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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

POS

Saudi Arabia: FOODICS Raises $20M for is Restaurant Management Platform

FOODICS, which makes restaurant management software, announced today that it has raised a $20 million Series B round of funding. The round was led by Sanabil Investments (a firm wholly owned by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investments Fund) and STV, with participation from Endeavor Catalyst and Elm & Derayah. This brings the total amount of funding raised by FOODICS to $28 million.

Based in Saudi Arabia, FOODICS offers a suite of restaurant management features that includes a cloud-based point-of-sale system, as well as iPad-compatible apps for inventory management, employee timesheets, digital menus, analytics, and a kitchen display system. According to the company’s website, FOODICS has more than 7,000 customers and has processed more than one billion orders.

The global pandemic has wreaked havoc on the restaurant industry, decimating sales, forcing the closure or reduction of dine-in eating capacity and shuttering thousands of businesses. But at the same time, it has created new opportunity for restaurant software platforms like FOODICS.

As digital ordering becomes more and more the norm and restaurants shift their focus to off-premises meal formats (e.g., takeout, delivery), software platforms can help with that transition. There is a need for coordinating orders, integrating orders with third-party delivery systems and expediting meals once they are ready. Software can also provide valuable data on customer ordering and experiences that can assist restaurants in becoming more efficient.

There are a number of players such as Toast and Olo in the restaurant software space that have been adapting their platforms to new pandemic realities over the past year. Toast, for example, saw its valuation practically double over the course of 2020, and could potentially IPO this year.

With its new funding, FOODICS says it will expand its share in existing markets, accelerate its international presence and expand its Fintech offering.

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.

A Peek Into the Tech That Could Power Next Week’s Restaurant Re-openings

As you’ve already heard by now, some U.S. states — notably Georgia and South Carolina — are set to relax their quarantine rules and allow certain non-essential businesses to reopen next week. That includes restaurant dining rooms. We’ve already made some predictions about what those dining rooms will look like, and this week, I got some more intel from tech entrepreneur Bo Peabody, who is on the task force that helped create the reopening guidelines for Georgia restaurants. 

Peabody is also the co-founder and chairman of Seated as well as a board member of Boqueria Restaurants and a longtime industry vet. Over the phone this week, he talked through many of the guidelines created by the Georgia task force, which also had involvement from The National Restaurant Association. (You can read The Association’s full guidelines here.)

While many of those guidelines are around implementing social distancing and stricter health practices, Peabody suggested technology also plays a key role. That includes everything from using a text to let people know when their table is ready to implementing digital menus and contactless payment systems. 

“We suggest embracing technology wherever you can,” says Peabody, though he admits tech is “a tough one” in terms of a task for restaurants. In particular, contactless payments will prove challenging for many operators. “We suggested contactless payments if you have that in your restaurant. But most restaurants don’t have that technology,” he said.

Contactless payments take many forms. They can happen through an order-ahead system, at a tabletop kiosk, or with a handheld device a la Starbucks. The common denominator in all these technologies is that they eliminate the need for a customer to hand a credit card to a server and vice versa.

‘We’ve been behind in this country at pay at the table,” said Peabody. And to implement any new technology, restaurants need time and money, two things in short supply these days. While restaurant tech companies have been waiving and reducing some costs, restaurants large and small are just busy trying to keep the lights on right now.

One solution could be QR codes. Peabody describes this as every POS company adding the ability for restaurants to include a QR code on the check. When the server brings the bill, the customer can simply scan the QR code with their own phone to pay for their meal. Ideally, the server would be able to split a check multiple ways, just as they can with credit card payments. 

He says that Toast is currently rolling out such a system, and that others may do the same soon. In fact, he goes as far as to suggest that by the end of next year, “putting your credit card down will be a thing of the past.”

And while contactless payments will be a challenge until that day, mobile ordering might be even trickier for many restaurants to implement. While we’re quick to praise the efficiency of mobile order systems offered by massive chains like Chipotle and Starbucks, the reality is that those apps cost hundreds of thousands of dollars to develop.

Peabody recommends solving the contactless payments issue before trying to tackle mobile ordering.

Even for those that do look to mobile ordering, developing an expensive in-house solution won’t make sense for most restaurants. A more likely scenario, he says, is that customers will start using apps provided by POS vendors, reservations companies, or even credit card companies to pay for meals. 

Before any of that happens, though, we have to actually reopen restaurants. Georgia’s plan for next week will give us some clues. For example, the success or failure of the reopening may give intel into whether we’re putting enough emphasis on basic safety precautions.

It’s also important to note that not every restaurant in Georgia is going to open next week. “For the most part the bigger operators in Atlanta are not going to open on Monday,” says Peabody. “Outside of Atlanta I think you’re going to see a lot more opening. The pressure to open will mount on everybody in Georgia as the days go on.”

Even so, Atlanta-based Chick-fil-A has already said it will “take additional time” before reopening. Nationwide, Starbucks said its re-openings will be “gradual” and that some stores may just continue as off-premises-focused locations. TGI Fridays has also said it will sit out on this initial reopening phase. 

Finally, let’s not forget that experts have warned it is too soon to relax shelter-in-place measures, so it’s entirely possible restaurants that choose to open will face some massive health risks for their workers. If that’s the case, tech may need to take a seat even further in the back.

Peabody believes that long term, more good than not will come in terms of the new developments restaurants have been forced to adopt during this time, technology and otherwise. In the meantime, as Peabody says, “What’s going to happen in Georgia is a dress rehearsal for the country.”

Toast Cuts 50 Percent of Its Staff. That’s an Ominous Sign for All of Restaurant Tech

Yesterday, Toast announced it will cut 50 percent of its staff through layoffs and furloughs. In a letter posted to the Toast blog, CEO Chris Comparato said the move is the result of the ongoing COVID-19 health crisis, which he called a “massive disruption” that “hit the [restaurant] industry virtually overnight.” Understatement of the year, so far. And given Toast’s status as a true heavyweight in the world of restaurant-management tech, the move has ominous implications for other companies that built their businesses off restaurant hardware and software. 

As of February, Toast was valued at around $5 billion. The company provides software/hardware combinations to restaurants to process payments, manage orders, organize back-of-house tasks, and integrate with other third-party services for things like delivery, reservations, and analytics. Basically, Toast offers the kitchen sink and then some in terms of restaurant tech.

Which begs the question, did anyone need all of that technology in the first place?

Toast and others supply a seeming endless amount of tech solutions to restaurants — to the the point that one can’t help but wonder how many of these products are useful and how many of them are what I like to call “tech for the sake of tech.” Does a restaurant general manager trying to juggle three meal shifts and an army of staff even have time to care about real-time guest analytics, for example? Does there really need to be a system in place for customers to order and pay for their meal before they ever set foot in a restaurant? And having spent years working as a server and manager in the restaurant biz myself, I can tell you that good employees don’t need wearable tech judging their every move to do their jobs well.

The economic fallout from the COVID-19 crisis will answer many such questions for us. Those answers will frequently be “no.” Right now, restaurant sales are down 80 percent thanks to government-mandated dining room closures. Restaurants are trying to pivot to delivery and takeout models that would still require some technology to function and integrate with third-party services like DoorDash. But that transition is far from smooth, and many restaurants are more concerned with trying to grasp the off-premises lifeline than they are with adding new bells and whistles to their tech stack. Many more establishments have simply shuttered their operations entirely, citing, among other things, health concerns for their staff.

No one yet knows what the restaurant industry will look like post-pandemic and post-economic fallout. One thing we can count on, though, is a slimmer tech operation. Restaurants operate off the thinnest of margins on a good day. Throw in a recession (or possible depression), and no one’s going to be spending money on anything that isn’t absolutely necessary. Software that integrates all your online order/delivery channels, yes. Software that “streamlines” your guest reservations, no.

Which is to say, the current upheaval the restaurant industry is undergoing is going to pare down everything for the long term: staffing, menus, plate portions, and, unfortunately for Toast and others, technology that businesses may or may not have ever needed in the first place.

Toast Expands Its Proprietary Hardware Suite With 4 New Devices

Toast, best known for its restaurant software at this point, just announced a suite of point-of-sale (POS) hardware tools designed by the company itself. Simply dubbed Toast Hardware, the suite consists of four different devices, according to the company’s press announcement. This is the first way in which the company is using money from its recent $400 million fundraise that bumped the company’s valuation up to $4.9 billion.

The main device of the four is the Toast Flex terminal, a POS terminal with a 14-inch screen that works across different contexts in the restaurant, including the front of house and the kitchen. It can integrate with another new piece of hardware, Toast Tap, which is an external payment processing device that supports NFC (contactless payments), EMV (chip), MSR (swipe) forms of payment. Toast Printer and Toast Hub, meanwhile, are aimed at eliminating cable clutter from hardware and allow the restaurant to set the entire hardware configuration up in a few minutes.

This actually isn’t Toast’s first foray into the hardware space. The company released its handheld payment device, ToastGo, in 2018.

Nor are these likely to be the last pieces of hardware the company designs and releases to the restaurant industry. From the point of view of a restaurant chain, having interoperable hardware and software pieces that come from the same vendor solves a major issue in the restaurant biz right now, which is that there’s plenty of technology from plenty different vendors, but most devices aren’t great at talking to one another. Terrible, in fact.

Buying a hardware suite from one company and using the accompanying software means there’s a greater chance a restaurant’s different devices and software can communicate smoothly and that the GM won’t have to play the role of de facto IT person during a busy dinner rush. (Of course, the flip side of that is that restaurants would lock themselves in with a single vendor.)

From Toast’s point of view, offering more hardware in addition to its software and extensive partner marketplace keeps Toast customers firmly entrenched in the company’s own world. It also lets Toast more adequately compete with others in the crowded POS space, Square, Revel, and Clover among them.

Grubhub Launches Its Own Tech Platform for Restaurant Pickup Orders

Grubhub today announced the launch of its own proprietary tech platform for pickup orders. According to a press release, the system connects the front and back of house to give diners and restaurant staff real-time views on their order status. It also integrates all ordering channels into a single ticket stream.

Dubbed Ultimate, the platform is a hardware-software combination is made up of four main components: A POS system that integrates directly into the Grubhub website and app; a customer-facing display system that shows an order status throughout its different stages; a kitchen display system; and in-store self-service kiosks.

For now, Ultimate is focused specifically on pickup orders. Once a users places an order — whether with a cashier, online, or via one of the kiosks — they can see their order status in a digital queue displayed in the app and on the digital boards in the front of house. Delivery drivers pickup up orders can also utilize the queue to better time when they pick up their customers’ orders. According to the press release, the back-of-house displays show the exact same queue.

“Most people do not want to order in person or by calling if they have an alternative, and by integrating pickup with delivery orders our restaurant partners have a complete picture to more efficiently manage their operations,” Grubhub’s CEO Matt Maloney said in a statement.

Integrating the front and back of house and streamlining the order process for customers are huge priorities right now for restaurants right now. Tech platforms like Brightloom, who recently inked a massive deal with Starbucks, have already been pushing solutions to restaurants that address faster, more accurate digital ordering. Grubhub, however, is the first delivery company to bring its own system to market instead of licensing tech from a third party.

Importantly, the press release mentions the role this technology could play in non-restaurant settings like food halls and stadiums: “Instead of standing in never-ending lines, sports fans and concert-goers can order ahead directly from their seat via Grubhub, watching their place from the in-app queue for the exact moment the order is ready.” That’s something Grubhub rival Postmates is already trying, as is a company called WaitTime, which uses cameras and AI to basically function like the Waze for concession stands. 

While there are no baseball or football stadiums on its roster yet, Ultimate is already on the market. The system is currently in pilot stage at over 100 locations across NYC and Grubhub’s hometown Chicago. 

As QSRs Double Down on Off-Premises Ordering, What Happens to the POS?

Whatever your food plans for the weekend, I’m betting there’s a good chance they’ll involve some kind of off-premises ordering. Delivery? Drive-thru? Drone? All of the above and more are becoming de rigueur for foodies and restaurants alike. With that in mind, here are a few more pieces of restaurant industry buzz from the week, all of which hint at what the next 12 months could look like when it comes to when, where, and how we get our food.

Grubhub and Shake Shack Expand Delivery Partnership Nationwide
Expanding on a deal struck back in August, Shake Shack is now available for exclusive delivery with Grubhub across the U.S. According to a press release sent to The Spoon, more than 140 Shake Shack restaurants now offer delivery through that third-party service and no other. While that’s great for customers who want Shack Burgers delivered to their couch, the partnership has also hurt Shake Shack’s sales, according to the chain’s third-quarter results. Part of that may have been due to the exclusive nature of the deal, exclusivity being a strategy increasingly discouraged in the restaurant industry when it comes to effective delivery services.

KFC’s Drive-Thru of the Future Is Open for Business
July brought the initial news that KFC had a drive-thru-only concept in the works down under, in Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia. Said location is now open for business. The new store features five drive-thru lanes that let customers order and pay via the KFC mobile app. While there is a designated lane for customers who want the traditional drive-thru experience (ordering on a crackly speaker, paying an actual person), there is no dining room at this location. If this pilot location proves successful, we’ll see more such KFC locations in the future.

Dunkin Donuts

Houston, We Have a Dunkin’
Dunkin’ (née Donuts), an institution here in the Northeast, is continuing its expansion across the U.S., and it’s bringing its next-generation store with it. The chain announced it is developing 18 new locations around Houston, TX that will emphasize to-go orders, self-service kiosks, and dedicated drive-thru lanes for customers who order via the Dunkin’ mobile app. The first of these new stores is slated to open in summer 2020.

Image via Unsplash.

RIP POS?
But is the POS about to become an endangered species? Not this week, and not probably in the next year. But the growth of ghost kitchens, which exist to fulfill off-premises orders and have no dining room, suggests that pieces of the front-of-house restaurant tech stack could be eliminated in the future. That’s the scenario posed by the folks at Reforming Retail this week. An excellent article from a few days ago points out that with no front of house or cashiers, and with customers ordering directly from their mobile devices, 99 percent of the tech in restaurants could disappear: “And instead of a restaurant needing multiple [sales] terminals they need, well, none.”

Agree? Disagree? Drop your thoughts in the comments below.

TouchBistro Launches a Reservations and Guest-Management Platform for Restaurants

POS provider TouchBistro this week launched a reservation and guest management platform for restaurants that will compete with SevenRooms, Toast, and others.

Dubbed TouchBistro Reservations, the new platform integrates with TouchBistro’s existing POS system and offers restaurants better communication between the front and back of house, more channels for booking tables, and better data on customer preferences.

While Reservations works as a standalone app, when restaurants integrate it with TouchBistro’s POS, it creates a real-time connection between the front-of-house reservations system and the back-of-house POS. For example, when a server sends an order to the kitchen, the system not only tells the kitchen to start making the food, but also alerts the front of house of that table’s status. Same goes for when the food is served or a table pays a bill. Real-time status updates such as these make it easier for, say, the host to more accurately gauge wait times for other guests. The system also provides the kind of real-time data that’s become increasingly important for restaurants to have in order to better personalize the dining experience for customers: dietary preferences, customer spend, and even when a customer is a first-time guest at the restaurant.

Reservations also allows participating restaurant to accept bookings via Google Search and Maps, their own website, or TouchBistro’s own restaurant discovery app.

Reservations enters some crowded waters in terms of competition among guest-management platforms. NYC-based SevenRooms’ front-of-house-focused platform also offers deeper insights into customer data, and the company is currently testing a voice-tech layer s via Amazon Alexa. Toast’s platform — a mix of its own tech as well as numerous integrations with third-party partners — manages both front and back of house and includes hardware components. Square, Omnivore, and Resy are just a few more companies bringing various solutions to market to handle various aspects of restaurant guest management.

TouchBistro’s differentiation is the connection it provides between the front and back of house. As more tech enters restaurants, businesses increasingly look to solutions that make their operations more efficient without burdening staff with clunky devices or non-intuitive software. Having that seamless communication between what’s going on in the kitchen and dining room will be crucial going forward.

The Week in Restaurant Tech: More POS Integrations, New Delivery Deals

Fall is just around the corner, which means we’re about to get inundated with headlines about pumpkin-spice lattes. And while the restaurant industry is seeing a bit of a sales slowdown at the moment, something that’s expected to continue through the last third of 2019, the space has no end of tech-centric developments happening week to week. Here’s a look at a few more pieces of restaurant tech news from the last few days.

Appetize Partners With Olo and Others for POS Integration

What’s the solution to having too much tech in the restaurant? More tech, obviously. This week, Playa Vista, CA-based POS maker Appetize announced new integrations with not one but three more pieces of restaurant tech software: Olo, which consolidates orders from multiple third-party channels, Punchh, who handles loyalty programs, and SynergySuite, a back-of-house inventory management solution. According to a press release, these additions will help restaurants to balance the many digital demands in the biz today: third-party delivery capability, loyalty programs, mobile order and payments, and back-of-house duties like inventory management.

Grubhub Launches Perks

Even as more restaurants talk about bringing customer loyalty back under their own roof, third-party delivery companies are countering that by adding new bells and whistles to retain users within their own apps and websites. This week, Grubhub launched Perks, an in-app feature that offers users more ways to earn loyalty points from restaurants via deals only available within the Grubhub app. Since the feature is actually integrated with restaurant loyalty programs, those rewards and points are all redeemable from the same account. However, to access all the free food on offer from the likes of Taco Bell, Red Lobster, and Smoothie King, customers have to use the Grubhub app.

Barclaycard and TouchBistro Join Forces to Improve Restaurant Payments

Another POS company, TouchBistro, announced a partnership with UK-based credit card and payments processor Barclaycard. TouchBistro will integrate Barclaycard’s payment solution into its iPad-based POS system for UK restaurants, making it easier for staff to split checks, and gratuities and process payments. For any restaurant-tech feature involving payments, the biggest benefit is that they cut down the amount of manual calculations and data entry workers have to do, which in theory reduces the risk of human error when it comes to keeping track of the numbers.

New Delivery Deals

In what was just another week in the world of delivery, numerous chains announced partnerships with third-party services. Casual dining chain Village Inn announced it’s now delivering via DoorDash; fast-food chain A&W also teamed up with the service, to deliver to nearly 400 locations across Canada. DoorDash didn’t grab all the headlines this week, though. As we covered in depth, McDonald’s is expanding its McDelivery program throughout NYC and the Tri-State area with Grubhub.

Intrigued? We’ll be talking restaurant tech at this year’s Smart Kitchen Summit this October in Seattle. Grab your tickets here and come on down.

Waitr’s Partnership With Olo Underscores the Delivery Service’s Mainstream Ambitions

It was only a matter of time before companies started addressing the problem of how to help restaurants process third-party delivery orders without throwing an extra device or three at them, a situation otherwise known as “tablet hell.”

Right on the heels of a similar deal with Uber Eats, restaurant-tech platform Olo has teamed up with delivery service Waitr to do just that. According to a press release sent today, the two companies have partnered to allow direct integration of all Waitr/Bite Squad orders into a restaurant partners’ POS systems through Olo’s Rails technology.

Rails transmits orders coming from third-party sales channels like delivery apps directly into a restaurant POS system. This is in stark contrast to how restaurants have typically taken orders from third-party delivery apps. Historically, a restaurant would have to designate someone on staff to manually input those orders from a tablet provided by the delivery service into the main POS system — the aforementioned tablet hell scenario. As I wrote in January, when Olo nabbed an $18 million investment, “Olo doesn’t compete with third-party delivery services; it more or less partners with them, so DoorDash or Grubhub orders placed via Olo go right into the regular queue of tickets, without an employee having to manually input them.”

By partnering with Olo, Waitr will be able to offer all of its restaurant partners this kind of streamlined processing for delivery orders, which saves restaurants time, money, and, very basically, physical space in the restaurants.

Interestingly, Olo’s tech platform is typically aimed at larger chains: it counts Denny’s, Five Guys, and Chipotle among its growing list of customers. Waitr has up to this point focused on serving smaller U.S. cities and emphasizing the local aspect of its business. But the company recently became the center of a lot of bad press when it announced adjustments to its terms and fee structure for restaurants, which take a higher commission from restaurants with smaller sales volumes. In most cases those would be smaller, independent restaurants. While the new terms sparked protests in some of Waitr’s markets, they went through on August 1. Waitr hasn’t directly stated its focus has shifted to prioritizing bigger brands and restaurant partners, but as the restaurant biz goes, it’s typically the smaller shops who will have a hard time managing the new fee structure and may not be able to continue using Waitr’s service.

The partnership with Olo seems to further affirm that direction. “This direct connection into our partners’ order stream is delivering on our commitment to be the most valued partner for restaurants,” Waitr CEO Chris Meaux said in the press release statement. Apparently only if you’re Denny’s or Five guys, though.

Toast Launches Real-Time Guest Feedback Tools for Restaurants

Real-time guest feedback is becoming the norm at restaurants, and today, restaurant-tech company Toast unveiled via press release a suite of new features meant to make it easier for customers to rate their meals and for restaurant managers and operators to understand and act on their feedback.

Toast Guest Feedback, as the new features suite is dubbed, lets restaurants collect guest feedback via the Toast Go and Toast Digital Receipts software. Toast Go is a handheld POS system made specifically for the restaurant industry. Both the hardware and software are Toast products. With the device, servers can take orders, receive real-time menu updates, swipe a customer’s credit card, and coordinate with the back of house so that cooks no longer have to scream “order up!” when someone’s food is ready.

With Guest Feedback, the Toast Go device also lets guests leave feedback about their experience via the touchscreen tablet in the form of thumb-up-thumb-down ratings. It also lets users type in comments on their experience. That feedback is processed in real time and, if they choose, managers can opt to receive SMS alerts every time a guest leaves a negative comment or review. Toast Guest Feedback can also run a report summarizing all reviews, so operators can see patterns and trends: what’s working, and what isn’t. Guest Feedback integrated into Toast Digital Receipts works much the same way, except for to-go food.

Right now, only about 2 percent of restaurant customers take the time to fill out a survey or comment card at the end of a meal. Having a digital, easy-to-use method for this could increase that number, and up the amount of information a restaurant can use to assess quality of service, popular foods, and other aspects of day-to-day operations.

Toast is hardly alone. Company Presto just raised $30 million, in part for its wearable tech that lets servers and managers see real-time feedback from guests. Square’s restaurant POS system allows the restaurant to communicate directly with a guest through the digital receipt and provides owners and managers a comprehensive summary of guest feedback.

Implementing real-time feedback brings a lot of obvious pluses to any restaurant operation. It’s easier to resolve a dispute or sooth an unhappy customer if said person is still in the restaurant when management is informed. The summary feature seems particularly useful, as it can alert managers to repeat issues in very clear terms. If five guests complain about the state of their after-dinner lattes, it might be time to retrain the staff on how to make those drinks. And Toast’s feature is already reportedly upping the amount of money individual servers bank each year, since the system as a whole makes it easier to tip, even suggesting tip amounts that might be higher than a guest might leave with cash.

One thing restaurant owners and managers will need to keep in mind with this brave new world of guest feedback: technology can’t communicate that some people are just assholes who take their frustrations out on servers. Not everyone, and not even most. My decade-long experience working in restaurants tells me the majority of people are reasonable, and that using real-time feedback as an alert, a manager could resolve an issue and therefore any negative tension before a guest even leaves the premises.

To be honest, a bigger problem than guests abusing the feedback feature is whether a constant stream of ratings will upset servers’ mental space during busy shifts and cause unnecessary tension. That’s one thing Presto has sought to address with its wearables: they only alert managers for super-important issues (as deemed by the restaurant), not every little gripe or hiccup.

Still, most owners and managers at restaurants worked their way up the ranks and have at one point or another stood in that server’s shoes. Real-time, tech-driven feedback has some horror stories to tell, to be sure. But I do think most folks working in the restaurant will be able to see the difference between a real problem and a high-maintenance customer, and real-time feedback will prove itself a huge help rather than make someone’s job miserable.

Toast and BevSpot Want to Improve the Way Restaurants Use Back-of-House Data

Yesterday, restaurant-management software maker Toast announced a partnership with BevSpot, whose own software simplifies the order tracking and inventory process for restaurants. The new solution claims to save businesses time and energy collecting and making sense of data from sales, ordering, and inventory.

Toast’s Android-powered platform already combines a POS system, front- and back-of-house operations, and customer-facing technology (e.g., tabletop order kiosks) into a single cloud-based platform. The BevSpot partnership is a boost because it addresses the often arduous process of gathering and analyzing data from activities that happen behind the scenes: taking accurate inventory, checking the status of an order, and calculating things like pour costs. For a restaurant — particularly a large operation — a combined service like the Toast-BevSpot one could speed up and/or automate a lot of these tasks, not to mention make the numbers more accurate.

Inventory tracking alone is tough; screwing it up, even with a tiny miscalculation, can drastically change the sales numbers. With the Toast-BevSpot integration, businesses will be able to see exact numbers on what goes into the kitchen, what goes out, spillage, customer complaints, theft, and a whole bunch of other factors that affect inventory.

And by harmonizing the POS data with inventory and order data (which is all digitized, thanks to BevSpot), businesses will in all likelihood have an easier time spotting trends, whether it’s about which time of day sells the most fries to what days of the week the kitchen goes through more eggs.

The BevSpot integration is part of Toast’s API Partner Program, where companies can partner with Toast to integrate its system into their own software. Among many others, Grubhub, LevelUp, and Hot Schedules all participate.

Toast raised a $115 million in Series D funding in July and is currently valued at $1.4 billion. But’s a crowded market out there. TouchBistro is a popular competitor and raised a $70 million Series D in June, and Square launched its own POS system in May. This partnership with BevSpot is no doubt a way for Toast to further differentiate itself by dabbling in the data issue — a topic that’s only going to get more important as high tech becomes commonplace in restaurants.