The 3 Technologies MULO Restaurant Businesses Need Today: A Chat with Eric Seymour

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Eric Seymour is the VP of Channel Programs at me&u. The company provides tech-powered ordering to restaurants.  He believes strongly that the right technologies, combined with the best possible human-customer interaction, can help solve many of the problems multi-location (MULO) restaurants face today in terms of service and satisfaction today. What are the top three […]

Hire Purpose: Five Creative Ways to Help Solve the Staff Shortage

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Restaurants have nearly 2 million unfilled jobs, and retailers are down about 5.5 million workers. If you work in these industries, you probably know the many reasons behind the staff shortage. The after-effects of the pandemic, demographic shifts, and the pressures of competitive salaries in other industries have created a huge challenge for hiring managers […]

Primanti Bros

CEO Adam Golomb on How Restaurant Chain Primanti Bros Is Evolving

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Primanti Bros. has 41 locations across Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Ohio, and Maryland, with three more to open by year’s end. CEO Adam Golomb and his team are deep in planning for summer events to commemorate the 90th anniversary of Primanti Bros. 

Hyperlocal Restaurant Advertising Hits CTV

Hyperlocal Restaurant Advertising Hits CTV

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Roku’s new partnership with DoorDash builds a channel for CTV advertising for local restaurants that already work with DoorDash. The multi-year deal in North America offers DoorDash merchants the ability to buy and deploy interactive and shoppable ads that let users click-to-order food deliveries on the spot.

6 AI-Based Voice Ordering Systems for Restaurants

6 AI-Based Voice Ordering Systems for Restaurants

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A growing number of restaurant chains are deploying AI ordering systems to streamline phone orders and digitize their off-premise business. 

Location-Based Marketing Association: Meta Goes After Restaurant Sales

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In this episode of Location Weekly, the Location-Based Marketing Association covers BC Transit debuting NextRide real-time transit info, PayTile launching a geo-location payment app, Meta going after restaurant sales, and Immertia releasing an AR packaging platform.

How Local Human-Driven Outreach is Helping Multi-Location Restaurants Grow Sales

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Seeing first-hand the challenges that restaurants are facing as the founder and CEO of the digital marketing startup Field Day, Alex Nocifera recently rolled out a local subscription service that uses human-to-human connections to help restaurant brands manage local sales opportunities for catering. The program is primarily aimed at local franchise operators, offering last-mile marketing outreach to drive demand.

NFT

How Restaurant Chains Are Using NFTs in 2022

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What was once an approach used primarily by fashion brands, like Gucci, Adidas, and Louis Vuitton, is now being adapted for the restaurant industry. Fast food giants like McDonald’s are using NFTs to energize their social media followers, while other restaurant chains are allowing investors to use NFTs to buy shares in brand franchise fees and adding virtual ordering and online delivery to their metaverse presence.

Super Bowl Advertising

Could Delivery Service Partners Offer Restaurants More Than a Lifeline?

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Data and AI enabled the digitization of advertising a decade ago. Now, those same forces that drove innovation and transformation in advertising are changing the dynamics between restaurants and delivery service partners. DSPs are becoming more than a lifeline. They’re helping fundamentally change how restaurants and the industry operate while also helping to create the omnichannel restaurant business of the future.

Text Marketing Delivers Massive Lift for Restaurants in 2021

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New data from the customer relationship management platform Mobivity shows that text message marketing subscribers visit businesses 44% more frequently than non-subscribers, and once a consumer joins a restaurant’s text messaging program, the guest’s spend increases by 23%. Measured over six months, a single text subscriber can be valued at $12.15 on average in incremental revenue.

Yelp Guest Manager

Yelp Introduces Guest Manager, A Front-of-House Operations Tool for Restaurants

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Yelp today introduced a new, comprehensive solution for restaurants to manage their front-of-house operations. With online searches for takeout remaining above pre-pandemic levels, the new Yelp Guest Manager is being billed as a comprehensive solution that brings together many of the digital tools restaurants have been using to manage digital ordering, reservations, takeout, guest loyalty, and table management.

Yelp Launches New Takeout Management Tools for Restaurants

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Yelp announced that it would be evolving its Waitlist system and introducing new features designed to streamline restaurants’ front-of-house operations.

Super Bowl Advertising

The Customer Touchpoints Businesses Aren’t Thinking Enough About

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Businesses can’t ignore that more and more of their success is linked to apps and services they don’t own. They need to get a view of customer touchpoints.

How Restaurants Are Using Interactive AR in 2021

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Restaurants, retailers, and other local businesses looking to engage customers in a socially-distant way are giving AR-enabled interactive experiences a try.

Google’s Latest Privacy Play Has Big Implications for the Open Web

Connecting the Dots on Google’s Visual Road Map

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Google continues to double down on visual search and navigation. Its latest move came last week with updates to its Live View visual navigation to help users identify and qualify local businesses. This follows soon after its Earth Cloud Anchors that will let users create digital content on physical places.

Both developments tell us something about what may well be the future of local search: augmented reality-enhanced visuals.

Self-Serve Restaurant Ordering in a Post-Covid World

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We expect to see a continued rise in touchless retail shopping and contactless transactions à la Amazon Go Stores.

But one of the less-discussed technologies in the Covid-advantaged bucket is self-serve mobile restaurant ordering. The idea is that ordering and paying from your table can reduce server interaction — which has Covid and non-Covid benefits considering it can save diners’ lives and their time.

Heard on the Street, Episode 54: Augmenting Local Commerce

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AR’s impact on local is playing out in many ways, including Google’s “internet of places” aspirations to let you point your phone at storefronts to reveal information like business details and reviews. It’s also happening in brand advertising activations to let consumers visualize products in 3D through mobile AR interfaces.

M7 founder Matt Maher tells us there are several advantages to this new flavor of brand marketing. AR’s immersion creates strong consumer engagement, which can be seen in metrics like session lengths. In-store activations mean lower-funnel impact near the point of purchase.

How Restaurants Can Capture More Customer Demand With Email

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Email is often the primary channel for restaurants to stay in touch with customers and let them know about changes. When email is done right, there are many small ways restaurants can use it to personalize messaging, drive more engagement, and make their lives easier with scalable best practices.

5 Ways to Reduce Errors in Voice Ordering

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Restaurant chains like Wingstop, Domino’s, Panera, and Round Table have created their own skills to make it easier for people to place orders through voice assistants like Amazon’s Echo and Google Home. But before voice ordering can truly disrupt the restaurant industry, restaurants have to find ways to reduce the friction and eliminate the kinds of errors that lead to the wrong orders being delivered.

Here’s how some of the country’s top restaurant chains are overcoming the challenges associated with voice ordering and developing more frictionless customer experiences.

“Alexa, Order Pizza!” How Voice Ordering Will Impact Restaurants

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The numbers suggest consumers might be ready to start ordering food and beverages via voice, and voice shopping via at-home smart speakers is projected to reach $40 million in revenue by 2022. In 2020, we’ll see consumers leveraging this technology at a growing rate. In advance of this increase in adoption, restaurants will need to ensure they will be compatible with connected consumer devices.

In order to keep up with the likes of Dunkin’, Denny’s and Domino’s, restaurants of all sizes need to optimize their tech stacks and diversify their strategies.