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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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Front-of-House Igloo? Chicago Asks Residents to Redesign the Outdoor Dining Experience for Winter

We’ve said it multiple times in the last couple of weeks: winter is coming for outdoor dining. And when it arrives, restaurants may be even more limited as to how they can serve dine-in customers in the midst of a pandemic and reduced capacity mandates for the dining room.

Chicago, a city that’s no stranger to harsh winters, is preemptively dealing with this situation by challenging residents to redesign the outdoor restaurant experience. Dubbed the Winter Design Challenge and done in partnership with IDEO, BMO Harris Bank, and the Illinois Restaurant Association, the contest is looking for outdoor dining ideas that can adhere to safety restrictions around COVID-19 while still allowing restaurant customers to eat outdoors.

Participants can submit ideas through September 7. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s office told NBC Chicago that winners will receive $5,000 each and “opportunities to start their idea at restaurants and bars around the city.”

Sam Toia, president and CEO of the Illinois Restaurant Association, added that, “We need out-of-the-box thinking to address the hardship facing our industry.”

We’ve seen some of that outside-the-box thinking already in the restaurant industry, from outdoor self-service kiosks to greenhouse-like buildings that enclose individual tables. But winter weather provides a whole new set of challenges that a few heat lamps may not be enough to solve. 

A panel of local judges will pick one winner from the following categories: outdoor structures; indoor-adjacent spaces; and cultural change/other ideas.

Ideas are already pouring in, including heated tent rentals, blankets, solar-powered pergolas, and actual igloos. There are also several suggestions to simply not open, which underscores how divided the general public remains about eating in restaurants in the time of a pandemic.

Submissions will be accepted through September 7 at 11:30 PST. All suggestions should address on-premises dining, not delivery or takeout.

Whatever winning solutions emerge from this could provide a blueprint for other cities around the country when it comes to addressing the upcoming winter. Chicago may have a reputation for harsh weather, but it’s hardly the only city in the U.S. to endure snow, ice, and sub-zero temperature. It wouldn’t be surprising if more cities launch their own challenges in the coming weeks in a collective effort to pull the restaurant industry through the changes and prevent even more from having to permanently close their doors.

TouchBistro Acquires Loyalty and CRM Company TableUp

Restaurant management platform TouchBistro today announced its acquisition of TableUp, a company that makes loyalty and marketing software for the restaurant biz. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

TouchBistro said in a press release sent to The Spoon that it will fully integrate TableUp’s CRM and loyalty capabilities into its existing platform. Dubbed TouchBistro Loyalty, the new product will be released in phases, with an introductory product hitting North American markets “in the coming weeks,.” Through it, TouchBistro’s restaurant customers will be able to use the software to power loyalty programs, create more personalized marketing campaigns for guests, and offer more promotions. 

Once a simple POS system, TouchBistro has been steadily adding features to its platform to transform it into the kind of all-in-one front-of-house management tool most restaurant tech companies are peddling these days. In 2019, TouchBistro launched its own reservations and guest-management features. Its system works for both in-house orders and those for off-premises.

That ability to serve to-go customers is a must nowadays for restaurant tech systems. With many dining rooms still shuttered because of the pandemic, restaurants have little choice but to focus on their off-premises strategies. Restaurant tech companies in turn must broaden their systems’ capabilities to meet those new requirements. We’ve seen the likes of Sevenrooms, Presto, Toast, and others do just that over the last few months in an attempt to stay relevant in world where the restaurant front of house is becoming alarmingly less relevant. 

At the moment, loyalty programs and personalized marketing don’t rank as high on the list of customer concerns as things like cleanliness or ease of use with new off-premises-focused tools. However, loyalty and marketing features themselves aren’t going by the wayside anytime soon, even if a lot of restaurant dining rooms are. That makes TouchBistro’s acquisition of TableUp a worthy long-term play as restaurant tech companies continue to redefine themselves.

Report: 66% of Consumers Are Not Ready for Restaurant Dining Rooms

Around 66 percent of consumers said they would not be willing to eat in a restaurant’s dining room immediately, according to new research from Washington State University’s Carson College of Business and covered by RestaurantDive. Another 47 percent said they planned to wait another three months before venturing out to eat. 

Of those surveyed for the report, 21 percent said they would eat in restaurant dining rooms “soon after” they reopen. “Over time, others will join this group of consumers — assuming that there is not a second wave of COVID-19 infections,” Dr. Dogan Gursoy, a professor of Hospitality Business Management at Washington State University, told the Bellingham Herald recently. About 50 percent of respondent said they would wait at least one to three months before eating out. 

The report also found that casual restaurants will be the first type of eating establishment customers will patronize. Think Outback Steakhouse or Applebee’s, or any of the hundreds of thousands of independent sit-down restaurants in the U.S. Well, at least those that have managed to keep the lights on during state-mandated dining room shutdowns. 

Consumers surveyed for the report said that sanitation efforts like masks for servers, hand sanitizer stations, and other visible efforts, like seeing staff clean tables and chairs, will be the most important safety precautions. 

As states reopen, rules, regulations, and practices vary from one to the next in terms of keeping customers safe. All states that have allowed dining rooms to reopen have set rules in place around reduced capacity for customers, with some at 50 percent and some as low as 25. Reservations are being encouraged, even for quick-service chains you’d have never in the past imagined having to book a table for, and many businesses are limiting the size of large parties to between 6 and 10 people. Meanwhile, the National Restaurant Association has thorough guidelines about updated cleaning and sanitizing procedures for restaurants as they start to invite customers back. 

Even so, consumers are wary when it comes to mingling with the outside world again, which means no matter how visible and effective a restaurant’s sanitization strategy is, it needs to also continue its off-premises strategy. Dr. Gursoy recommended having such a strategy in place for the next three to six months, since limited capacity in the dining room will make it next to impossible to turn a profit.

Granted, there’s no guarantee off-premises orders will make a restaurant money either, especially not when it comes to delivery. Add a possible second wave of coronavirus infections to the mix, and it looks like we’re still a long ways off from the restaurant industry having a true recovery. 

Presto Is Giving Away Free Kiosks to Restaurants in a Bid to Keep the Front of House Relevant

Presto this week joins the growing list of companies offering restaurants deals on hardware and software solutions geared towards the off-premises model most businesses now have to employ to stay alive. In an email sent to The Spoon, the company said it is making its Presto Kiosk product “absolutely free” to restaurants. 

Presto, which counts Denny’s, Outback Steakhouse, and Applebee’s among its clients, has up to now made a name for itself through products designed for the restaurant dining room, from wearable technology for servers to tabletop order and pay terminals for guests. However, with most dining rooms shut down now in an effort to help slow the spread of COVID-19, it makes sense Presto is now promoting its self-service kiosk, which is the most to-go friendly option of all its products.

Like other kiosks, Presto’s is a standalone device guests can use to browse a restaurant menu and order and pay for their items. The kiosk software integrates with a restaurant’s main POS system and, according to the company email, “enables guests to order and pay safely without requiring any interaction with the restaurant staff.”

The company says it is waiving the integration and deployment costs of these kiosks, which restaurants can use “without any contractual obligations,” and that the devices can be set up and running in a matter of days. Existing presto customers who use the company’s tabletop terminals will have access to a software update that can repurpose the devices for taking to-go orders.

The question is whether it will be enough to help Presto keep its footing in a restaurant industry that suddenly finds itself with no dine-in guests, no servers, and really no front of house at all. Presto doesn’t yet offer any devices geared towards delivery or drive-thru orders, so highlighting its kiosk option is the company’s one way to stay relevant in this era of social distancing.

Plus, takeout is starting to look a little risky as an order channel. Earlier this week, Starbucks announced it was getting rid of takeout as an option because of the amount of foot traffic it was causing in the store. In an even more drastic move, McDonald’s completely shuttered all its U.K. restaurants as well as 50 locations in the U.S. Wendy’s also discontinued takeout services this week. Since these massive chains tend to set the standards everyone else follows, it could be a matter of just days before other restaurant chains start getting rid of takeout options.

On the other hand, a device that enables contactless to-go orders might be the only thing saving some restaurants who have no drive-thru option and may not be able to pay Grubhub its 30 percent commission fee for each order.