins Presto, Sevenrooms, Zuppler, and other others offering systems that try to minimize contact between guests and restaurant staff.

Of course, to make the most of Paytronix new system, restaurants will actually need a lot of customers. As we learned recently, the general population remains pretty divided about going out to eat. Some refuse to set foot in restaurants. Others were ready weeks before they reopened. Between those two extremes is a swath of folks who, while wary, are slowly but surely becoming open to the idea of going out to eat once more. Restaurant tech companies that can help sway more people towards that idea will be the ones businesses find most valuable going forward.

Panasonic and PopID Aim to Make Paying With Your Face the Norm at Restaurants

Using facial recognition to order and pay for food has long been an intriguing concept for restaurants, albeit one that comes with a bit of a creep factor. But now that the pandemic has accelerated the need for contactless systems in restaurants, it may become more widespread.

Case in point: this week, Panasonic and Cali Group’s PopID announced a new partnership that lets restaurant customers pay with their faces at drive-thrus and kiosks. PopID’s technology, which includes its PopPay “wallet,” will be integrated into Panasonic’s ClearConnect Kiosk, which offers restaurants the hardware, software, and UI/UX design needed to install self-order kiosks at restaurants. The two companies will also jointly integrate PopPay at drive-thru systems.

Once customers register for a PopID account, they can use PopPay at any restaurant that accepts the technology. They’ll be able to view past orders and loyalty points, reorder items, and, of course, pay for their meals without the need for human interaction. You can watch a quick explainer video here.

Facial recognition at fast-casual and QSR restaurants has been slowly gaining momentum over the last couple years. Bite, which works with ToGo’s and Noodles World Kitchen, among other restaurants, also offers facial recognition in its kiosks. Some restaurants, namely Dallas-TX Malibu Poke, have offered face recognition for years.

PopID’s tech is already in a number of restaurants, including Cali Group-owned CaliBurger, Bojangles, and Dairi-O. The Panasonic partnership is meant to expand the number of PopID deployments.

The flip side, of course, is that users have to be comfortable with giving away their face data in order to use the this convenient, socially distanced form of ordering and payments. Biometric data remains a controversial topic and comes with its fair share of security and privacy concerns. That means restaurants and tech companies deploying these systems have a responsibility to communicate with customers about how they use the data — and how well they protect it.

In a pandemic-stricken world, some of these systems actually do more than let customers order and pay for meals. Cali Burger recently launched a modified system (using PopID) that can, as well as processing ordering and payments, take staff and guests’ temperatures. A handful of restaurants, including Cali Burger, are using this feature, and if the sensors detect someone has a fever, that person is not allowed to enter the building. 

So while privacy concerns will always be a risk with facial recognition, the ability of these kiosks to actually ensure the safety of guests and staff could sway more folks to hand over their personal data. At the very least, the privacy tradeoff may seem more worth it.