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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

labor

Domino’s Used More Tech to Address Labor Challenges in Q2

For Domino’s, combatting the restaurant industry’s current labor shortage means adopting more tech to make operating procedures more efficient. Speaking on this week’s earnings call, CEO Ritch Allison said his company is “absolutely working on technologies and operating procedures to help us run our stores more efficiently, and with less labor.”

One major development relates to the delivery drivers themselves. Allison noted that Domino’s is currently “trying to take a lot of things off of their plates that cause them to do anything other than being in a car, delivering a pizza or on a bike, delivering a pizza to a customer.” A non-tech example he mentions is removing the task of pre-folding pizza boxes from their workload. More than 2,000 Domino’s locations in the U.S. no longer use this method, which frees up delivery drivers’ time. 

More tech-related are the efforts Domino’s has made around integrating more GPS software to its processes and making it available to drivers on their own phones. Allison said that in the “old days,” it might take a driver two to three months to really learn a geographic area and be able to navigate it quickly and without mistakes. GPS speeds up this process.

The company started expanding its GPS-tracking system back in 2019. As time has moved on and third-party delivery services like DoorDash and Uber Eats have gotten bigger, GPS has become a priority for Domino’s partly as a way to stay as fast and efficient as those services. 

Allison also noted on the call that Domino’s is now using machine learning to predict sales at a store and “more appropriately matching the number of team members at the store at the times when we need them.”

Despite staffing issues this past quarter, Domino’s second-quarter U.S. sales were up 3.5 percent. International sales were up by double digits. International sales were up by double digits. “COVID’s strong sales, the accelerating economic growth and ongoing government stimulus continue to result in one of the most difficult staffing environments that we’ve seen in a long time.”

He added that in addition to the above changes, Domino’s expects to see some wage increases in the future, too. 

Instawork Raises $60M to Connect Local Businesses with Hourly Workers

Instawork, an online marketplace that connects local businesses across the U.S. with available workers, announced today that it has raised a $60 million Series C round of funding. The round was led by Craft Ventures with participation from Grelock, Corner Ventures, Four River Group, WndrCo and Tilman Fertitta (owner of Landry’s and the Houston Rockets). Existing investors Benchmark, Spark Capital, GV, Burst Capital, and SV Angel also participated. This brings the total amount of funding raised by Instawork to $100 million.

Instawork’s platform supports a number of industries, including food and beverage and hospitality, where qualified workers like servers and chefs can post their services. Instawork checks references and makes sure each worker is indeed qualified, then connects them with open shifts available at different companies such as Marriott, Sodexo, and Sun Basket. After a shift, the worker gets paid within hours of completion and can rate their experience.

In a press release sent to The Spoon, the company said it has grown dramactically over the past 15 months and now has more than 1 million workers across the U.S. on its network. Instawork said the number of available shifts on its platform has grown 8x in less than two years, with professionals finding work in less than 24 hours with shifts paying an average of $18 an hour.

Labor remains a hot button issue in the food a beverage sector. Though restaurants and bars have been fully re-opened as the pandemic recedes, they are having a tough time filling open positions as the industry grapples with issues around worker safety and fair pay. As those issues get resolved, platforms like Instawork, ShiftPixy, Shyft, and Jobletics can help fill in short-term workforce gaps.

Presto Launches a Bundle of Tech Tools to Help Restaurants Reopen With Fewer Staff

Restaurant tech platform Presto today launched a new product bundle it says is meant to help restaurants keep their operations up-to-par in the midst of the ongoing labor shortage. The Staff Multiplier technology package is meant to help both QSRs and full-service restaurants reopen at full capacity even with limited workers onboard, according to a press release sent to The Spoon. 

From Presto:

“Presto Staff Multiplier includes a variety of technologies designed to enable restaurants to increase the guest-to-staff ratio, improve speed and quality of service, identify bottlenecks, and offer guests a superior experience.”

In terms of actual tools, that includes a feature called Vision, which uses computer vision cameras to track throughput and order accuracy, and the Line Buster/Server Assistant, which are handheld tablets staff can use to take orders from anywhere, whether in the dining room or drive-thru. The bundle also includes voice ordering and pay-at-the-table features via tabletop kiosks and QR codes that let guests order and pay from their own mobile devices.

Some of these features are not brand new. Presto began offering QR codes for diners early on during the pandemic. The computer vision system and the company’s pay-at-the-table kiosks both pre-date the pandemic. Rather than a suite of new tools, Staff Multiplier is instead a neatly bundled package of existing Presto hardware and software that can make the order and pay process faster for restaurants, and easier with fewer people on the floor. 

Presto, which counts Chilli’s, Outback Steakhouse, and Aramark among its clients, launched a similar “bundle” last year, just as restaurants began to cautiously reopen after the first major lockdown. It’s “contactless” package was one of the instances of a restaurant tech company bundling a suite of tools together and branding them as a way to help restaurants reopen. Others quickly followed Presto’s lead, unveiling their own bundles of “contactless” dining room kits.

Of course, all that got put on hold when new lockdowns and capacity restrictions once again shuttered dining rooms. Now, with vaccinations widely available and capacity restrictions lifting or already lifted, we can expect more restaurant tech companies to follow Presto’s lead and launch tech bundles branded as tools to help with reopening. Only this time, the angle is combating the labor shortage. While more complex than first meets the eye, the shortage of restaurant workers is creating difficulties for restaurant owners when it comes to delivering high-quality service to guests in the dining room. Hardware and software can’t fix some of the bigger issues at stake, like the need for wage increases, but they can help restaurants grapple with the current situation a little more easily.

Video: Albertsons Brings Labor into Automation Decisions on “Day One”

A recurring theme during our recent ArticulATE food robot and automation conference was the issue of human labor. What do you do when machines displace people in the workforce? It’s a tough question employers throughout the food world are grappling with.

On the one hand, automation is coming, and we need to figure out what combination of government and private sector will be responsible to help re/train people put out of work by robots. On the other hand, food-related companies like Albertsons (and restaurants), are having a tough time finding people to work for them.

Trung Nguyen, VP of eCommerce for Albertsons, told the audience at ArticulATE that the grocer is having a hard time filling jobs, especially truck driving jobs. Turns out people would rather set their own hours and work unsupervised driving for Uber than a delivery truck.

Even with a labor crunch, Albertsons is very methodical in its approach to automation. That’s because Albertsons is unionized, and, as Nguyen explained, before any kind of automation is implemented, the company brings in union reps and lawyers on “day one.” This way, Nguyen said that there is clear communication in what the company does.

Check out the full video from the conference to hear more about how the Albertsons grapples with the labor issue, why scale is important to a chain like Albertsons, and how it, too, has started piloting some autonomous vehicle delivery tests in the Bay Area.

ArticulATE 2019, Rethinking Grocery in the Age of Automation

Be sure to check back all through the week for more videos of the full sessions from ArticulATE!