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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Presto

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.

   

Week in Restaurants: Moe’s Goes Digital, Denny’s Adds Pay-at-the-Table Features

Some weeks are all about the incremental developments. Such has been the case over the last few days, with much of the news in the restaurant-tech space about chains adding new tools and features to their digital-focused operations. As the weekend sets in, here are a few more of those developments. 

Moe’s Southwest Grill Plans Digital-First Locations
Joining the growing number of restaurant chains experimenting with off-premises-focused store formats, Moe’s Southwest Grill announced this week it will launch its first-ever “all-digital/kiosk-only” locations in the first quarter of 2020, one in Pittsburgh, PA and the other in Charlottesville, VA. Each store will be equipped with four self-order kiosks and accept cash, Apple Pay, and, for, University of Pittsburgh students, university credit cards. Both locations will also offer limited in-house seating and one traditional cash register.

Denny’s Adds Pay-at-the-Table Feature
Denny’s, beloved pit stop of roadtrippers everywhere, plans to add tabletop devices in its restaurants that allow customers to pay for their meal, rather than having to wait for a server to run a credit card. The Spartanburg, S.C.-based chain has teamed up with restaurant tech company Presto, whose partners also include Applebee’s, Red Lobster, and Outback Steakhouse, among others. An initial deployment of Presto tablets at Denny’s is slated for 2020, and guests will be able to pay, complete feedback surveys, and access loyalty points on the devices. As of now, they will not be able to order food. 

Now You Can Reorder Your Favorite Chipotle Meal With Alexa
Chipotle added a little extra beef to its existing Alexa efforts this week by announcing a reorder skill for the device that functions just as it sounds. Customers download the Alexa app, enable the Chipotle skill, link up their Chipotle profile, and say something like “Alexa, tell Chipotle to reorder my favorite for delivery.” While a very incremental development in the world of restaurant tech, as voice-enabled technologies improve and become more integral to the order process, we’ll see more restaurant chains offering similar functions for repeat customers.

DoorDash May Go for a Direct Stock Listing Instead of an IPO
There have been plenty of rumors about DoorDash’s IPO, which we first heard rumblings about in August. But according to Bloomberg, DoorDash many now opt for a direct stock listing, which would allow it to enter the public markets without incurring the burden of investor pressures that go hand-in-hand with IPOs. This is an approach both Slack and Spotify took when they entered the public markets, and it’s one that lets companies save on bank fees. Whether this is the better approach for food delivery companies, who continue to struggle with the problem of becoming profitable businesses, remains to be seen.

Presto Launches Computer Vision System for Front-of-House Restaurant Operations

Redwood, CA-based restaurant-tech company Presto has launched a a computer vision product that monitors the front of house in the restaurant and alerts managers in real time to any potential problems.

Called Presto Vision, the system leverages the same computer vision technology found in automated toll booths, traffic monitoring, and Amazon Go cashierless stores. Presto Vision uses cameras placed in the restaurant lobby to tag staff and guests and analyze their motions in real time. The company makes a point of saying it doesn’t track or store information that would personally identify someone. Rather, it “models individuals as abstracted entities (e.g., boxes)” to gather data on things like guest interactions with the host, excessively long wait times, and if customers leave before getting seated because of those long waits.

The product joins Presto’s existing lineup of restaurant management tools, which also includes a tabletop terminal for guests, Presto A.I., and Presto Wearables.

In addition to monitoring the lobby, the system can alert a restaurant manager, via a mobile or wearable to device, to any potential problems. For example, Vision could tell a restaurant GM that the host station has been empty for 10 minutes, and the GM could then immediately send someone to fill in, to keep wait times for customers down. The system also generates next-day reports that include data on things like bounce rates (i.e., how many customers left before getting seated) and how tidy the lobby area is.

“With this product, restaurants can now have access to critical insights on how their stores actually work. This helps them provide better service, operate more efficiently, and reduce overhead,” said Rajat Suri, Presto’s founder and CEO, said in a statement.

Suri, who is also the cofounder of Lyft, founded Presto in 2008 after working in restaurants and prototyping a product based on his observations of front-of-house activity. The company raised $30 million in February of this year.

Right now, Presto Vision is currently only being tested in the lobby area at undisclosed Outback Steakhouse locations. Presto says it plans to expand the product to other parts of the restaurant soon, including the back of house, the dining room, and curbside areas.

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.

Presto Raises $30M Growth Round For Its Front of House Restaurant Tech

Presto, whose tech suite helps restaurants organize and manage their front of house, announced today it has raised $30 million in growth funding. The round was led by Recruit Holdings and Romulus Capital, with participation from I2BF Global Ventures, EG Capital, and Brainchild Holdings.

In an interview with The Spoon, Presto founder and CEO Rajat Suri said the new funds will go towards further developing the company’s products, which it expanded earlier this year to include Presto Wearable and Presto A.I., in addition to the company’s tabletop terminal, PrestoPrime.

Suri, who is also the cofounder of Lyft, launched Presto in 2008 after a year spent working in restaurants and prototyping the PrestoPrime based on his observations. The device, which lives on restaurant tabletops, lets guests order, pay, leave feedback and play games while waiting for their food.

If the restaurant is also using Presto’s wearable technology, the terminal can notify a server directly when a guest has a specific need, whether it’s about a soda refill or an undercooked steak.

Those wearables come in the form of an app that’s compatible with any Android device. As Suri points out, wearables like smartwatches make the most sense, since restaurant managers don’t love servers having their phones out and since those devices would be cumbersome anyway during a fast-paced dinner rush. The plus side of having wearable tech sending instant notifications is that it can help a restaurant catch issues as they arise. If that undercooked steak arrives and the guest files a negative comment, it will be able to address the issue in real time, before the customer leaves. If a guest asks for a side of sour cream, the request reaches the server in the form of a digital notification, which is a lot harder to forget and could even help create more accountability, since everything has a digital footprint.

There’s an obvious downside to these real-time updates, though. Guest ratings via technology can affect a server’s bottom line if the manager starts scheduling that person for the slowest shifts due to low ratings. Maybe in some cases that’s justified, but anyone who’s ever worked in a restaurant knows, unhappy customers aren’t necessarily the fault of the server waiting on them.

Suri, of course, has his own restaurant experience, which he’s clearly putting to good use when it comes to how Presto positions these wearables in its array of products. Rather than notify the server (or the GM) about every single activity and issue, Presto Wearable is about important notifications only. “Wearables are meant to cover the biggest gaps, not every gap,” he notes.

And even if an operator wanted their employees to get every last piece of data in the restaurant, that would be impossible for humans to do in any meaningful way. “There’s so much important information coming from various different sources that staff workers can’t make sense of it,” explains Suri of the restaurant operation nowadays. “[Workers] can’t improve on their predictions in a systematic way.” AI, on the other hand, can, and Presto A.I. does the heavy lifting where most of the data is concerned. If it’s Tuesday afternoon, the system can pull weather data or data about external events and make predictions for the Friday night shift. Maybe that college football game around the corner will increase traffic that night. Perhaps bad weather will lessen the number of guests. Presto’s system processes all this data and makes such predictions to help operators better predict and accordingly.

Restaurants who use Presto can pick and choose which of its technologies to use, though as Suri points out, smart restaurants should at this point be making some kind of investment in technology to improve front-of-house operations. “The industry is ripe for change,” he says. “Labor has never had so many options as they do now and the industry has to change because of that to stay relevant. A lot of our partners realize that, and that’s why they’re adopting a lot more solutions.”

Presto currently partners with, according to the company, “five of the top 10 restaurant chains.” Suri wouldn’t go into specific companies (Applebees and Red Lobster are clients), only adding that the company “doubled last year we expect to double again this year in terms of revenues in terms of team size.”

Will Wearable Tech and Artificial Intelligence Help or Hinder Restaurants?

Restaurant tech company Presto dropped a couple new products today for front-of-house operations in the restaurant: Presto Wearables and Presto A.I. These join Presto’s tabletop terminal, on which guests can order, pay, report feedback, and contact the manager if needs be.

According to a press release, Presto Wearables are smartwatch-like devices that notify the servers wearing them of a customer’s needs (e.g., refill table six’s Diet Coke). In the event of a bigger issue, guests can also notify the manager via the wearable device. Presto A.I., meanwhile, does real-time data analytics and predictive modeling, both of which typically improve things like inventory management and labor costs.

Presto launched in 2008 after founder Rajat Suri — also a cofounder of Lyft — dropped out of MIT and spent a year waiting tables and testing a prototype device. The ensuing tabletop terminal, dubbed PrestoPrime, allows guests to order, pay, play games, and leave feedback, and is currently at major chains like Outback Steakhouse and Applebee’s.

One thing Suri highlighted was the “easy to use” aspect of the new offerings, which brings up a certain issue. Recently, I had a conversation with someone in the restaurant industry about the burden GMs now shoulder of having to not just manage a restaurant but also act as de facto IT person for the many devices and software systems now part of a restaurant’s operations. Which is to say, wearable tech and A.I. sound great in theory, but it’s too soon yet to tell whether these new offerings will be a blessing or another tech burden for GMs to wrestle with. Plus, rating a server via tablet has gotten an understandably bad rap; I can’t imagine expanding that capability to a device the server is wearing will make the idea any more palatable.

As for AI, it’s currently sweeping the restaurant industry, from voice ordering to more robust POS systems to facial recognition. Given that, Presto will definitely face competition in this area.

The company may stand out more on the wearables front, since that’s an area that hasn’t really entered the restaurant industry as of yet. Oracle’s Restaurant 2025 report from last year found that only about half of restaurant operators surveyed found the idea of wearable tech appealing; fewer than half of consumers surveyed said they would use the tech for things like ordering.
 
Presto’s device isn’t yet primed for ordering capabilities, but it does seem like the logical next step. And if Presto’s watch-like device can grab the same high-profile chains its tabletop device did, we may start to see more wearables on the dining room floor in future.