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Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

vending machines

Civic Technologies Powers Age Verification Tech in New Vending Machine

Something we’ve pondered here at The Spoon is how age verification might work for vending machines that sell beer or booze. We’ve seen other automated alcohol dispensers like Hop Robotics and Rotender rely on the venue where they are installed to have humans do the ID checking (think: a beer garden area at a festival). But Civic Technology announced today a new vending machine that uses blockchain, face mapping and QR codes to verify the age of the purchaser.

The new machine from Civic was developed in conjunction with Black Fire Innovation (a hospitality tech hub created by Caesars Entertainment and the University of Nevada, Las Vegas). It is proof-of-concept only. It currently serves non-alcoholic drinks to Black Fire’s tenants, but it’s meant to show off how Civic’s age verification technology works. Civic wants to show how it can confirm that a user’s ID information is correct and not altered, and that that ID information is being kept private and secure.

To make an age-restricted purchase through the vending machine, a user must first download the Civic Wallet mobile app and register their information. To do so, a user must verify their phone number and email address, and scan their official ID document (Civic works with 4,000 different documents types across 95 countries). Users then must take a 3D selfie to map their face, which Civic then matches with the ID document provided.

At the vending machine, Civic uses Identity.com‘s open-source age verification ecosystem. A QR code is presented to the user, which they scan with the Civic Wallet app. The user then shows their face to the phone which matches that with the verified ID information. It’s important to note that no personal information is being exchanged with the machine. A person’s data is stored on their phone and all that is being transmitted to the vending machine is a yes or no. Either the user is an age verified person making the transaction or not. The transaction then becomes an entry and recorded on using blockchain technology.

The ability for an unattended machine to verify ages before purchases could be a boon to venues like hotels and stadiums. For instance, sales of canned beer and hard seltzers could shift over to a vending machine and free up human workers to focus on more complicated (and profitable) cocktails or other aspects of customer service. Normally when I talk about vending machines, I also tout the fact that they can work around the clock, but in the case of alcohol, that might not be a benefit for everyone.

Civic is one of a few verification systems we’ve seen coming to market. In 2019, Pan Pacific debuted the SmartPan Pro beer vending machine that used finger vein biometrics for verification. Prior to that, CLEAR, of airport security fame, had its own biometric, pay and verify your age with your finger technology at stadiums. Though, one has to wonder if the finger biometric has lost its appeal post-COVID, when retailers are looking for more contactless experiences.

The pandemic has accelerated all kinds of interest in automation and robotics and generally removing human-to-human contact during retail transactions. Unattended age verifying vending machines could certainly be a part of that movement.

Low-Tech: Casters Added Mobility to Chowbotics’ Vending Machines

I write about the new wave of smart vending machines a lot. And when I do, it’s almost always in the context of a fixed installation. Airports or corporate campuses and the like can tuck vending machines away in an alcove or corner and just leave them there for customers to find. But what if those vending machines were made mobile using a basic piece of hardware you can find at any Home Depot?

During her talk at our ArticulATE food automation conference this week, Chowbotics/DoorDash Head of Marketing & Design, Mara Behrens, explained how some of Chowbotics’ Sally robots were made mobile by putting them on casters. By literally putting Sally on wheels, the vending machine could be moved around a building to where hungry people are throughout the day and night.

For instance, in a hospital a Sally could be easily moved around when a particular area is closed for the night. Or in an office building, a vending machine could be moved between floors to accommodate different worker shifts.

Throughout the day at ArticulATE, we had discussed drones whizzing across Ireland’s skies to drop off lattes at people’s homes, robots packed with groceries traversing sidewalks and autonomous robot cooks capable of creating hundreds of different dishes — all modern technological miracles. But this basic caster idea stuck with me because of its simplicity.

There are companies like Yo-Kai Express, which is making an autonomous vending machine for college campuses that can be hailed to come to your location. And Fanbot roams malls, fully stocked with snacks and drinks to sell. Those solutions are great and I look forward to using them some day! But they are also expensive to outfit and require a team of people to design and implement.

Industrial casters on the other hand, are around $15 apiece. They are certainly not high-tech solution, but not every solution needs to be.

EBar Automates Beer Pouring at Events, Aims to Equity Crowdfund £275,001

As people return to sporting and live events, they won’t have to wait as long for a beer. Well, they won’t have to wait as long in Europe, because a number of robotic beer-pouring solutions are coming to market there.

The latest entrant to the robo-beer pouring space is EBar, a startup based in Aberdeen, United Kingdom, which makes what is essentially a beer dispensing vending machine. From the video description (see below), the EBar is more about volume than variety. There are just two kegs plugged into the back of the machine, so don’t expect an extensive menu of artisanal beer choices. Customers order via on-board touchscreen, take cups from the built-in dispenser and place them in the machine. The EBar then pours out what looks like a pretty perfect cup of a beer, complete with appropriately-sized foamy head, in under 30 seconds.

The EBar is built for large venues like stadiums and outdoor festivals, where people want their drinks quickly and don’t care as much about whether the beer they are getting is an IPA or a Stout. Additionally, since there is no server, the machine reduces the amount of human-to-human contact when getting a drink — an important factor in this emerging post-pandemic world.

EBar calls its business model Beer as a Service. Rather than installing and leasing machines in a single location, they move the machines around from venue to venue and charge a commission on all the sales. This is a smart play for the company because potential venues don’t have to spend money up front for the machine, and EBar can look at the data to determine which are the best events/times/locations to set up their machines to maximize revenue.

EBar is in the middle of an equity crowdfunding campaign and aiming to raise £275,001 (~$387,827 USD). The company says that despite the pandemic shutting most events down in 2020, its machines were still being used by thousands of customers. As venues re-open and people return to sporting events and concerts, it’s easy to see how having multiple EBars on-hand could come in handy. (This news post should not be considered investment advice.)

Europe appears to be a hotbed of automated beer pouring activity. In Poland, the Revolmatic is a smaller, counterop machine also built for large events that cranks out cups of beer. And over in Spain, Macco Robotics’ humanoid Kime robot pours beer, but isn’t really built as much for speed and volume.

Large events are actually good use cases for automation because attendees are at a venue to see a concert or a game, not stand in long lines for drink.

If you want to know more about the future of vending machines, then be sure to attend ArticulATE, our food robotics and automation summit on May 18. We’ll have speakers from smart vending companies like Yo-Kai Express, Rotender and Calvary Robotics. Get your ticket today!

Is the College Market Back in Session? Yo-Kai Express Installs Machines at U. of Arizona

Yo-Kai Express is heading off to college to feed hot ramen to hungry students. Over the weekend, company founder and CEO Andy Lin posted a picture on Linkedin of Yo-Kai’s newest vending machine installation at the University of Arizona.

In a follow up email sent to The Spoon, Yo-Kai COO Amanda Tsung said that the company now has 25 machines live. The hot ramen vending kiosks are located across corporate campuses, hotels, retail locations, airports and now, colleges. The University of Arizona will actually be getting two additional Yo-Kais once students and faculty return.

In addition to the University of Arizona, Yo-Kai has installations going in at the University of California at San Francisco Medical Center Parnassus and the University of San Diego. Machines will accept student dining programs as a form a payment.

College campuses were becoming quite the hot spot for automated vending machines like Chowbotics and Blendid prior to the pandemic. Colleges are a good target location for unattended vending machines because they have a sizable population of students that don’t necessarily constrain their mealtimes to normal daylight hours. Vending machines can operate around the clock, and have the ability nowadays to serve up pretty complex food like ramen and grain bowls.

Yo-Kai could be a canary in the coalmine — a sign that the college campus market could be back in play for automated vending companies. With overall infection rates in the U.S. declining (knocks on wood) and vaccine efforts ramping up, students going back to college in the fall could mark a return to “normal” (whatever that will actually mean).

Relatedly, last month the San Francisco Airport gave the go-ahead to Cafe X to reopen its robot barista in the Terminal 3 location as foot traffic there ticked back up. Airports, too, could once again be a more thriving location for vending machines as travel increases.

For those vending startups that have successfully weathered the COVID-19 storm thus far, this should be welcome news that more opportunities lie ahead.

PizzaForno Bringing its Pizza Vending Machines to the U.S. Next Month

Like so many other startups in the space, PizzaForno doesn’t like to call its product a “vending machine.” That term carries with it a lot of baggage, conjuring up coils of stale snacks. Instead, the company makes “Automated Pizza Ovens.” But regardless of what you call it, PizzaForno is bringing its 24-hour, unattended pizza kiosk to the U.S. next month.

Based near Toronto, Canada, PizzaForno has 25 such machines in operation already in Ontario. They work pretty much as you’d expect. Customers walk up to the machine, place an order through the touchscreen (a mobile app is forthcoming) and roughly twelve dollars and two minutes later, a 12 inch piping hot pizza is dispensed.

While PizzaForno, the company, is based in Canada, it’s using technology from an undisclosed company in France. Each machine holds 70 pre-made pizzas (typically eight different varieties), and features a convection technology that blast hot air to cook the pizza.

PizzaForno’s go-to market is a little different from other players in the automated pizza space. Piestro is building its own brand and licensed pizza vending robots, and API Tech makes machines that are then branded by a third party. PizzaForno wants to build its own food brand and is using a licensing model to expand its presence.

Licensees will pay between $115,000 – $125,000 for the machine, materials and territorial rights. They will then negotiate with landlords for location space, and handle maintenance, operational and logistical matters. The first machine U.S. will be placed in Jackson, Michigan in February.

As I wrote last year, smart vending machines are going through a re-invention, one partly spurred on by the global pandemic that has consumers wanting contactless food retail experiences. Vending machines keep ingredients safe from outside germs, don’t require humans to serve up food, and can operate around the clock.

But it’s also a reinvention because the food these machines make is just better than it used to be. It’s no longer packaged snacks. Instead, it is hot, fresh food created by what is essentially a small restaurant-in-a-box. Ramen, salad, bowl foods — vending machines are making it all these days.

Pizza in particular is turning into a hot sub-category for automated vending services. In addition to Piestro and API Tech, Basil Street has its “Automated Pizza Kitchen” and Bake Xpress offers personal pizzas among its baked goods.

The question for PizzaForno is whether its licensee approach will work. Pizza vending machines are still a relatively new concept. People immediately know what they’d get from a Domino’s Pizza vending machine, regardless of who made the actual machine. And while it isn’t exactly hard to figure out what PizzaForno makes, consumers won’t be familiar with the brand or the product. Hungry folks may be more hesitant to try it — even though it comes out of an “automated pizza oven.”

UPDATE: Though PizzaForno reps used the term “franchise” during my call with them, the company followed up to say the correct term was “license.” Also, the location of the first Michigan machine changed after the publication of this article. It has been updated to reflect these changes.

Fresh Idea: Milk Vending Machines on Dairy Farms in the U.K.

With modern day vending machines dispensing everything from pizza and hot ramen to smoothies and boba tea, it was only a matter of time until some enterprising dairy farmers started using vending machines to sell farm-fresh milk.

The Daily Mail posted a story today about two different dairy farms in the U.K. who started selling their milk in unattended vending machines. The impetus for the new machines was recent milk shortages at local grocery stores, thanks in part to the pandemic.

The story mentions the Townsend Farm in Bicester, England, and the Mynydd Mostyn in Berthengam, Wales, both of which sell milk in glass bottles.

On the Townsend Farm, The Milk Churn machine operates from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., seven days a week. According to the family running the farm, the machine gets hundreds of customers each week. In addition to selling straight milk, The Milk Churn also sells syrups for flavored milk (chocolate, strawberry, etc.).

This is actually the second time we’ve written about farmers turning to vending machines during the pandemic. Last month we covered produce farms in France selling fruits, vegetables, eggs and more through unattended vending machines. At least one French farmer reported their vending machine generating tens of thousands of dollars a month in revenue.

Both of these instances show the versatility of modern vending machines. Vending machines don’t require a lot of space or labor and allow farmers to create retail experiences without the need for building out a full store. Vending machines are also capable of handling fresh and perishable items, opening up new retail possibilities that weren’t around before.

I’ll be curious to see if vending machines hop across the pond to farms here in the U.S. Independent farms located somewhat near residential areas could add a revenue stream through unattended retail. And as farmers in France noted, they can sell farm fresh produce for less than what it would cost at the supermarket because there is no markup.

Given all the innovation that’s happening right now, I expect we’ll see a lot of new use cases, errr, milking vending machines for all they are worth this year.

Farmers in France Set Up Vending Machines to Sell Food

Typically when we write about vending machines, it’s in the context of quickly feeding lots of people in high-traffic areas: airports, office buildings, hospitals, etc. We don’t generally think of vending machines in the bucolic farmlands of rural France, but now we might start.

Barron’s has a story up this week about Le Casier Francais, which makes automat-style vending machines. The company has seen a surge in interest from farmers this year thanks to the pandemic. The vending machines allow farms to sell fruits, vegetables, eggs and more directly to consumers who, thanks to COVID, prefer to interact with a vending machine rather than go inside a farm store.

Le Casier Francais machines aren’t cheap, costing between €40,000-50,000 (~ $48,000 – $60,000 USD). But as Barron’s reports, farmers are recouping their investment pretty quickly. One such farmer says he generated between €10,000 – 15,000 (~ $12,000 – $18,000 USD) per month.

Though farms aren’t the first place to spring to mind when thinking about vending machines, the idea actually makes a lot of sense. First, the pandemic has both sellers and buyers thinking of more contactless retail experiences like unattended vending machines. Second, vending machines give people access to fresh food 24 hours a day. And, because farms are selling direct, goods can be sold for less than they would cost at the grocery store.

But perhaps the biggest reason vending machines on farms makes sense is that the entire vending machine category is evolving into something completely new and modern. They aren’t just hulking metal boxes filled with coils of packaged cookies and gum sitting in dimly lit alcoves. Companies like Yo-Kai are serving complex dishes like hot ramen from vending machines, while Chowbotics and Fresh Bowl offer access to healthy, fresh salads.

What these French farmers illustrate is that when it comes to vending machines, we shouldn’t just think about putting them where the people are, we should also be putting them where the food is.

VEAT Raises €0.5M Pre-Seed Round, Launches Vending Machine for Plant-Based Foods

Swedish startup VEAT, which makes vending machines that dispense plant-based grab-and-go food, announced today that it has raised a €0.5 million (~$.7 million USD) pre-Seed round of funding. Investors in the round include Pale Blue Dot, Robert Ahldin, Erik Segerborg, Purple Orange Ventures, and Shio Equity.

According to the press announcement emailed to The Spoon, VEAT vending machines will offer a selection of salads, wraps, ready-to-heat meals as well as drinks and snacks. Prices for meals range from 29 Swedish Krona ($3.37 USD) to 85 Swedish Krona ($9.89 USD).

The first VEAT machine was deployed in Stockholm, Sweden earlier this month, and future machines will be placed in large department stores, co-working spaces and office buildings. The company plans to launch 10 machines before the end of the year in Stockholm.

VEAT sits nicely in the middle of a couple of trends we are following here at The Spoon. The first is the continued growth in sales of plant-based foods, which received an extra boost this year as the pandemic highlighted ethical and logistical problems with animal-based meat production.

The other trend is the evolution of vending machines from purveyors of stale snacks to mini restaurants in a box. VEAT is similar to Fresh Bowl and Farmer’s Fridge here in the U.S. All of those companies make it easier for people to access fresh foods anytime of day, and do so without interacting with other humans, something that has become more important as COVID continues to loom large across the globe and contactless retail becomes the norm.

For more information on how the vending machine space is changing, check out The Great Vending Reinvention: The Spoon’s Smart Vending Machine Market Report, available to Spoon Plus members.

And though it’s not the company’s main mission, VEAT is also helping to combat food waste by donating any unsold food to local charities.

Nutrimeals Launched an App for Contactless Ordering at its Vending Machine

Nutrimeals launched its first vending machine roughly eight months ago in Calgary, Canada. Eight months ago is also around the same time the coronavirus began hitting North America.

That the two happened at the same time wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. Nutrimeals sells fresh, healthy, pre-cooked meals that just need to be reheated in a microwave. As I wrote earlier this year in The Great Vending Reinvention, the pandemic could provide a boost to automated vending machines like those of Nurtimeals (and Chowbotics and Yo-Kai Express) because they offer convenient full meals on-the-go in a more contactless environment, and there are no human hands serving up your food.

But at the time I also noted that vending machines need to take their current contactless options even further. Many vending machines right now still require you to touch a screen to place your order. Having lots of people paw at the same touchscreen of an unattended vending machine all day seems to negate all the other contactless benefits automated vending machines offer.

Which is why Nurtimeals launched its own app two weeks ago (hat tip to Vending Times). The Nutrimeals app lets customers check inventory of machines, reserve meals and pay for them all through their mobile phones so they don’t have to touch a screen. The meals are even dispensed in such a way that people don’t have to even have to touch the machine to get their food.

Originally the company, like so many other vending services, targeted airports, office buildings and other high-traffic areas as prime locations for its machines. But COVID pretty much shut down air traffic and offices, so now Nutrimeals is targeting residential buildings, and even hotels that don’t have their own food facilities.

Nutrimeals is bootstrapped and its main business remains a D2C meal prep subscription service. It has two vending machines up and running in Calgary and is looking to expand the food options in those machines to include snacks and salads.

Saladworks to Use Chowbotics’ Salad Making Robot for Market Expansion

Fast casual restaurant chain Saladworks announced today that it will be using Chowbotics’ Sally robot to expand into hospitals, universities and grocery stores. According to the press release, the Sally machines will feature Saladworks’ branding and exclusively carry menu items from Saladworks’ menu.

This deal actually makes a lot of sense. First, Sally is compact, coming in at only 3 ft. x 3 ft. This means the robot can be installed almost anywhere, and that Saladworks can extend its brand into high-traffic areas without needing to build out a full store. Plus, vending machines like Sally can run 24 hours a day.

Second, during this pandemic, restaurants (and consumers) have been looking for ways to reduce the amount of human-to-human contact involved in day-to-day foodservice operations. Not only does the Sally robot make the salads sans humans, it also keeps all of its 22 fresh ingredients sealed away in chambers which are themselves sealed up behind glass. Customers can literally see where their order is coming from as it is dispensed.

Finally, and some might say this is the most important thing, Sally makes a good salad. All the convenience and COVID-19 protections in the world don’t make a difference if no one wants to eat what you’re making.

One item of particular note in the press announcement is how Saladworks is targeting grocery stores in its go-to market. Prior to the pandemic, retailers were not too keen on robotic vending services like Sally because they were redundant to what grocery stores already offered. But as the coronavirus has grocery stores removing things like salad bars, those vending machines become more attractive. Just last month, ShopRite partnered with Chowbotics to put a Sally in its Carteret, NJ store. Having the Saladworks brand, which is probably more well known in certain geographic areas than Chowbotics, on the machine and the Saladworks menu could entice more people to try it out.

This is the second such restaurant partnership for Chowbotics, which previously partnered with SaladStation to roll out 50 Sally robots across seven states.

It’s not hard to imagine that Chowbotics has a steady pipeline of similar co-branded restaurant deals in the works. As noted above, the small footprint, low-cost and relatively low-touch aspects of robotic vending machines could make them attractive platforms for restaurants looking for growth opportunities during this pandemic.

I’ve written before that I’m all-in on robotic vending machines and even wrote a comprehensive report on the market landscape for our Spoon Plus premium service.

Yo-Kai Express Adding Boba Dessert to its Machine and Meal Kit

Pretty soon, you’ll be able to get more than just ramen from Yo-Kai Express vending machines and meal kits. Yo-Kai Founder and CEO, Andy Lin, shared on Linkedin today that his company will be adding a frosty dessert to its menus.

The Yo-Kai “signature snow ice,” Lin wrote, consists of “Himalayan salt whip cream with brown sugar boba black milk tea.” No specific timeframe was mentioned but Lin said the dessert would be available in Yo-Kai machines and home meal kits “soon.”

We reached out to Lin to fill in some details and will update the post when those arrive. Overall, this marks another bit of expansion for the vending machine startup.

When we first started covering Yo-Kai, its automated vending machines served hot ramen to customers in high-traffic areas like malls, airports and corporate campuses. But as the pandemic hit the U.S., those locations saw fewer and fewer people.

So, if people can’t come to you, you may as well go directly to them. In April of this year, Yo-Kai started selling ramen meal kits that ship directly to consumers’ doors (if you live on the West Coast).

Like the meal kits, the addition of a cool dessert isn’t too much of a surprise either. Once made, Yo-Kai’s bowls of ramen are frozen and stored that way inside the vending machine before being reheated. A similar, pre-made frosty snow ice dessert in a bowl seems like a pretty easy thing for the Yo-Kai machine to dispense as well.

It should also be noted that according to the Yo-Kai website, two of its machines are installed at Milk Tea labs in San Francisco and San Jose. So offering a boba/black milk tea doesn’t seem like that much of a stretch.

As I’ve written before, I’m all-in on vending machines (and wrote an extensive report on them for Spoon Plus Subscribers), in part because of their ability to offer really good food, from a very compact space around the clock. While I haven’t had the chance to test out Yo-Kai’s snow ice dessert, given how much I liked their ramen meal kit, it’s hard to imagine them making their first foray into desserts a bad one.

Why I’m All-in on Smart Vending Machines

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Vending machines are cool.

No, really! Between robotics, IoT and way better food, today’s vending machines are poised to be a great, pardon the phrase, disruptor in food tech.

To fully understand why I’m all-in on vending machines, you should check out my new report, The Great Vending Reinvention: The Spoon’s Smart Vending Machine Market Report over on Spoon Plus, our new research and virtual events membership community.

The report covers a ton of players in the space including Chowbotics, Yo-Kai, API-Tech and many, many more. I don’t want to spoil it for you, but here are just a few reasons I’m so excited about the smart vending machine space:

  1. COVID-19. If/when we all emerge from this pandemic, people will want fewer human hands touching their food. Smart vending machines literally keep all their ingredients inside a sealed box and provide automated service.
  2. Small footprint. Because they don’t require much physical space, they can be set up quickly almost anywhere and run around the clock. They also provide a lower-cost way to launch a food brand into new outlets (like existing retail spaces!).
  3. Better food. Robotic arms and fast service don’t amount to much if the food is junk. Thankfully, there is a new wave of machines making fresh food from menus created by actual chefs.

To be sure, things right now aren’t exactly rosy for the smart vending machine space. Cafe X shut down its SF locations, Stockwell shut down and the European Vending & Coffee Service Association said its operators are experiencing losses of up to 90 percent.

It’s not hard to understand why we’re in a dark time. Vending machines are meant to be in high-traffic areas where people want food quickly. Places like airports, offices and dorms. Guess what’s shut down right now? Airports, offices and dorms.

But as I lay out in the report, there’s reason to believe that new opportunities will arise, and with it the whole smart vending sector.

Sign up for Spoon Plus and take a look at the report let me know what you think.

Could Apple Clips Bring Contactless Payments into the Mainstream?

During Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference yesterday, Apple announced App Clips. Basically, it let’s you get can access specific functionality of an app without having to download the full version of that app.

So for example, you could visit a coffee shop and pay with your phone without having to download that coffee shop’s app, set up an account and enter credit card information. Everything is done through Apple Sign In and Apple Pay.

This is actually a big move in a pandemic world where contactless payment options will be more important when it comes to getting customers to eat inside restaurants again. Apple greasing the skids like this with its massive footprint could make contactless payments more ubiquitous.

Apple also showed off other potential uses for Clips, including finding a nearby restaurant and even interacting with connected kitchen services like Drop. Perhaps we’ll see micro-transactions for connected devices, like buying a recipe specifically for an appliance, rather than getting a premium subscription.

We’ll certainly be watching to see what kitchen uses Clips comes up with.

Investing into the Future of Restaurant Tech

Restaurants are going through an unprecedented time of flux. What are some of the opportunities and challenges ahead for the industry? Brita Rosenheim, a Partner at Better Food Ventures recently shared her thoughts on “the new normal” for restaurants and what they need to do to adapt. Following is an excerpt of her guest post (you should totally read the whole thing, though):

Convenience reigns supreme: The shift to take-out/delivery will reshape the basic premise of many restaurants

Well before COVID-related shutdowns, the increasing customer demands for convenience had already fueled a major shift from dine-in to take out/delivery. In 2019, we reached the tipping point where off-premise sales (drive-thru, takeout, delivery, catering) represented a majority of U.S. restaurant revenues. Now, intensified by a decimated restaurant industry and an uncertain socially distanced future, the growth of off-premise will only continue.

As restaurant operators increasingly respond to our “new normal”, we have seen many full-service restaurant concepts testing a more “fast casual” off-premise approach, with increased tech-focused integration, minimized employee/customer exposure, and a lot of creativity to inject hospitality into socially-distanced interactions.

The bottom line is that the restaurant experience – from QSR to Fine Dining – will increasingly no longer be confined to the four walls of a restaurant. We have reached an urgent point where the basic premise of dine-in restaurants must evolve in order to generate the sales volume and margins to remain financially viable.