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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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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. 

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.