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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

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Checkers To Roll Out AI-Powered Voice Tech to 267 Restaurant Drive-Thrus By End of 2022

This week restaurant chain Checkers & Rally’s announced a deal with Presto, a maker of restaurant technology, in which the drive-thru focused chain will roll out Presto’s AI-powered voice assistant technology chain-wide by the end of the year.

The announcement comes after early trials showed a 98% order accuracy for the voice assistant technology. And now, according to Checkers President and CEO Frances Allen, the chain plans to roll out Presto’s voice technology to all 267 store-owned and operated locations by the end of 2022. She also indicated that many franchise locations are expressing interest in the technology.

“We had a vision two years ago that we wanted what I would call ‘Alexa at the drive-thru,'” said Allen.

And now, with Presto, they have it. According to Allen, about 80% of the chain’s total business comes through a drive-thru, so the company’s management felt transitioning to a high-accuracy automated drive-thru could significantly impact the business.

“Anything we can do to improve operations, streamline for our guests and our employees, we wanted to do.”

You can hear the Presto voice assistant taking an order at a Checkers drive-thru in the video above. The Presto bot sounds, well, bot-like as it says “Welcome to Checkers, this drive-thru microphone is monitored and recorded for quality assurance.” In fact, the entire exchange sounds like something you might hear on an automated customer service line.

Expedite’s Kristen Hawley thought so too and asked during the press briefing if customers could access live humans at any point during the interaction.

“There are 2% of orders where the system says ‘you know, I don’t quite understand that,'” said Presto founder and CEO Rajat Suri. “If the person is insistent on talking to a staff member or operator, the system will escalate to the human in the restaurant.”

When asked if the broader rollout of Presto’s technology will result in a permanent reduction of headcount, Allen said no. Instead, she said, Presto’s technology helps fill roles left empty by the persistent shortage of workers the entire restaurant industry has been experiencing since the pandemic began.

“Our motivation is to fill the gap between the people that are available to us working in restaurants and where we need to focus that human labor,” said Allen. “In an ideal world, maybe we have five people at any shift right now. We probably have three or four available. And so this (Presto’s voice assistant) is like a fifth person that is coming in to help.”

“Our motivation here is not to replace people with robots.”

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.

Bbot Raises $3M for Its Contactless Restaurant Tech Solution

NYC-based restaurant tech company Bbot today announced a $3 million seed funding round led by Craft Ventures. The company says it will use the new funds to hire up and expand its reach and product capabilities, according to a press release sent to The Spoon.

Bbot, which was founded in 2017, was ahead of the times when it originally launched its mobile order and pay platform that emphasizes contactless functionality and minimizes human-to-human contact in restaurants and bars. The system integrates directly with a restaurant or bar’s existing tech setup. Customers use their own phones to scan a QR code (usually placed on a decal on the table) and browse the menu, as well as order and pay for food. 

Bbot points to a number of different advantages with this setup. Most obviously, contactless features in the dining room makes it easier for restaurants to foster social distancing among customers and staff. It also more or less forces restaurants to have at least some digital presence, which is becoming increasingly mandatory these days. Bbot also says the system can increase revenue for the restaurant, and that some of its existing clients have seen a 15 percent lift thanks to the system.

While that’s an encouraging figure, the challenge right now for any restaurant tech is two-fold. First is the sheer amount of competition in the restaurant tech space — particularly when it comes to the consumer-facing side of things. As I said earlier, companies that formerly served the front of house are now racing to find new ways to stay relevant. So far, that’s been through contactless dining kits a la Paytronix, Zuppler, Presto, and many others. 

The other part of the challenge is that the state of restaurant dining rooms remains uncertain, to put it mildly. Some states and/or individual businesses are halting or reversing their reopening plans, thanks to a rapid rise in COVID-19 cases, and businesses are being encouraged to continue their focus off-premises orders.

On that latter note, Bbot has an advantage in that its system is designed to work for any type of restaurant setting, including the off-premises ones. That ability to translate across restaurant formats plus its early entry into the contactless space may give Bbot a greater advantage over the competition, even if dining rooms don’t reopen the way we thought they would.

Sevenrooms Raises $50M Series B Funding for Its Data-Driven Restaurant Tech Platform

Restaurant tech company Sevenrooms has raised $50 million in Series B funding. The round was led by Providence Strategic Growth and brings Sevenrooms’ total funding to $71.5 million. According to a press release sent to The Spoon, Sevenrooms will use the new funds to “further enhance” its restaurant guest-management platform as well as continue expanding globally. 

Sevenrooms, which was founded in 2011, has over time evolved from a reservations platform to a full suite of front-of-house tools that nowadays includes some pandemic-friendly features like contactless ordering and payments. The company continues to offer its reservations system, as well as waitlist and table management tools, marketing automation, and online ordering. Pre-pandemic, Sevenrooms was exploring voice-enabled restaurant tech as well as data-driven personalization.  

Like other front-of-house-focused restaurant tech companies, Sevenrooms quickly reacted to the COVID-19 crisis and the dining room shutdowns that followed. At no extra cost, it launched its DirectDelivery feature, which gives restaurants more ownership over their customers data on delivery order. The company also recently released its version of the contactless dining kit, meant to equip freshly reopened restaurant dining rooms with more contactless solutions, from order and pay technologies to digital menus. 

Others have made similar moves recently. In fact most restaurant tech companies — Presto, Zuppler, Paytronix, etc. — are offering enhancements to their platforms that emphasize contactless tools for the restaurant dining room.

Standing out from the masses will be the biggest challenge for all of these companies. Sevenrooms’ previous work around voice tech and personalization would give it a push in a somewhat unique direction. Its continued focus on giving restaurants more control over customer data will also be an important asset for the company going forward as digital properties become the restaurant experience, rather than an add-on sales channel.

Paytronix Puts a New Spin on Contactless Tech in Restaurant Dining Rooms

Guest management platform Paytronix Systems today announced its version of the contactless dining kit for restaurants, simply called Paytronix Contactless Dining. With it, restaurants can offer guests touch-free ways to browse menus, order, and pay for meals while in the restaurant dining room, according to a press release sent to The Spoon.

While the motivation behind Paytronix’ new offering is similar to other contactless dining kits out there — minimize human-to-human contact in the restaurant — the tech itself offers some features we haven’t yet seen on other platforms.

Most notably, Paytronix’ system allows guests to keep their virtual “tab” — that is, ticket — throughout the entire meal.

Right now with most mobile apps, a customer has to order and pay to complete the transaction and get that order sent to the restaurant kitchen. That works fine for takeout or delivery orders, which are inherently meant to be one-off transactions. For dine-in service, however, a customer might want to order a second drink partway through their meal. Or they may decide at last minute to get dessert. For each of those extra items, a new transaction, or “tab,” would have to be made, which means more transaction fees for restaurants that they may or may not pass on to the customer via higher menu prices. It’s also just a messy scenario to have to pay multiple transactions for each course at a single meal.

That mess and expense is what Paytronix is trying to eliminate with this Contactless Dining kit. The platform connects directly to the restaurant’s POS system. Customers then use their mobile devices to browse the menu, order items, and make a single payment (the virtual equivalent of “closing the tab”) at the end of the meal. 

Tim Ridgely, head of development for Contactless Dining, got to the heart of the matter when he noted in today’s press release that, “When it comes to on-premises dining, guests want the freedom to peruse a menu, order what they want when they want it, open tabs, and ultimately, pay for that experience at the end.”

Offering more flexibility in terms of this open tab feature also means restaurants could potentially sell more per ticket, whether that’s a second martini or a slice of cake at the end of the meal. That boost in sales will be much needed for most restaurants, since dining rooms across the U.S. are still operating at reduced capacity and, depending on how the pandemic wave falls, will be doing so for quite some time.

Paytronix joins Presto, Sevenrooms, Zuppler, and other others offering systems that try to minimize contact between guests and restaurant staff.

Of course, to make the most of Paytronix new system, restaurants will actually need a lot of customers. As we learned recently, the general population remains pretty divided about going out to eat. Some refuse to set foot in restaurants. Others were ready weeks before they reopened. Between those two extremes is a swath of folks who, while wary, are slowly but surely becoming open to the idea of going out to eat once more. Restaurant tech companies that can help sway more people towards that idea will be the ones businesses find most valuable going forward.

Revention Rebrands as HungerRush, Launches Off-Premises Enhancements

Restaurant tech company Revention has rebranded as HungerRush and announced a new set of features aimed at helping restaurants fulfill off-premises orders. According to a tip sent to The Spoon, new products include contactless delivery capabilities, driver tracking, and integration with third-party delivery services.

HungerRush’s focus on digital ordering and off-premises orders isn’t completely new. As Revention, the restaurant management platform already included integration with some delivery companies, mobile and online ordering, and the ability to manage customer loyalty programs. 

The new features are mostly enhancements to existing products. HungerRush Drive lets restaurant operators track drivers as they deliver orders, which is becoming a more common practice nowadays. There is also messaging system for curbside pickup orders, where customers can notify the restaurant when they arrive, as well as the addition of more integrations with third-party delivery services, including Postmates, Grubhub, and “hundreds more,” according to today’s press release.

HungerRush is rebranding and releasing these features at at time when most restaurants continue to focus on improving their digital ordering as well as the process for takeout and delivery. The pandemic forced many restaurants into the off-premises world, and though dining rooms have reopened in a lot of states, they’ve done so with reduced capacity, not to mention customer base rather wary of going out to eat. It’s pretty much assumed at this point that restaurants must continue building to-go strategies to make up for lost revenue and keep the lights on.

Many a tech company promises to help in that area. Toast, Presto, CardFree, Sevenrooms, and a boatload of others have all announced new features or product enhancements that emphasize digital ordering and contactless delivery/pickup.

How well they deliver on these promises is what will determine who has value and who’s expendable when it comes to choosing a restaurant tech platform. For example, having a system for customers to message the restaurant when they arrive for their curbside order is smart. But geofencing tech, which automatically alerts the restaurant when a customer arrives, is even more efficient. 

HungerRush is old guard when it comes to restaurant tech companies, having been founded in 2003. (It’s also very popular with pizza chains, for some reason.) Time will tell if these new enhancements to its platform will be enough to compete with the dozens of other offerings vying for dominance as the restaurant industry reinvents itself. 

Sevenrooms Is the Latest Restaurant Tech Company Serving Up Contactless Order and Pay Features

Restaurant guest management platform Sevenrooms today released a Contactless Order & Pay system for restaurants as businesses get set to reopen under new social distancing guidelines and regulations. The new system “aims to ease consumer hesitation around dining out,” according to an email sent to The Spoon.

Since Sevenrooms is first and foremost a tech company, it will obviously be using technology to minimize person-to-person contact in an effort to make dining rooms safer places once they reopen. 

The new contactless system includes a digital menu as well as ordering and payment functionality customers can access with their own devices by one of three ways: scanning a QR code, using near-field communication (NFC), or going to a URL. Importantly, there is no need for customers to download any additional apps, something that would only add confusion and extra steps to the process. 

Ideally, this setup will mean restaurants do not have to hand physical menus out to guests, and that items like order tickets and credit cards won’t pass from one person to the next, potentially spreading infectious germs along the way.

The idea isn’t specific to Sevenrooms. In its reopening guidelines for restaurants, the National Restaurant Association said that “Contactless payment systems, automated ordering systems, mobile ordering apps, website updates and simple texts can help you to communicate and conduct business with reduced need for close contact.”

Other industry figures agree. Seated cofounder and chairman Bo Peabody, who also sits on the task force in charge of restaurant reopening guidelines for the state of Georgia, told me recently that contactless payments are one of the most important pieces of tech a restaurant can invest in right now and that by the end of next year, “putting your credit card down will be a thing of the past.”

He added, however, that most restaurants right now are not equipped to easily switch to contactless ordering and payments. Making the process of adoption easier and affordable will be a major factor restaurant tech companies like Sevenrooms must consider if they truly want to help restaurants through the reopening process. 

Sevenrooms joins other restaurant tech companies pivoting to offer contactless order and payment capabilities. This week, Presto released its own version of a contactless order and pay tech bundle. Paytronix, which raised $10 million in April, has also added an online order platform and touchless payments to its tech stack. 

A subject we land on frequently these days is exactly how relevant will front-of-house restaurant tech companies be as more dining rooms reopen with limited seating capacity and consumers cautiously venture out to eat. The growing number of companies offering contactless order and payment options makes me think that the debate isn’t around whether these companies will remain relevant. Rather, the ones that can present restaurants with the most helpful, hassle-free ways to go contactless will be the ones the industry finds most valuable going forward. 

Presto Makes Its Contactless Dining Kit Free for Restaurants Reopening Dining Rooms

Restaurant tech company Preso has released a Contactless Dining Kit to assist restaurants with social distancing measures as they prepare to reopen dining rooms in the coming days and weeks. The kit, which Presto is making available free of charge to restaurants, notably offers technologies to assist restaurants with contactless order and payment, according to an email sent to The Spoon.

In certain states, restaurants are slowly but surely reopening. Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Tennessee, Texas, and others have all loosened stay-at-home restrictions to varying degrees, though restaurants are operating at reduced capacity and with stricter social distancing measures in place.

In a letter sent to California Governor Gavin Newsom, of which The Spoon has obtained a copy, the Redwood City, CA-based company outlined the technologies on offer in its Contactless Dining Kit. “As our state looks towards reopening for business, it will be important for restaurants to operate in an environment that can reassure customers about their personal safety,” the letter states, before going on to say that the new normal will be “very different” and that “technology can play a very critical role in enabling this new normal.” 

For the Contactless Dining Kit, that technology primarily addresses how restaurants can ensure social distancing during the order and pay process in the dining room. That means plenty of contactless solutions. Presto’s tech stack already offered a number of contactless order and pay solutions prior to the pandemic; for its kit, the company has pulled relevant pieces of software and hardware and bundle them together.

The contactless menu option lets restaurants place a QR code sticker on tables, which guests can scan to access the menu. Any loyalty or rewards programs the restaurant runs can be integrated into the process. For those guests that can’t use their own device or don’t want to, the restaurant can also provide the menu via a Presto tablet placed on the table.

Restaurants can choose to have those orders directly integrated into their main POS system, which would definitely be the more contactless way to go. Otherwise, orders from diners’ devices land in a Staff Tablet and will have to be input into the POS system. 

Finally, the kit’s contactless payments feature lets guests pay via their own devices or the aforementioned Presto tablet on the table. 

Presto says on its website that it will ship a kit within three days of a restaurant signing up for one. Deployment takes “less than an hour in most cases” — though that doesn’t factor in restaurant staff having to learn how to work a new technology. On that front, Presto appears to be trying to make the switch to a more tech-centric dining experience as easy as possible for restaurants. Kits arrive with a tablet, 60 QR code stickers and table placards, setup instructions, and a web portal from which businesses can create and manage their online menus. 

As I mentioned earlier, Presto is giving this pack away for free right now to restaurants. That’s a generous move, given the turbulent times, but it’s also a smart one from a business perspective. Presto is a front-of-house technology company, and at the moment, front-of-house players are fighting to remain relevant in a world where the in-house dining experience will probably never be the same. Allowing restaurants to sample its technology stack for free potentially gives Presto wider exposure across the sector and, so long as execution goes well, helps the company solidify its credibility as an important tech company in the space. 

The company hasn’t yet said if there is a time limit on getting the kit, only that “supplies are limited” and that the offer is only valid while said supplies last.

That it’s chosen to focus on contactless order and payments is also a move that could pay off down the line for Presto. As a growing number of restaurant industry figures have said, contactless will be the way forward, and one of the most important parts of the restaurant experience to get right is ordering and payments.

If Presto can take some headache out of that process for restaurants with its technology, it could win over a lot of new and loyal clients as the foodservice world starts to reopen.

Here’s a Rundown of Restaurant Tech Deals Available to Struggling Businesses

As more restaurants are forced to pivot to off-premises models in the fight to stay alive, it seems more tech companies are coming to market with hardware and/or software meant to speed up, simplify, automate, and more efficiently manage delivery. And in the spirit of simplifying things, I’ve rounded up a number of those solutions here that address different parts of the off-premises model. 

Just remember: there are tech solutions that solve problems and, as a friend of mine once said, tech solutions in search of problems. Reduced fees or no, not every product or service is going to be useful, and what improves one restaurant’s business could be a total distraction for another.

Order-ahead app Allset has a contactless pickup option at participating restaurants. For all existing restaurant partners that provide the contactless pickup option at their stores, the company is waiving commission fees.

Delivery orchestration platform Bringg launched its BringgNow feature months ahead of schedule. The new feature helps larger chain restaurants, among other businesses, manage delivery orders, track drivers, make last-minute adjustments, and integrate with third-party platforms. BringgNow is free to new users at this time.

Chowly, whose tech helps manage delivery orders, is offering a “no cost” starter package to businesses needing to quickly pivot to delivery models as more cities and states shut down dining rooms.

DailyPay, an app that lets restaurant workers access their earnings immediately, has waived all access fees so that individuals using the service can get their earned income immediately. 

POS and guest management software platform Epicuri is waiving set up fees and offering a 60-day free trial with no commitment for restaurants right now.

Paytronix just launched a new cloud-based solution that lets restaurants add online ordering and delivery to their existing POS systems and, for those who want to conduct delivery in-house, integrate with DoorDash.

Presto is giving away free self-service kiosks that at this point can be used for pickup orders. In an email to The Spoon, the company also said it is also “offering Presto Quick Serve drive-thru kiosks, staff handhelds, and smartwatches completely free.”

Ordermark, a software-hardware platform that streamlines the process of accepting, managing, and fulfilling delivery orders, is waiving all setup fees right now, according to an email sent to The Spoon.

Restaurant order management platform Revention is offering an Online Ordering and Delivery Starter Bundle for a reduced price. It includes a POS terminal, optional DoorDash on-demand delivery service, and remote installation.

Guest management platform Sevenrooms now offers a feature called Direct Delivery that gives restaurants more ownership over their customer data on delivery and takeout orders. For the next 90 days, existing and prospective Sevenrooms customers can add the feature on at no extra cost. 

End-to-end platform Toast has eliminated software fees for restaurant customers for the next month and will provide those customers with free access to its digital ordering, marketing, and gift card programs for three months. 

Operations platform Zenput says it is “offering operators that are new to Zenput – at no charge or obligation through the end of June 2020 – the ability to use our platform to build-out, communicate, and ensure compliance with their COVID-19 processes.”

Online food ordering platform Zuppler is offering free setup and reduced pricing for restaurants and caterers who want to add online or Google ordering to their websites.

Over the coming weeks, we’ll know more about which products and services are most beneficial to restaurants trying to survive the current situation in which the industry finds itself. In the meantime, drop us a line if you know a company or product you think should be on this list.

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. 

OneDine Raises $5M for Its Front-of-House Restaurant Tech Platform

Dallas, TX-based startup OneDine has closed a $5 million funding round with a pre-money valuation of $90 million for its front-of-house restaurant tech platform. The new funding came from “a private family trust” along with participation from TMW Capital and Hidden Lake Asset Management of New York.

OneDine founder and CEO Rom Krupp told The Dallas Morning News last week that his company will use the money to “staff into fulfillment.” OneDine plans to grow its staff from 24 to 100 persons by the end of the year to help meet the growing demand for the product, which currently serves over 60 brands and has a waiting list of others lining up to implement the technology.

The solution itself is a SaaS-based platform that lets customers with a OneDine app and profile check in to the restaurant, set dietary preferences and restrictions, order from a digital menu, and pay at the table, all from their own mobile device. Guests can also receive customized recommendations and fill out post-meal surveys. The platform integrates with restaurants’ POS systems so that businesses don’t have to do a major tech overhaul in order to incorporate the technology into their day-to-day operations. 

OneDine told The Dallas Morning News that restaurants using the platform can operate with 20 percent less waitstaff. At a time when restaurants are facing a labor shortage and turnover is high, being able to automate certain front-of-house costs is something many restaurants are looking into. 

“Labor has never had so many options as they do now and the industry has to change because of that to stay relevant,” Rajat Suri, CEO of restaurant-tech company Presto, told us last year. Like OneDine, Presto makes a front-of-house-focused tech solution that automates certain tasks, including the order and pay process for guests. Toast, Square, and many others are also automating the front of house.

For its part, OneDine says it plans to hire support and client fulfillment staff as well as expand across the U.S. in the coming months.

Chili’s Teams Up With Presto to Offer Pay-at-the-Table Devices

Fast-casual chain Chili’s announced today it has partnered with restaurant-tech company Presto to make PrestoPrime tabletop devices available to customers dining in the restaurant. According to a press release, the devices will be installed in most of Chili’s 1,250 locations in the U.S.

PrestoPrime devices let guests order meals and pay for them right from the table. The tablet-sized devices accept multiple forms of payment, from credit and debit cards to mobile payments. Restaurants can also use them to offer feedback surveys to guests, suggest upsell items on orders, and notify managers of unhappy guests in real time, so they can address problems before the customer leaves the restaurant. 

In addition to all those things, Chili’s has another goal in mind when it comes to using these devices in the front of house: personalization. According to the press release, a new featured being tested in PrestoPrime with the Chili’s deal is a guest sign-in feature. Customers can log into their My Chili’s Rewards (the chain’s loyalty program), view past orders, re-order favorites, set and adjust dietary preferences. 

While the feature is convenient for guests, it more importantly gives Chili’s access to the kind of customer data restaurants can use to tailor more pieces of the restaurant experience to fit the individual customer, whether that’s offering seating appropriate for someone in a wheelchair or avoiding onions because the customer in question hates them. Restaurants can also use the data to offer more relevant upsell items and boost ticket sizes.

Personalization features are all over the restaurant nowadays. McDonald’s deploying AI tech in its drive-thrus to speed up the personalization process. A company called 5thru is working with major QSRs to do much the same, only using technology that scans a customer’s license plate number to get to their restaurant profile. In the dining room, chains like Olive Garden, Outback Steakhouse, and Denny’s are all exploring tabletop devices as a way to personalize and speed up service.

Just a little over one year ago, Presto raised $30 million to further develop its front-of-house technology, which includes Presto Wearables and Presto A.I. in addition to PrestoPrime. Chili’s hasn’t yet said if either of these features will make their way into its dining rooms, though it would be an appropriate pairing given the chain’s goals around personalization.

Want more info on food personalization? Join us in NYC for The Spoon’s first-ever Customize event, taking place on February 27, 2020.