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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

digital ordering

Sweetgreen to Launch a ‘Drive-In’ Store Format in 2021

Sweetgreen joins the ranks of restaurants reformatting their store concepts to accommodate more off-premises operations. The fast-casual chain announced today it will open its first “drive-in” restaurant, the company’s own take on the drive-thru format.

According to sweetgreen materials sent to The Spoon, the new store, set to open in 2021 in Highlands Ranch, Colorado, will focus on digital orders placed via the sweetgreen app. Off-premises formats will include a traditional drive-thru lane “for optimized digital pickup” as well as a drive-in area where customers can park and are attended by a dedicated “concierge.” 

Based on the information sweetgreen provided, the new store format looks to be all about keeping customers in their cars. The company said the Highlands Ranch location “allows guests to access sweetgreen without ever having to leave their vehicle,” and that it provides a glimpse of what’s happening in the kitchen without requiring customers to ever enter the store. Large windows will look into the restaurant’s food prep space so customers can watch as the staff prepares orders. The company did not explicitly say whether there is any indoor dining attached to this location, though there does not appear to be based on the information sweetgreen provided. A small patio will provide some outdoor seating.

The pandemic has accelerated moves by fast-casual and QSR restaurants to revamp their store formats to cater to more to-go and delivery orders. McDonald’s, Burger King, El Pollo Loco, and Chipotle are just a few of the major names on the list. But sweetgreen said the plan to evolve its physical store format was in motion before COVID-19, citing the chain’s digital growth (more than 50 percent of orders are placed digitally) as the big driver.

Sweetgreen said it is already looking to expand this format to other parts of the country once the Highlands Ranch location is open. That includes expansion to new suburban areas of the U.S. in addition to the urban centers where the brand is best known. 

Requiem for the Dining Room

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At one point most figured it would take about five to 10 years for off-premises to become the industry-wide norm in the restaurant biz and for QSRs to change their store formats accordingly. Instead, those changes around restaurant store formats have unfolded in a matter of months and are soon to be everyday realities.

Ever since Burger King unveiled a new store design with space-saver kitchens suspended over drive-thru lanes and conveyor belts handing food to customers, we’ve seen a non-stop stream of announcements from fast-casual and QSR restaurant with similar plans. Two more chains joined the list this week — El Pollo Loco and La Madeleine. But rather than simply list the new features slated for those brands’ revamped store formats, it’s now worth our while to comb through all the major announcements in this realm and find the common denominators driving these new store formats. There may be a lot of unknowns in the restaurant industry right now (aka everything), but the following developments give us a pretty good hint at some certainties for the future.

With the biz going virtual at a blinding clip, it’s only natural that future store designs will have a smaller physical footprint. From the aforementioned Burger King to El Pollo Loco, more brands are significantly reducing the size of their dining rooms or getting rid of them altogether. The fast rise of ghost kitchens, which cater to takeout and delivery orders only, is partly responsible for this trend. The pandemic and ongoing lockdowns across the country are an even bigger driver, and one that’s accelerated the timeline of these smaller store formats.

But of all the concepts fast becoming the norm for QSRs, it’s the multiple-drive-thru-lane scenario — that is, stores are being designed with double and triple lanes (or more) to accommodate the uptick in customers. KFC, McDonald’s, Chipotle, El Pollo Loco, and Shake Shack are some of the top names on the list of restaurant chains literally expanding their drive-thrus. La Madeline is actually adding drive-thru for the first time, and Dunkin’ was doing the whole multi-lane concept long before the pandemic. There’s a good reason for the widespread emphasis on this particular format: with the pandemic keeping us out of dining rooms and in our cars, the length of time one spends waiting in the drive-thru is getting longer.

Anecdotally speaking, I’ve visited three drive-thru lanes in the last week where the wait time was longer than 20 minutes. (Joke’s on me for staying in line that long.) More lanes, some of them dedicated to mobile order customers, will go some way to alleviate this problem. More commonly used developments, like extra parking spaces for curbside pickup and geofencing technologies, could also reduce some of the drive-thru congestion.

Meanwhile, predictive selling technologies aren’t widespread at the moment, but they will be. McDonald’s was first to put this concept — which involves using AI, machine learning, and other tech to analyze customer preferences and upsell relevant items — on the industry’s radar when it acquired Dynamic Yield. Over the last few months, Restaurant Brands International, which owns BK, Tim Horton’s, and Popeye’s, announced plans to use something similar in its drive-thrus, and KFC has hinted at using AI as well.

While predictive selling tech doesn’t directly alter store formats, it expedites channels like pickup and the drive-thru, which are integral parts of the QSR of the (near) future. It’s also a good example of how technology will influence the physical restaurant going forward. Tech that makes off-premises channels faster and more efficient will help drive more sales through those channels. That in turn will make those off-premises channels more valuable than their dining room counterparts, both now, during lockdowns, and long into the next decade. That makes these new developments in store formats less of a trend than a really big step into the restaurant industry’s next version of normalcy.

Upcoming Event: The Ghost Kitchen Deep Dive

Is now the right time to adopt a ghost kitchen strategy? The epic fallout of the restaurant industry suggest yes, but before you take the plunge, there are many things to consider. How much will it cost? What kind of set up do you need? How do you scale a virtual restaurant business?

Join The Spoon on Dec. 9 to discuss these things and more at our latest virtual event, The Ghost Kitchen Deep Dive. Throughout the day, we’ll be joined by Reef, Kitchen United, Ordermark, Fat Brands, Wow Bao, and many other companies enabling big changes in the ghost kitchen space.

General admission is free. Register for a Gold Ticket and get special networking opportunities, a month of free access to Spoon Plus content, and exclusive live tours of some real-life ghost kitchen operations. 

Restaurant Tech ‘Round the Web

California imposed new stay-at-home orders for certain regions in the state late this week. Looks like it’s back to takeout- and delivery-only meals for Golden State restaurants for the foreseeable future.

Uber completed its $2.65 billion acquisition of Postmates this week, and the two companies have started to integrate their U.S. operations.

Restaurant tech platform Allset this week launched a new feature, Dietary Preferences, to its takeout and contactless dining app. Customers can add their dietary needs and preferences as well as any food allergies to their search to further refine results on the app.

Survey: More Than Half of Restaurant Sales Will be Digital by 2025

Digital sales will make up more than half, or 54 percent, of all quick-service and limited-service restaurant sales by 2025, according to new survey numbers from market research firm Incisiv. That’s 70 percent higher than pre-COVID estimates, the firm notes.

That projected growth isn’t hard to understand. It’s been an all-out dumpster-fire of a year for restaurants, with hundreds of thousands of restaurants permanently shuttered and billions of dollars already lost. Currently, restaurants across the country are reverting to off-premises-only models, which lend themselves more to minimal interactions between restaurant staff and customers.

But as we saw early on in the pandemic, even limited/quick service restaurants struggled to manage the sudden influx of takeout, curbside pickup, drive-thru, and delivery order channels. Bigger brands with money to burn and existing digital strategies have obviously fared better over the last eight months than those without many tech investments in place. As of July, Chipotle had increased its digital sales by over 200 percent thanks to the brand’s pre-COVID focus in that area. Another example is Starbucks, which as publicly said 80 percent of its orders before the pandemic were already for to-go channels.

Separately, Incisiv notes that while restaurant chains are making investments in tech, they are “not necessarily addressing the highest priorities nor the solutions that will deliver the best maximum ROI across diverse customer expectations.”

It’s a point we make all the time here at The Spoon. There are seemingly endless options for businesses when it comes to tech, but they’re not all equal in terms of the value they provide to a businesses trying to serve customers quickly, safely, and with the same quality they would get in the dining room. For example, the so-called “contactless” kits that address the in-dining room experience may become a staple of the future, but they can’t exactly add value when dining rooms are shut down. On the other hand, focusing tech investments on tools that will make digital ordering and fulfillment easier and cheaper should be a priority. To that end, Incisiv’s report urges restaurants to “make enhancements in digital tech.” Those that do, according to the report, “will be better positioned should another shutdown occur.” Which, if you hadn’t noticed, is happening as we speak.

As noted above some of the bigger QSR brands are clearly leading the charge when it comes to digital sales trends, but Incisiv says there is plenty of area for both growth and improvement. Customer satisfaction actually remains low in a few key areas. Only 40 percent of survey respondents were satisified with their pickup experience; that number drops to 25 percent for delivery. Half of guests prefer paying with a mobile wallet, but fewer than 20 percent of QSRs provide expanded payment options.

The survey found that “close to 70 percent” of restaurant chains have “stated their intent” to increase investments in mobile ordering. Over the long term, digital sales are expected to dip slightly once in-dining room service is resumed with some semblance of its former days. However, the return of the dining room won’t mean the end of off-premises, not if recent developments around condensed store formats and expanded drive-thru lanes are any indication. Incisiv also notes that share of delivery sales is expected to grow 23 percent by 2025 versus a pre-COVID forecast of 15 percent.

As the report notes, if all of this holds true, it will be QSR chains making the most progress in terms of digital ordering and setting the example for the rest of the industry. 

Olo Unveils New Restaurant Tech Features for Curbside, Dining Room

Curbside pickup is here to stay, and so too is the dining room, judging from restaurant tech startup Olo’s latest announcement. The company announced two new features this week aimed at smoother, more efficient service for off-premises orders. The new features include arrival notifications for curbside orders and order-ahead capabilities for dine-in guests, according to a press release sent to The Spoon.

Olo’s main businesses is to make the management of off-premises orders simpler and easier for restaurants. Its software funnels the orders coming from different sales channels (DoorDash versus social media versus an in-house kiosk) into a single ticket stream and directly into a restaurant’s main POS system. That means less juggling of tablets for the staff and a lower risk for mistakes, since humans aren’t manually keying in orders from a delivery service’s tablet to the POS. 

Eight months ago, that kind of streamlined management was a nice-to-have. Thanks to the pandemic, which has shuttered dining rooms across the country and forced the restaurant biz to lean on delivery and takeout, a platform like Olo’s is a must-have. But given the evolving needs of restaurants, no restaurant tech company should rest on its laurels right now. To stay valuable and relevant to restaurants, they too, need to evolve.

Olo appears to be doing just that with its new bundle of features. The need for speed when it comes to curbside pickup is well documented. Olo’s new feature is available as of now for restaurants using the company’s Expo tablet. When a customer arrives and hits an “I’m here” button, the system automatically notifies the restaurant. It’s not as automatic as, say, geofence-enabled curbside pickup, but it saves customers from having to dial an actual phone number and wait for a human to pick up.

The other big feature Olo released this week, it’s Dine-In Support, may get less use in the near term, though it’s a wise long-term strategy. The function allows customers to order and pay for meals they intend to eat in the dining room.

At one point, this particular technology felt superfluous, and at the moment, cities across the U.S. have closed down indoor dining so there isn’t a great need for it. But someday, we’ll be able to eat in an actual restaurant again, and by then, consumer preferences around speed, efficiency, and social distance will have been firmly embedded into their routines, even when it comes to restaurants. While there’s something a little depressing about a restaurant experience based solely on those factors, it’s inescapably the future for many. Seen in that light, Olo is an early mover in what will be a long-term behavior change. (Fellow restaurant tech company Allset is also a known leader in this area.)

The above features are both available right now, at no extra cost to existing Olo customers. 

KFC Is the Latest QSR to Ditch the Dining Room in Favor if Digital Drive-Thru

KFC unveiled two new designs today for future stores that emphasize off-premises order formats and minimal dining room space, according to Nation’s Restaurant News. The Louisville, Kentucky-based chain is the latest major QSR to revamp its store format in response to the pandemic’s impact on the restaurant industry.

One design is for an “express” store format with no indoor dining space. Clocking in at about 1,300 square feet, the design is intended for use in crowded urban locations where space is both limited and expensive. This is a tactic also used by chains like Starbucks and, most recently, Chipotle. 

KFC’s other design is all about the drive-thru, which the company said grew 60 percent year-over-year in Q3 of 2020. The format includes multiple drive-thru lanes, including those dedicated to mobile orders, a small outdoor seating area, and designated parking spots and entrances for customers and delivery drivers picking up digital orders.

These new prototypes have actually been in development since last year. Chief Development Officer Brian Cahoe told NRN today that the company hit the “pause” button on these projects when the pandemic hit in order to learn and apply new requirements the pandemic would bring to the restaurant experience.

More obvious safety measures are one thing. The new KFC stores will include automatic doors and more space between tables. And of course, with the emphasis on digital ordering, a more contactless pickup or drive-thru experience is also on the menu. The company said some stores would also have a digital cubby system in future.

The QSR has in the last couple months become ground zero for testing out new restaurant tech. Besides digitizing the drive-thru, which everyone from McDonald’s to Tim Horton’s is doing, brands are introducing features like geofencing, conveyer belt meal delivery systems, and AI-powered menu boards to the restaurant experience. Many are also ditching the dining room in favor of drive-thru-only locations and ghost kitchen facilities. 

KFC will open three new restaurants based on these prototypes in 2021. 

Lunchbox Raises $20M to Expand Its Online Ordering System for Restaurants

Lunchbox, an online ordering system for restaurants, announced today it has closed a $20 million Series A funding round led by Coatue. The round also included participation from existing investors 645 Ventures and Primary Ventures, and executives from Venmo, HelloFresh, and Planet Hollywood, according to a press release sent to The Spoon. Including this round, Lunchbox has raised $22.1 million to date.

Lunchbox’s software integrates digital ordering, loyalty programs, delivery dispatch, marketing, analytics, and many other features into a single interface, effectively eliminating the need for restaurants to juggle multiple restaurant tech platforms on the front end. Businesses pay a flat monthly fee to use the platform.

The end goal as Lunchbox sees it is to give restaurants more ownership over their digital properties and operations as the restaurant biz moves deeper into the off-premises realm. That includes the all-important customer data, which up until recently was largely held captive by third-party delivery services. In the wake of the pandemic, more restaurants are taking steps to gain more control of this data along with other aspects of the customer relationship.

With the new funds, Lunchbox plans to scale up nationally to meet that demand, as well as add new capabilities to its platform and build out its team.

And while the company may only be 18 months old, it has reached a number of noteworthy deals and milestones over the last year. In September, it struck a deal with Ordermark to integrate the latter’s online ordering platform into the Lunchbox system. Last month, Lunchbox teamed up with Beam Social to let customers donate to nonprofits via their restaurant orders, and the company has also ventured into autonomous delivery via a partnership with Sodexo and Kiwibot.

All that activity and attention isn’t too surprising. The pandemic and its subsequent leveling of the restaurant biz as we know it has forced businesses to go online by adopting digital ordering and payments technologies, mobile apps, more robust rewards programs, and a whole bunch of other tech tools most restaurants can’t afford to build in-house. Lunchbox’s platform is one option restaurants have when it comes to a third-party system that can help them make sense of the seemingly endless tech options out there.

The common denominator for all these developments is off-premises ordering, which is where many restaurants are headed, if not already there. Since we’re still in the midst of the fallout created by the pandemic, it’s too early to say exactly how much of the restaurant industry will be permanently about delivery and takeout. For now, though, much of it is, which gives restaurant tech companies like Lunchbox a competitive edge.

Popmenu Raises $17M to Expand Its Restaurant Software Capabilities

Popmenu, a platform for digital ordering and reservations for restaurants, announced this week it has raised a $17 million Series B round. The round was led by Bedrock Capital, with participation from existing investors Base10 Partners and Felicis Ventures, as well as new investors Mantis Ventures and Chapter One Ventures. This brings Popmenu’s total funding to $22.1 million. 

In a press release sent to The Spoon, Popmenu said It will use the new funds to develop new features for its platform, which currently allows restaurants to manage online ordering and menus, collect direct feedback from customers (as opposed to getting it via third-party platforms), manage reservations, and integrate with delivery and reservations services. 

Right now, one of the company’s main selling points is that it gives restaurants more control over their own branding, which is tough to do in the age of online delivery platforms and user-driven review sites like Yelp and Google. To give restaurants more of that brand control, Popmenu creates customized websites that include the aforementioned features and that allow the restaurants’ customers to upload their own photos, feedback, and reviews.

In response to the pandemic, Popmenu, like other restaurant tech companies, also launched its own version of contactless software that lets guests scan a QR code with their own smartphones to view and order from restaurant menus. 

In addition to contactless features, having more control over their own branding (and customer data) has surfaced as a priority for restaurants since the start of the pandemic. SKS panelists noted yesterday that more restaurants, from large chains to mom-and-pop shops, are starting to bring more elements of the off-premises experience back into their own control. ShiftPixy, a company that provides not just custom-branded websites but also delivery drivers, is a huge supporter of restaurant-controlled customer data. Square just launched a similar function.

Even delivery services, like Uber Eats, now offer restaurants the ability to process orders via their own websites. The catch with that last one, of course, is that Uber Eats still owns the customer data, which kind of renders the whole point of maintaining one’s own website null and void.

As more companies like Popmenu bring features to the table that put branding and data back in the hands of restaurants, there will inevitably be more pushback from third-party delivery.

Augmented Reality Bites

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Virtual food hall, meet the augmented-reality restaurant menu. You’ll soon be best friends.

Hear me out.

Over these last few weeks, multiple news bites around virtual food halls have surfaced. These food halls are collections of restaurants that exist online and where meals are only available for delivery and pickup. They are in many ways a natural effect of the pandemic shutting down dining rooms and the restaurant biz going off-premises.

The latest one comes from Lunchbox. This week, the company integrated its online digital order platform into C3’s virtual restaurant brand ecosystem to bring a bunch of different delivery-only eateries under one virtual umbrella.

Being able to order a plant-based burger, chicken, and maybe a rice dish through a single digital interface sounds great until you zero in on that word digital. One of the potential problems with this new wave of virtual food halls is that customers will never have the chance to actually visit these restaurants in person. Your introduction to their food comes in the form of 2D thumbnails you have to scroll through on your phone and squint at to even get an inkling of what you’re about to order. If you’re familiar with the restaurant that’s less of an issue, but most virtual food halls and brands are new, and ordering from them is something of a culinary gamble.

Enter augmented reality (AR), a technology some say is the next great innovation for restaurant menus. Modern Restaurant Management ran a piece this week exploring the possibility of customers using their own smartphones to display 3D models of the food they are about to order. With AR, instead of a small, flat, 2D image, a user could “see” how the dish looks on their table, zoom in on it and view it from multiple angles to get a much better idea of what they’re about to buy.

I should note that the Modern Restaurant Management Post was authored by Mike Cadoux of augmented reality platform QReal. In other words, Cadoux’s has skin in the AR game.

But he makes a good point when it comes to thinking about AR in the context of the new off-premises reality in which restaurants now operate: “Early adoption of AR was hindered by the problem of getting the experience to the customer. People are loath to download apps, and delivery platforms had to service thousands of restaurants, most of which wouldn’t have access to 3D models. Now a restaurant or brand can push their own content to the customer. They would be wise to utilize all the smartphones capabilities and showcase their food with the next-generation of content.”

Spoon Editor Chris Albrecht actually spoke with Cadoux back in August, when QReal released a study with Oxford University’s Saïd Business School that found participants were more likely to order an item if they could view options in AR. “It’s like a test drive for a car,” Cadoux told The Spoon at the time. “Same way when you buy food, you want to think about what it’s like to eat it.”

The tech makes especially good sense for virtual food halls. As I said, these restaurants do not have dining rooms, so customers are relying solely on the digital realm to learn about the food. If, for the sake of argument, Lunchbox and C3 were to integrate AR into their ordering platform, they could better showcase the “fine dining” aspects of their food and in doing so make their meals more appetizing. Everyone else, from Zuul’s virtual-only sandwich chain to Steve Aoki’s pizza brand, could also reap the benefits of AR in the virtual restaurant realm.

AR is not yet mainstream, and its presence in the restaurant industry is still largely forthcoming. But since one pandemic year seems equal to five normal ones, an AR-powered food hall may be closer than we think.

Uber Engineer Says “No” to Uber’s Prop. 22

Californians, take note. One of the things those in the Golden State will vote on come November is Prop. 22, a $180 million ballot measure that would allow third-party delivery services to classify drivers as independent contractors. The measure would effectively override California’s Assembly Bill 5 (AB 5), which was signed into law last year and dictates that Uber, Grubhub, and other gig-economy companies must classify drivers and couriers as employees. 

Classifying them as independent contractors means delivery drivers would lack access to workers comp., paid sick leave, and other benefits W-2 employees receive. It goes without saying that a lot of folks are against Prop. 22. One of them is an employee at Uber.

Kurt Nelson, who’s been a software engineer at Uber since 2018, penned an op-ed at TechCrunch this week that argues drivers should be classified as employees. Nelson, who still makes deliveries for app-based companies in order to understand the gig economy, writes that Uber “refuses to obey” AB5 and instead prefers to “write a new set of rules for themselves” with Prop. 22. 

Among many other notable lines, there was also this gem about the gig economy: “I’ve met drivers who have to sleep in their cars, risk financial ruin over a single doctor’s appointment or go without life-saving medication. There’s no way around it. Uber’s Prop 22 is a multi-million effort to deny these workers their rights.”

You can read the piece in its entirety here. Uber has yet to make any public response to Nelson’s op-ed, so stay tuned.

Restaurant Tech ‘Round the Web

Kitchen United CEO Jim Collins has stepped down to “focus on personal endeavors,” according to Nation’s Restaurant News. Collins played a major role in turning KU into one of the leaders of the ghost kitchen space. Michael Montagano, KU’s former chief financial officer and treasurer, has been named CEO.

Mobile POS platform GoTab launched an integration with hospitality labor management system 7shifts. The combined offering gives restaurant owners/operators the ability to view sales and labor data from the same interface.

Meal prep software company Meallogix announced a partnership with DoorDash this week. A press release sent to The Spoon notes that the deal gives Meallogix’ customers the option of using the third-party delivery service to manage their routes for the last mile of delivery.

Lunchbox Partners With C3 to Launch a Virtual Food Hall for High-End Meals

Online ordering platform Lunchbox announced today it has teamed up with virtual kitchen company C3 (Creating Culinary Communities) to create a virtual food hall, much of it devoted to higher-end eats from top chefs. C3 will use Lunchbox’s restaurant tech platform to power the food hall, which will unite C3’s brands under a single ordering interface.

C3, which is a partnership between SBE Entertainment Group, shopping mall company Simon, and Accor Hospitality Group, operates a network of ghost kitchens and delivery-only restaurant brands. Virtual brands currently include the delivery-only version of the popular Unami Burger, a plant-based concept in collaboration with Impossible Foods called Plant Nation, and a caviar bar called 12 Chairs, among others. The bulk of C3’s restaurant brands are, in the company’s own words, “higher-end meals that can withstand 30-minute delivery routes.” Hence the caviar bar. C3 said it also plans to launch seven additional brands in the coming months and have 200 digital kitchens in operation by the end of the year.

The partnership with Lunchbox will give C3 the technology chops to bring its many restaurant brands under a single virtual roof. Customers will be able to browse and purchase meals from all C3 brands via the Lunchbox interface. That includes group orders from multiple restaurants. 

Lunchbox’s software bundles together digital order processing, loyalty programs, delivery dispatch, marketing, analytics, and more into a single interface which restaurants pay a flat monthly fee to use. The company raised $2 million in February of this year and has multiple partnerships with other restaurant tech companies, including Ordermark and Toast.

Virtual food halls seem an obvious next step, what with the pandemic shuttering restaurants left and right and businesses basically being forced to work in off-premises formats. Last month, NYC-based Zuul launched its own virtual food hall to accompany its ghost kitchen network, and Texas-based grocery chain H-E-B recently unveiled a hybrid grocery store and food hall available for takeout and delivery.

If it proves popular, C3’s virtual network for higher-end foods could provide some blueprint materials for other full-service restaurants, which have been hit the hardest by industry-wide shutdowns. Much of that will depend on the type of food these high-end restaurants are serving, and if they can alter their menus to accommodate some transit. It’s not ideal for these types of restaurants, which were crated around the dine-in experience, but it’s at least some lifeline in these perpetually uncertain times.

Sevenrooms Integrates Its Digital Waitlist With Google Reserve

Restaurant management platform Sevenrooms announced today it has integrated its waitlist feature with Google’s reservation tool, Reserve With Google. Sevenrooms has also integrated its waitlist Google Search, Maps, and Assistant, according to a press release sent to The Spoon.

The Reserve With Google integration means guests can add themselves to a restaurant’s waitlist digitally, while they are still at home, and receive real-time estimates and updates on their wait time. 

Guests are notified via text message when they are close to the top of the waitlist and can then check in virtually when they arrive at the restaurants. Remember the pre-digital process where the restaurant called your name over a loudspeaker then crossed it off a piece of paper when you arrived at the host station? The Sevenrooms-Google integration is basically a digital version of that.

It also comes at a time when most dining rooms are still operating at reduced capacity and restaurants that might not have previously used reservations now require them. This is in part to manage that reduced capacity, but it’s also a way to keep waiting areas less crowded and customers more socially distanced.

For Google, the Sevenrooms partnership is just the latest step in the search giant’s march into the restaurant industry. In August, Google announced a partnership with Panera that lets guests order and pickup meals directly via Search, Maps, and Assistant. Last year, it partnered with delivery integrator Olo to offer more pickup and delivery through Google features and added several new innovations around restaurant menus.

Sevenrooms, meanwhile, has expanded its own arsenal of features in recent months to include contactless ordering and payments and a direct delivery tool that lets restaurants (partly) bypass third-party services like Grubhub and DoorDash. The company raised $50 million in Series B funding in June of this year.

Just Salad Launches a ‘Climatarian’ Menu for Digital Orders

Fast-casual chain Just Salad announced today that it will launch its “Climataraian” menu on September 17. The menu, available exclusively for orders placed via the chain’s app and website, will collect and feature those Just Salad items with the lowest greenhouse gas emissions, according to an email sent to The Spoon. It will also display the carbon footprint and GHGs for each item.

The Climatarian menu will have two categories. The “Carbon Counter” is for customers wishing to have the bare minimum of carbon emissions associated with their meal. The “Conscientious Carnivore” is for “meat-eaters concerned about climate change.” The carbon footprint of each item in these categories will be displayed via the digital menu.

Just Salad hasn’t limited this carbon labeling to just menu items on the Climatarian menu. As the company announced back in June, all menu items on the Just Salad app and website will now come with a corresponding carbon footprint, which reflects total GHGs associated with the production of each item. The official rollout of these labels will happen alongside the launch of the Climatarian menu and apply even to “build your own” offerings. 

These menu additions seem aimed at taking some of the guesswork out of eco-friendly eating for consumers. It remains to be seen if seeing “0.41 kg CO2e” and “0.77 kg CO2e” labels on a menu will actually motivate customers to choose the more climate-friendly option in the same way they might choose the lower-calorie option when faced with the numbers. Carbon labeling on restaurant menus is practically unheard of at this point, so it’s reasonable to expect an adoption curve. 

Both the carbon labeling and the Climatarian menu offer us a glimpse of how versatile the digital menu of the future could be in terms of the information it provides. For example, carbon labels could automatically adjust in real time to include GHGs associated with last-mile delivery. And with more restaurant menus going digital and the sustainable restaurant discussion again becoming a priority, Just Salad likely won’t long be the only chain offering environmental info on its menu items. 

This week’s news folds into Just Salad’s larger sustainability goals, which include ditching single-use plastics and sending zero waste to landfills by 2022.

North American Bancard Acquires Restaurant Management Platform SALIDO

Restaurant tech platform SALIDO announced this week it has been acquired by payment tech company North American Bancard (NAB). According to a press release sent to The Spoon, NAB will “vertically integrate” SALIDO’s restaurant operating system onto its own payments platform, EPX.

SALIDO, which was founded in 2012, began its life as a POS system before evolving into a full restaurant-management platform that includes data analytics, staff management tools, menu management features, and a kitchen display system for back-of-house management. The platform works for both independent operators and large chains/franchises. The company counts EATALY, by CHLOE. and Restoration Hardware among its clients. 

SALIDO said in this week’s press release that since the acquisition, the company has been building out new products, including tableside mobile ordering, contactless payments, and online ordering — all features are fast becoming the norm in the restaurant industry. 

On that note, SALIDO is hardly alone in its efforts to build more digital, contactless tech into its platform. Actually, the majority of recent restaurant tech news has centered on these types of technologies, and SALIDO will compete with the likes of Paytronix, Toast, and many other companies, legacy and startup alike.

“Speed” and “efficiency” are two words you’ll hear frequently around the restaurant industry these days, as businesses fight to stay alive. Controlling operations in the restaurant is one way to get closer to achieving those things. SALIDO bills itself as a “unified” solution with which restaurants can do this. The integration with NAB will also give the platform better capabilities around digital payments, another new norm of the restaurant biz.

NAB acquired the EPX payment-processing platform in 2014. The acquisition of SALIDO will further embed the company in the hospitality industry.