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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

delivery

Minnow Picks Up $3M in Seed Funding for its Pickup Pods

Minnow Technologies, which creates smart lockers for food delivery and pickup, announced today that it has raised an additional $3 million in Seed funding. Branded Strategic Hospitality led the round, which also saw participation from Elevate Capital and Portland Seed Fund. This brings Minnow’s total funding to date to $6.4 million.

Seattle, Washington-based Minnow has certainly had a twisty-turny startup journey . The company started out in Portland, Maine in 2017 as Veebie and made a mobile lunch pickup locker system. In 2018, the company moved to to the West Coast, changed its name to Kadabra and pivoted to making stationary pickup lockers. In 2020 the company, now called Minnow, launched its first pickup pods in Portland, Oregon.

Minnow’s smart lockers can be installed in residential buildings, office buildings, college campuses and other locations. The units are like an Amazon locker for restaurant delivery. Instead of needing to be home when a delivery driver arrives (or come downstairs if you live in a tall building), orders are placed inside a Minnow pod cubby. When the customer is ready, they go to the locker, enter a code and retrieve their food.

Minnow’s pod system took on greater importance last year because it provides a contactless method of delivery. Customers and delivery people don’t have to interact with one another, and food can be securely stowed until pickup. Solving these issues around convenience and safety helped Minnow win the Startup Showcase at our Smart Kitchen Summit last year.

Minnow says that is has installations across the U.S. and in Japan, and that the first batch of Pickup Pods is already sold out. (The company is accepting pre-orders for batch two.) With its new funding, the company is accelerating the production of its first commercial model, the M8.

DoorDash Launches Tiered Commission Fees for Restaurants

DoorDash announced today that is has launched a new pricing structure to deal with its historically controversial restaurant commission fees. Via these “Partnership Plans,” as the service calls them, U.S. restaurants can now choose between three different commission price points.

Plans are priced according to how much area a restaurant wants its delivery radius to cover and how much marketing it needs from DoorDash. 

The DoorDash Basic plan has the smallest delivery radius and the highest cost for customers, since most of the delivery costs are shifted to them. The commission fee for restaurants with this plan is 15 percent. It does not include in-app marketing.

DoorDash Plus has a 25 percent commission fee, offers a bigger delivery radius, and includes the DashPass loyalty program. DoorDash Premier has the biggest delivery radius and, in addition to DashPass, also offers what it calls a “growth guarantee.” Via this feature, restaurants will be reimbursed their full commission for the month if they receive fewer than 20 orders for delivery, pickup, or DoorDash subsidiary Caviar.

DoorDash also announced a new and reduced commission fee for pickup orders, which is 6 percent across all plans. 

The new tiered pricing structure is very clearly a response to the commission fee caps dozens of U.S. cities implemented last year. With dining rooms closed because of the COVID-19 pandemic, restaurants were forced to rely more heavily on third-party delivery services like DoorDash. We weren’t too many months into restaurant restrictions before many across the restaurant industry started to decry commission fees, which often go as high as 30 percent per transaction, as detrimental to restaurants’ bottom lines. 

DoorDash and others oppose fee caps, saying they hurt order volumes and result in the service having to raise prices for customers. 

Granted, with a plan like DoorDash Basic, customers will still pay more for their meals to be delivered. From the looks of it, bringing those costs down will mean hiking commission fees for restaurants back up, so it remains to be seen if this new pricing structure is truly beneficial for businesses or if it’s more of the same old story.

Deliverect Raises $65M for Its Delivery Integration Software

Belgium-based restaurant tech startup Deliverect announced today it has raised $65 million in Series C funding. The round was led by DST Global Partners and Redpoint Ventures, as well as existing investors OMERS Ventures, Newion and Smartfin. Deliverect’s founders also invested in the round. To date, Deliverect has raised a total of $86.8 million including this round.

The Deliverect platform manages orders from third party delivery services, funneling them into a single ticket stream that goes into a restaurant’s main POS system. This eliminates the need for a restaurant staffer to manually input these orders from the third-party delivery service’s tablet into the POS. That in turn saves time and can lessen the likelihood of order inaccuracy. 

While this class of technology has been around for years now, the move towards more delivery and takeout orders, brought on by the pandemic, has made this type of software something of a must-have for businesses using multiple third-party providers (e.g., Uber Eats, Deliverroo, etc.). 

Deliverect’s software services single restaurants, chains, and ghost kitchen operations. The company said today it will use the new funding for more R&D as well as to expand further. Right now, Deliverect’s software is in more than 10,000 restaurants around the world, including high-profile chains like Pret a Manger, Taco Bell, and Le Pain Quotidien.

Numerous other startups, including Ordermark, which raised $120 million last year, and Olo, which recently filed to go public, offer a similar product to restaurants. Which is to say that Deliverect will face its fair share of competition as it continues to expand.

The company raised €16.25 million (~$17.63 million USD) in Series B funding last year. It said today it has processed more than 30 million orders, and is now processing an average of 1 million orders per week.

Pizza: an Opportunity for Restaurant Tech Innovation

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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.

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.

Tracking the Next Generation of To-Go Concepts for Restaurants

This shift towards delivery and other off-premises formats was already underway. Back in 2019, the National Restaurant Association predicted that by 2030 off-premises would drive most of the growth for restaurant sales. 

Suffice to say, the pandemic sped that timeline up. In the words of Ordermark’s cofounder and CEO Alex Canter (whose family also owns famed L.A. restaurant Canter’s Deli), “10 years of progress maybe happened in a couple of months, not out desire, but really out of necessity.”

Out of that progress have come many different ways and tactics to approach delivery and takeout formats, from iterating on the virtual restaurant concept to altering the cooking process of the meal itself. This intelligence briefing for Spoon Plus will look at some some off-premises success stories to come out of the pandemic-era restaurant industry.

This content is exclusive to Spoon Plus. To learn more about membership, click here.

C3 to Bring Ghost Kitchens to Residential Buildings

Ghost kitchen/virtual restaurant network C3 (Creating Culinary Communities) today announced a partnership with apartment operator Akera Living to place ghost kitchens inside the latter’s Kenect communities.

Kenect bills itself as a combination coworking space, social club, and residential community that’s become increasingly popular in urban settings over the last few years. Since the idea seems to be to jam as many amenities as possible under one roof, ghost kitchens were bound to show up in this setting sooner or later.

For Kenect properties, C3 kitchens will not only serve up delivery-only meals to residents, they will also provide food and drink for Kenect’s lobby bars, building cafes, and pool areas. For residents ordering in, C3’s virtual restaurant brands will be available.

The company will launch its kitchens in summer 2021 at Kenect buildings in Nashville, Tennessee and Phoenix, Arizona, with upcoming locations planned for more U.S. cities soon. 

The partnership is not unlike C3’s deal with Graduate Hotels, which was announced earlier this year. For that partnership, C3 is taking over the hotel chain’s culinary spaces and converting them into “multi-branded kitchens” that will serve C3 virtual brands to hotel guests and community residents. 

The company’s expansion tactic is somewhat unique in the ghost kitchen world right now. Whereas most ghost kitchen-virtual food hall operations are currently in standalone facilities that require cars to deliver the food, C3 seems to want to bring the ghost kitchen as close as possible to customers. This concept of making a ghost kitchen a standard amenity on high-end properties isn’t widespread yet, though it will probably become so quickly, at least within the luxury property format. Whether it can translate to other settings remains to be seen.

Is Deliveroo’s IPO a Turning Point for Third-Party Delivery’s Labor Force?

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U.K.-based Deliveroo is the latest third-party delivery service getting ready to debut on the public market, with plans to go public in early April. As usual, the move comes with the standard buffet of controversies surrounding third-party delivery services, particularly those around pay and protections for workers actually doing the last mile of the food delivery. Unlike usual, the labor issue is actually making would-be investors think twice this time.

Six major U.K. investors, including Aberdeen Standard, BMO Global, and Aviva Investors, said last week that they will not participate in Deliveroo’s initial public market, citing working conditions for the delivery service’s couriers and drivers. 

Like DoorDash, Uber Eats, and others, Deliveroo classifies the folks doing the actual food delivery as independent contractors, and therefore isn’t required to offer minimum wage, paid time off, or paid sick leave. As we’ve written ad nauseam, this is problematic for many reasons, not the least of which is that many workers struggle to make a living wage off these delivery gigs, as evidenced by a recent report from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism that found some Deliveroo riders earn as little as £2 ($2.76 USD) per hour during a shift.

What’s turning investors off, however, is more than just an ethical issue. Some apparently see a business built on gig workers as a risky model because of the regulatory scrutiny that model is getting of late, at least in the U.K. and in Europe. Case in point: Uber recently lost a fight against the U.K. supreme court and must now classify its drivers as employees, not independent contractors. For now, that doesn’t impact the company’s Eats business, but it’s been enough to, in the words of investment forecasters, “dampen the mood” around Deliveroo’s IPO. 

Deliveroo itself admitted in its investment prospectus that having to reclassify its workers as employees would have a “material impact” on the business. Part of the reason third-party services, including Deliveroo, have been able to achieve such high valuations in the past is because their businesses are built off the idea of minimizing labor costs. Paying drivers a minimum wage and other benefits eats into those costs, and puts the idea of steady profitability further out of reach. Additionally, Deliveroo suggested having to change its worker classifications would also impact its ability to operate in certain markets. 

The chances of Deliveroo having to reclassify its workers seems high. Just Eat Takeaway.com, another major food delivery service in the U.K. and Europe, as already pledged to do away with the gig worker model. The aforementioned Uber fight with the U.K. supreme court also doesn’t bode well for Deliveroo.

What is yet to be determined is whether this will have a ripple effect across the pond. Some recent events, like California passing Prop 22 in November of last year, seem to suggest gig workers are losing the fight against third-party delivery. On the other hand, Just Eat Takeaway.com has plans to acquire U.S.-based Grubhub, which means it may eventually bring its employee-based model Stateside.

Right now there seem to be more questions than answers surrounding the fate of third-party delivery services. But as more countries and governments take a harder stance against the gig-worker model, and as more investors think twice before backing such ventures, we may finally start to see the balance of power start to shift in favor of the folks on whose backs these businesses are actually built.

Restaurant Tech ‘Round the Web

Starbucks aims to become carbon neutral with its coffee by 2030, the company said this week. The Seattle-based coffee giant says it will do this with things like precision agronomy and climate-resistant coffee plant varieties.

Yum Brands, parent company of KFC, Pizza Hut, and Taco Bell, has acquired omnichannel solutions company Tictuk Technologies. Tictuk is known for its “conversational commerce,” which will allow customers to place food orders via social media, SMS, email, and many other formats. 

Restaurant Group Brinker International this week announced a Google Maps and Google Search integration for the company’s It’s Just Wings virtual brand, in a bid to further digitize the off-premises experience.

7-Eleven Is Adding Drive-Thrus to Its Restaurant Business

Neither dine-in restaurants nor drive-thrus are commonly associated with the name 7-Eleven, but that many not be the case for long. The convenience store chain announced this week that its first-ever Laredo Taco Company restaurant with a drive-thru is open for business in Dallas, Texas. 7-Eleven purchased South Texas chain Laredo Taco in 2018 and has been slowly expanding it in stores since. This is the first time a drive-thru lane has made an appearance at a corporate-owned 7-Eleven store.

7-Eleven purchased the Laredo Taco Company, along with Stripes convenience stores, in 2018 from Sunoco. The restaurant serves up quick-service Mexican food, which customers can order either in the drive-thru lane or for dine-in seating at this new location. Alcoholic beverages are also available for those eating at the restaurant. For those driving thru, the famous 7-Eleven Slurpee is available along with enough specialty beverages to rival a Dunkin’ location.

The restaurant shares space with a new 7-Eleven Evolution Store. As its name suggests, the company’s Evolution stores are a new take on the concept of a convenience mart and a testing ground for the company’s new store formats and technologies, including restaurants. 7-Eleven currently has six of these stores open in the U.S., with three of them being Dallas.

For this newest store, 7-Eleven is also testing its mobile checkout system, where customers skip the cashier line entirely and simply pay for goods on their phones via the 7-Eleven app. Products from the store, including meals from the Laredo Taco Company, are also available for delivery. 

Outside of the Laredo Taco Company restaurants, 7-Eleven has offered delivery from its convenience stores for a few years now. In 2020, the chain expanded those capabilities last year through partnerships with Instacart and DoorDash.

Meanwhile, the lines between QSR, convenience mart, and grocery store continue to overlap. Wawa also has a delivery partnership with DoorDash and has added plant-based meals and other non-convenience-store food to its roster. The concept of the “ghost convenience store,” a delivery-only mashup of a convenience store, grocery, and restaurant, has also become popular in the last year thanks to DoorDash and, across the Atlantic, delivery service Glovo.

7-Eleven will continue building out its delivery, but also has big plans for its Evolution stores. Future stores are slated to open later this year in North Texas and Manassas, Virginia, as well as other yet-to-be-named locations.

GoPuff Raises $1.5 Billion to Deliver You Goods in Under a Half Hour Around the Clock

GoPuff, the service that delivers food and other goods in under a half hour any time of day, announced today that it has raised $1.5 billion in new funding. Investors in the round include D1 Capital Partners, Fidelity Management and Research Company, Baillie Gifford, Eldridge, Reinvent Capital, Luxor Capital and SoftBank Vision Fund 1. This brings goPuff’s total amount of funding to roughly $2.5 billion.

GoPuff operates more than 250 micro-fulfillment centers that service more than 650 cities in the U.S. These fulfillment centers stock groceries, alcohol, pet supplies and other household goods for home delivery 24 hours a day. Because these micro-fulfillment centers are delivery only, they can be placed deeper within residential areas and closer to customers to facilitate fast delivery. GoPuff doesn’t guarantee 30-minute delivery, but says that’s the average time it takes to fulfill an order.

The company made headlines in November of last year when it acquired brick and mortar retailer BevMo for $350 million. Not only did that acquisition give goPuff access to BevMo’s customers, it also provided 161 physical stores from which goPuff could establish new micro-fulfillment centers.

This funding almost feels like the apotheosis of the dark store/fast delivery trend we’ve been watching for the past few month. Since the beginning of the year, a number of startups promising grocery delivery in as little as fifteen minutes have gotten funding including Weezy, Fridge No More and Jiffy. GoPuff’s $1.5 billion haul, however, blows all those other funding rounds out of the water.

With is warchest now bursting at the seams, you have to wonder if DoorDash is going to step up its own dark convenience store ambitions. The company launched its DashMart delivery only stores last year, but has been quiet about their rollout since.

The concept of dark grocery stores with super-fast delivery is a new concept, and honestly, it is something that will only work in dense residential areas where multiple orders can be completed per hour. But if the concept catches on, these startups are poised to change our relationship with grocery shopping. Baking cookies and realize you’re out of sugar? A few taps on your phone and fifteen minutes later you have it. Guests coming over and you’re out of wine? A few more taps and problem solved. Groceries, in this scenario, become a utility, always on and available any time of day or night.

Ghost Kitchens! Fee Caps! Igloos! Tracking the Restaurant Biz’s Changes Over the Last 12 Months

For the majority of restaurants around the U.S., last week marked the one-year anniversary since stay-at-home mandates initially forced dining rooms to close down. What’s followed has been 12 months of great uncertainty, loss, and struggle. But it’s also been a time of astounding resilience and creativity, with restaurants and restaurant tech companies alike have pivoted and shape-shifted to survive the times. 

We’ve been checking in with individuals from both spheres to see where these businesses are now and what’s most useful in terms of tools and tactics as dining rooms slowly reopen and the world goes back to some version of “normal.” 

But to better appreciate how far we’ve come and how much work has gone into this industry’s survival over the last year, I’d like to pause and take a brief look back in time at some of the major stories from these last 12 months.  

March 2020

  • States across the U.S. mandate dining room shutdowns. Restaurants large and small scramble to make the overnight shift to delivery and takeout formats.
  • Restaurant tech companies start offering software and services free of charge to restaurants. Third-party delivery services like Uber Eats and Postmates waive some fees — though not without some controversies.
  • Restaurants like Canter’s Deli, Wahoo’s Fish Tacos, and Torchy’s Tacos discuss strategies for going off-premises. Some include paring down menus, prioritizing takeout meals, and going DIY when it comes to the drive-thru.

April 2020

May 2020

June 2020

  • Some restaurant chains, including Panda Express, start to launch their own in-house delivery services.
  • Restaurants get really creative with their ideas on how to safely reopen dining rooms.
  • This Latin American startup teaches us how to run a restaurant from a mobile phone. (Hint: everyone will do this in the future.)

July

August

September

October

  • The in-house delivery versus third-party delivery debate further heats up, with many encouraging restaurants to take back control of their digital orders.
  • Crave Collective and others put a fine-dining spin on the ghost kitchen and virtual restaurant concepts.

November

  • California passes Proposition 22, which lets third-party delivery services classify their couriers and drivers as independent contractors and keeps these companies from having to pay workers comp, health insurance, and other benefits.
  • Investment in back-of-house technology grows as both restaurants and restaurant tech investors realize the foreseeable future of the industry is in the kitchen, not the dining room.

January 2021

Feburary

March

Obviously this brief timeline isn’t comprehensive, since there’s no way to really capture the true scope of the last 12 months in a single newsletter. It is meant to be a snapshot only of the change and turns the industry took over the last year.

Which is where you, readers, come in. Whether you’re part of an eating establishment, tech company, or an avid foodie, we would love to hear your restaurant experiences over the last year. Drop us a line at tips@thespoon.tech.

Restaurant Tech ‘Round the Web

Nation’s Restaurant News has a new gallery showcasing stories “from the front lines” of the restaurant industry — that is, the restaurants themselves. NRN has compiled first-hand accounts of owners, managers, brand executives and others about their experiences from the last year.

Restaurant Dive has an ongoing analysis of the state of restaurants one year later across a number of U.S. cities. Available so far are in-depth looks at Los Angeles, New York City, and Seattle. More to come.

Grubstreet looks at lessons the New York City restaurant scene has learned over the last 12 months, and what comes next.