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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

restaurant tech

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. 

Report: Prep, Cook, Automate – Where Tech Is Leading the Restaurant Back of House

Back-of-house processes in the restaurant tend to involve a lot more legacy hardware and closed-loop systems, which present significantly different challenges than those at the front of house. That in turn has created a slower innovation pipeline and less interest from investors. 

This report will examine current back of house processes and technologies as well as the drivers for innovation changing those things. 

 Back-of-house operations present a huge opportunity for tech companies and other startups willing to tackle the many problems that have yet to be solved in the space. Additionally, technological innovations in robotics, AI and machine learning will change the physical restaurant kitchen along with its labor needs and cooking and delivery systems.

This report is available to Spoon Plus members. To learn more about Spoon Plus, go here.

Choco Is Challenging L.A. Chefs to Curb Food Waste With Food Creativity

As the world’s food waste problem gets literally bigger each year, so too does the amount of creative effort tech companies are putting into fighting it. The latest of these comes in the form of the Waste is Gold campaign, a pop-up event in Los Angeles in which three restaurants will serve dishes created from the food byproduct in their own kitchens. Powering the event is restaurant tech company Choco, which has big ambitions for fighting food waste both now and in the future.

The pop-up event will take place from Nov. 19–21 at Counterpart Vegan in Echo Park, Strings of Life in West Hollywood, and Beelman’s in Downtown L.A. These restaurants’ chefs will create dishes made from food byproduct (e.g., tomato soup from leftover vegetables) that will be available for takeout or outdoor dining. Customers can order online via the Waste is Gold website.

Choco is best known for its mobile platform that connects restaurant kitchens directly with suppliers to more easily order and manage their inventory. The company raised $30.2 million back in April, around the time it also launched a direct-to-consumer channel in response to the pandemic and ensuing restaurant industry meltdown. 

But speaking to me on a call this week, Chelsea van Hooven, the Global Industry Advisor at Choco, said that the company’s overarching goal was to fight food waste, and that Choco is working on a number of different projects to raise awareness about the problem, including the Waste Is Gold campaign.

She noted that the inspiration for this campaign came after working with Matt Orlando, owner and chef at Amass, a zero-waste restaurant in Copenhagen, Denmark. In keeping with Orlando’s idea of building creative menus from food byproduct, Choco has given chefs participating in the Waste is Gold campaign a similar challenge.

For example, Mimi Williams, the executive chef for Counterpart Vegan, has created a ratatouille with spaghetti made from various parts of squash — parts that might normally be thrown out. Using more of the entire food, whether a squash, a pumpkin, or whatever else happens to be in the fridge, is lesson more chefs could take advantage of, and one that doesn’t necessarily require a lot of tech to execute on.

Tech, however, definitely has a role to play in the fight against food waste. For her part, van Hooven said that Choco is exploring the role of data in this area and how her company can provide a layer of it that will bring awareness and understanding of food waste to more restaurants. Tracking inventory data, and therefore food waste data, needs to become a part of daily business for restaurants. “We’re analyzing data in every field of our life, we should definitely use it for the better and optimize our food system,” she said. It’s a sentiment the food industry is voicing more these days as data’s critical role in fighting waste becomes more and more apparent.

While it’s still early days for Choco’s ambitions around creating that data layer, the pop-up restaurant events will definitely be making their way to more cities in the future. 

Square Moves Into the Restaurant Back of House With Square KDS

With COVID-19 restrictions putting the future of the restaurant front of house in question, many restaurant tech companies are turning to the back of house as the next area for innovation. Case in point: Today, Square, a company best known for its payments system, unveiled a kitchen display system that organizes and displays the flow of tickets coming into the back of house from multiple different sales channels. The feature is available to new and existing Square for Restaurants subscribers, according to a press release sent to The Spoon.

Dubbed Square KDS, the system replaces paper tickets and can process orders coming from multiple different ordering sources — of which there are many these days. With restaurant dining rooms either closing again or operating at reduced capacity, more customers are ordering via delivery platforms (e.g., DoorDash) or restaurants’ digital storefronts, in addition to the business’ in-house POS system. The idea is to do away with humans having to manage these multiple order streams by automating the organization of each ticket and in the process speeding up the time it takes to receive, cook, and prep an order and get it out the door.

According to today’s press release the KDS system can also track how long the kitchen is taking to prepare orders at each step of the process. The feature is available to Square for Restaurants customers as of now, with the option to try the product free for 30 days. 

Square’s new system is tackling the same challenge delivery integrators like ChowNow, Chowly, and Ordermark have been doing for some time now. The big difference is that Square is also a payments processing company with an existing suite of restaurant tech including a POS system. In theory, at least, that means adding one less piece of tech to the stack for restaurants that are already using the Square for Restaurants system, of which KDS is now a part. At a time when restaurants have an overwhelming number of options to choose from when it comes to technology, a simpler setup could be enticing. 

Square’s move into the back of house is also wise considering the demand these days for ghost kitchens and the number of restaurants shifting from brick-and-mortar locations to delivery-only business models. In many cases, the days of the traditional restaurant dining room are gone as businesses evolve to stay relevant with the (highly turbulent) times. Restaurant companies must do the same, which is what Square looks to be doing with this latest product.

New Restaurant Restrictions Put the Value of Restaurant Tech to the Test

States and cities across the U.S. have imposed new restrictions and in some cases lockdowns that will once again shutter indoor dining. As they’ve done in the past, these restrictions once again call into question how restaurant tech can help restaurants pandemic-proof themselves and stay in business.

A stay-at-home order for Chicago residents goes into effect today. Restaurants must close by 11 p.m. each night and may only offer delivery, takeout, and outdoor seating. The city didn’t completely shutter indoor dining; it’s allowed so long as tables are within eight feet of an open window. But given Chicago’s typical wintertime temperatures, neither that nor patio seating will likely be popular options for diners right now.

New Mexico, and Oregon have imposed far tighter restrictions. Effective last week, Oregon restaurants and bars must return to takeout- and delivery-only service. New Mexico has similar restrictions as residents shelter under a two-week-long stay-at-home order.

Likewise, restaurants in Washington State and Michigan must halt indoor dining and stick to takeout and delivery models. Other states, including Minnesota and New York, have imposed curfews on restaurants, and for everyone, the threat of another lockdown looms large.

One difference this time around is that unlike in March, restaurants have more tools at their disposal when it comes to fulfilling off-premises orders. Since the early days of the pandemic, most restaurant tech companies have offered so-called “contactless” solutions that minimize human-to-human contact. Some parts of those packages, like QR-code-based ordering for the dining room, will be of little help right now, since there is no dining room in many places. But other features, such as software to power online order processing, could help restaurants fulfill takeout tickets faster and in a more organized fashion. Elsewhere, delivery integrators a la Chowly and ChowNow are now more widely used than in March and help restaurants manage delivery orders coming through multiple sales channels (DoorDash vs. Uber Eats vs. Caviar, for example). 

The option to go virtual is also more widely available. That point was underscored recently in the massive $120 million sum Ordermark raised for its NextBite platform, which pairs restaurants with kitchen space to help them develop and operate virtual restaurant brands. Along those lines, countless options for ghost kitchens have sprung up from the likes of Zuul, Virtual Kitchen, ShiftPixy, and many others. Still others, like restaurant chain Wow Bao, offer creative takes on the ghost kitchen/virtual restaurant concept that could benefit not only themselves but other local restaurants.

These and other tech solutions will undoubtedly help restaurants as they navigate new lockdowns and restrictions. The unknown factor is whether they will be enough. Big-name QSR brands have the deep pockets to turn their drive-thrus into digital innovation centers and reinvent their physical footprints, and restaurants with a certain level of demand will find ghost kitchens useful for pandemic-proofing operations. 

The indie restaurants will, however, struggle more than any other restaurant type. These are businesses that have neither the money to invest in sophisticated tech solutions nor the demand to justify a big ghost kitchen operation. Fee caps may help as far as delivery orders go: cities across the country have implemented mandatory caps on the commission fess third-party delivery services can charge these businesses, and if stricter lockdowns ensue, other municipalities may do the same. 

None of this guarantees a future for independent restaurants. One thing that hasn’t changed, not yet anyway, between previous spikes in the pandemic and this one is that off-premises remains a lifeline for restaurants, not the lifeline. Many restaurants still grapple with the fact that they were built — from the food they serve to the atmosphere they provide — for an on-premises experience. Developments to turn on-premises experiences into those suited for takeout and delivery are moving fast. Unfortunately, the pandemic is moving faster. Seen in that light, restaurant tech’s big priority right now should be helping smaller restaurants complete the transition from the dining room to the living room.

Reef Technology Raises $700M to Reinvent the Neighborhood, Including Ghost Kitchens

Reef Technology, which turns underutilized urban space into what it calls “neighborhood hubs,” announced today it has just raised a $700 million syndicate investment to further that vision. TechCrunch first reported the news. Softbank and Mubadala led the round, along with Oaktree, UBS Asset Management, and Target Global. This brings Reef’s total funding to $701.9 million.

Reef started its life as ParkJockey with the goal of more efficiently managing parking lots. Over time, however, the company has evolved from disruptor of parking lots to a real estate business that provides infrastructure for retail spaces, clinics, and cloud kitchens, among other ventures. The idea is to turn these underutilized spaces in cities into hubs for local neighborhood businesses. Think town square of olden days, only in this version it’s equipped with shipping containers that hold kitchens and stores and powered by software.

According to TechCrunch, Reef will use the new funds to scale from about 4,800 locations to 10,000 locations around the U.S. Ari Ojalvo, the company’s cofounder and chief executive, said ghost kitchens “will be a significant part of non-parking revenue” for Reef. 

These ghost kitchens are housed in Reef’s mobile trailers that can be parked virtually anywhere there is underutilized real estate. Restaurants wanting to offload delivery orders or those launching virtual concepts can rent the spaces. Right now, the kitchens house a mix of local and national brands across the country, including Saladworks, Wow Bao, and BurgerFi. Customers order meals via the major third-party delivery apps (DoorDash, Uber Eats, etc.).

Reef’s gargantuan fundraise comes a time when ghost kitchens, virtual restaurants, and virtual food halls are becoming an integral part of the restaurant industry. The future of the restaurant dining room still hangs in the balance — especially with winter coming and COVID-19 cases rising. That in turn is forcing restaurants, restaurant tech companies, and infrastructure providers like Reef to rethink the formats in which customers access to-go and delivery meals.

Euromonitor recently predicted the ghost kitchen sector will be worth $1 trillion by 2030, and there are investment dollars a plenty to support that projection. Ordermark just raised $120 million to build out its virtual restaurant network, which will utilize ghost kitchens. NYC-based Zuul raised another $9 million for its Big Apple-based concept. And outside the U.S., Yummy Corporation (Indonesia), iKcon (Dubai), and Zomato (India) have all raised capital in the last few months.

In Reef’s case, its kitchens also provide employees to prep the food in addition to physical space. The company has over 100 kitchens across 20 markets in North America. Between the ongoing pandemic and the new influx of investment, those numbers will rise quickly in the coming months. 

If you’re interested in diving deep into ghost kitchens, you won’t want to miss The Spoon’s upcoming ghost kitchen virtual event on December 9th.

Following Other Cities, San Francisco Halts Its Restaurant Reopening Plan

Another day, another grim piece of news for the restaurant biz. Over the weekend, San Francisco announced it will pause its reopening plan for indoor restaurant dining. The decision follows moves from a growing list of cities around the U.S. as cases of COVID-19 continue to break records.

SF restaurants were set to increase dine-in capacity from 25 percent to 50 percent on Nov. 3. Mayor London Breed said the pause, which also affects movie theaters, places of worship, and other public spaces, is a precautionary measure, even though the COVID-19 infection rate in San Francisco is currently low. “We’re still in the middle of a pandemic,” she said. “We are tired of COVID-19 but COVID-19 is not tired of us.”  

In the U.S., the seven-day average of new COVID-19 cases is the highest the country has seen. Around the world, countries are imposing new lockdowns that will affect indoor dining. And in addition to San Francisco, multiple cities in the U.S. are also restricting restaurant dining rooms. 

As of last Friday, Chicago banned indoor dining in response to rising COVID-19 cases (outdoor dining is still allowed). NYC has shut down dining rooms in certain neighborhoods, and in Los Angeles county, only outdoor seating is allowed.

The closures won’t stop with major cities. Communities across Massachusetts are already reversing reopening plans, as are New Mexico, Idaho, and Colorado. A large number of states remain reopened, but given the rise in COVID-19 numbers, not to mention the lockdowns happening in other parts of the world, that’s not likely to stay the case for long.   

Tripleseat Launches DirectBook to Take Private Event Catering Off-Premises

Event management platform Tripleseat announced today the launch of its DirectBook feature that streamlines the process of booking catered and private events with restaurants, hotels, and other hospitality companies. More importantly, the new feature allows businesses to provide such services to customers in off-premises settings — that is, outside a restaurant or hotel venue. 

It’s a seemingly valuable tool for the catering industry, which has so far been slower to go online than other industries. But as I’ll get into in a minute, it’s also launching at a confusing time for the restaurant industry as a whole, and certainly for catered events.

Over a phone call this week, Tripleseat founder and CEO Jonathan Morse said his company has been working on DirectBook for nearly a year. Historically, booking an event — think corporate events, weddings, birthdays, and bar mitzvahs — meant calling the restaurant and interacting with one or more staff members to choose a menu, reserve the space, and pay for the event, among other tasks. DirectBook bundles all of these together and puts them on the restaurant’s website so that a user interfaces with that rather than a bunch of different people. 

“There’s a lot of back and forth when you’re doing a catered event,” said Morse, adding that DirectBook “facilitates all the dialogue and last-mile logistics “without all the muss and fuss.”

The company has also incorporated an off-premises angle to this feature, which allows users to book catering services (food, tables, chairs, etc.) via DirectBook and have them delivered to a location (a park, your backyard) other than the restaurant or hotel. That makes sense, given that many restaurants and hotels can’t hold sizable gatherings due to state restrictions around COVID-19.

There’s no doubt that Tripleseat’s new feature could help event planners more easily manage their gatherings, and that restaurants could make some extra revenue from the process. But is now the best time to launch a tool that makes large(ish) gatherings easier? After all, DirectBook is kicking off at a time when the U.S. is seeing record numbers of COVID-19 cases. Some states are reimposing restrictions on the number of people allowed at any gathering, and others say that small gatherings are just as troublesome when it comes to spreading the virus.

Morse was quick to point out that DirectBook can be used for more than, say, a 50-person gathering. He cited the upcoming Thanksgiving holiday as an example. For years, restaurants of all types have offered Thanksgiving meals onsite, and many are now doing the same thing for delivery and takeout. Arranging a catered Thanksgiving meal for an extended family gathering would certainly be easier with a platform like DirectBook, given the amount of food needed. But again, there’s no getting around the risks of going to Grandma’s for a turkey dinner, especially since Grandma herself might be in the high-risk individual category. New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo has gone as far as to discourage these large family get-togethers for the holiday.

Taken together, all of this suggests a bit of a right train, wrong track scenario for the moment. Morse himself acknowledged on the phone that as of now, there is rightly so a lot of “doom and gloom around the restaurant industry” despite the interest the company is seeing in online event bookings.

Longer term, when large gatherings are once again safe, DirectBook could prove to be a very valuable piece of the restaurant tech stack when it comes to bringing some versatility and off-premises features to the catering world. Seen in that light, the feature is definitely one to watch. It’s just a matter of getting to the day when gatherings of any size are a little bit safer.

Popmenu Raises $17M to Expand Its Restaurant Software Capabilities

Popmenu, a platform for digital ordering and reservations for restaurants, announced this week it has raised a $17 million Series B round. The round was led by Bedrock Capital, with participation from existing investors Base10 Partners and Felicis Ventures, as well as new investors Mantis Ventures and Chapter One Ventures. This brings Popmenu’s total funding to $22.1 million. 

In a press release sent to The Spoon, Popmenu said It will use the new funds to develop new features for its platform, which currently allows restaurants to manage online ordering and menus, collect direct feedback from customers (as opposed to getting it via third-party platforms), manage reservations, and integrate with delivery and reservations services. 

Right now, one of the company’s main selling points is that it gives restaurants more control over their own branding, which is tough to do in the age of online delivery platforms and user-driven review sites like Yelp and Google. To give restaurants more of that brand control, Popmenu creates customized websites that include the aforementioned features and that allow the restaurants’ customers to upload their own photos, feedback, and reviews.

In response to the pandemic, Popmenu, like other restaurant tech companies, also launched its own version of contactless software that lets guests scan a QR code with their own smartphones to view and order from restaurant menus. 

In addition to contactless features, having more control over their own branding (and customer data) has surfaced as a priority for restaurants since the start of the pandemic. SKS panelists noted yesterday that more restaurants, from large chains to mom-and-pop shops, are starting to bring more elements of the off-premises experience back into their own control. ShiftPixy, a company that provides not just custom-branded websites but also delivery drivers, is a huge supporter of restaurant-controlled customer data. Square just launched a similar function.

Even delivery services, like Uber Eats, now offer restaurants the ability to process orders via their own websites. The catch with that last one, of course, is that Uber Eats still owns the customer data, which kind of renders the whole point of maintaining one’s own website null and void.

As more companies like Popmenu bring features to the table that put branding and data back in the hands of restaurants, there will inevitably be more pushback from third-party delivery.

SKS 2020: Ghost Kitchen’s Changing Tech Trends

The definition of “ghost kitchen” is changing rapidly as more restaurants go off-premises and even non-restaurant food entities, like grocery stores, hop onboard the trend.

But as was discussed during our ghost kitchen strategy panel at SKS 2020 this week, the common denominator beneath all shapes and sizes of ghost kitchens is the technology powering them. As Ashley Colpaart, CEO of The Food Corridor, said on the panel, ghost kitchens are all about “going direct to the consumer through technology platforms.”

Joining Colpaart and myself were Michael Schaefer, global lead for food and bev at Euromonitor, and Bolt Kitchen CEO Nick Avedesian. Everyone agreed there is a lot of technology being thrown at restaurant owners and ghost kitchen operators nowadays. This makes sense because, as Schaefer said, more of our dining experiences are getting mediated by the smartphone. Keeping that in mind, panelists pointed to a few different areas of tech that are especially important to the ghost kitchen operation right now.

One is software that can integrate the many different channels orders flow through from customer to kitchen. Most restaurants, large and small, work with more than one delivery partner, which causes a deluge of different orders from different channels in what’s commonly referred to as “tablet hell.” Using a delivery integrator (Olo and Chowly are two such companies) lessens the chance of an order getting lost in translation on its way to the kitchen and, Avedesian said, creates “a better experience for your staff.”

It’s not just the back-of-house that needs optimizing, though. Colpaart mentioned the need for “the shopping experience” — that is, the experience a customer has finding and ordering from a restaurant — to be as easy as possible. Along the same lines, restaurants themselves will need technologies that can help them become more visible in this brave new world of online delivery marketplaces and virtual food halls. Some solutions, like Lunchbox, are working very closely with restaurants on this visibility and marketing aspect.

Then there’s delivery, one of the restaurant biz’s most controversial topics right now. Among the (many) griefs with third-party delivery services a la Uber Eats and DoorDash right now is that restaurants can’t control their own branding or customer experience through these platforms. Some white label delivery services, like DoorDash Drive, are emerging to address this. Avedesian said said we will see a lot more of these white label, custom-branded solutions in future.

We may also see more delivery go in-house at restaurants. That trend was actually happening long before the pandemic, with Panera being a notable early adopter of the practice. Now, panelists said everyone from large enterprises to mom-and-pop shops are considering the native delivery experience. One group we may see doing this in large numbers in future is QSRs like the aforementioned Panera or Panda Express, which recently launched its own delivery program. 

Not discussed on the panel but something that sprang to my mind is this: Is this shift to native delivery creating an opportunity for restaurant tech companies to improve the in-house delivery experience? And will those innovations be enough to disrupt third-party delivery as we know it?

Stay tuned on that one.

SKS 2020 Day Three: Food Robots, Ghost Kitchens & a Tour of the Modernist Cuisine Kitchen

Yesterday at SKS was jam-packed with great insights and conversation.

Novameat printed meat for us, we learned Pat Brown believes cell-based meat will never be a thing, and Eat Just CEO Josh Tetrick outlined a four-phase plan to bring — you guessed it — cell-based meat to market. We also heard from Wired’s Joe Ray and ATK’s Lisa McManus on the proper way to use tech in the kitchen and headed into the labs, homes and headquarters of our Startup Showcase finalists to see what they’re building.

And we’re not done! Here’s what we have lined up for our final day of SKS 2020 Virtual:

Building Resiliency in Restaurants with Tech: We catch up with the leaders of Sweetgreen, Galley Solutions and Leanpath to hear how restaurants are using tech to build more resilient businesses during the pandemic.

The Online Grocery Explosion: Wall Street Journal’s Wilson Rothman talks to Shipt CEO Kelly Caruso about the changing nature of online grocery in 2020 and where it’s going in the future.

I, Restaurant: Chris Albrecht will sit down with the CEOs of Picnic, DishCraft and Bear Robotics to see how the adoption of robotics and automation is changing restaurants in the front and back of house.

The DoorDash Playbook: Brita Rosenheim will talk with DoorDash’s Tom Pickett about lessons learned and new opportunities in the food delivery market.

Ghost Kitchens Everywhere: Jenn Marston will talk with ghost kitchen and virtual restaurant experts about strategies for navigatng this red-hot market.

The OG in Molecular Gastronomy: We just added a early-day debut of my conversation with the guy who kicked off the molecular gastronomy revolution, Harold McGee, about his new book on smells and the state of cooking innovation. (Hint: he’s more excited about some other things going on in food innovation happening outside of the kitchen.)

Let’s Head Into the Modernist Kitchen: Speaking of molecular gastronomy, we’re getting a guided tour of the Modernist Cuisine by head chef Francisco Migoya.

Plus a whole lot more. (See schedule here.)

If you’d like to attend day three, you’re in luck! We’re offering a discounted day three ticket that gets you full access. See all the sessions, network with the community and more for just $99.

NPD: Restaurant Digital Orders Declined in August

Digital orders at restaurants dropped 17 percent in August, down from 20 percent in April of this year, according to NPD CREST’s latest monthly update.

While that’s not an enormous drop, it does suggest many people still prefer eating at restaurants to ordering ahead and picking the food up or having it delivered.

The slight downturn in digital sales coincides with the fact that in many cities, some form of dine-in service has been available for a few months now. “As the summer progressed and mandated restrictions were lifted, an increasing number of consumers became more comfortable dining out based on the safety protocols restaurants put in place,” says author and NPD food industry advisor David Portalatin.

Along those lines, NPD notes that on-premises service, whether in the dining room or with outdoor seating, have “improved every month since April” and that August trends reflect a restaurant industry operating with far fewer restrictions than were in place at the height of the pandemic.

Not that it hasn’t been a tough road for most restaurants over the last six months. Dine-in service may be available, but it’s with capacity restrictions almost everywhere. Meanwhile, many restaurant owners still struggle to pay rent, and there are questions around the fate of dine-in service once the weather grows cold enough to make outdoor dining an unlikely choice for many consumers (though creative solutions to this problem are emerging).

Some states are just now about to increase their capacity numbers inside restaurants, while others are on the cusp of reopening indoor dining for the first time since shutdowns began. At the same time, reports of rising COVID-19 cases are multiplying. How the pandemic’s trajectory travels for the next few months will most certainly impact what on-premises dining sales look like with NPD CREST’s next report. If extreme measures have to be taken again, digital orders could experience another surge.