Five Restaurant Technology Trends to Watch in 2023

The restaurant business has experienced a tumultuous ride over the past several years. We have had lockdowns, staffing shortages, and now inflationary increases. Thankfully, technology has helped us surmount these limitations. Never before have technology and the restaurant industry been so linked, and the food and beverage software used to survive the Covid pandemic is not going to go away.

While we may not soon be consuming digital burgers and virtual beer in the metaverse, this article will point out five restaurant technology developments to help you future-proof your business.

What Is Restaurant Technology?

Restaurant technology includes the tools, equipment, and computer programs that restaurants, cafes, and bars use daily. Technology makes both business processes and customer service run better.

Restaurant technologies, like hospitality software, are in a perpetual state of evolution. As the hospitality industry expands and becomes more competitive, restaurants must use the most recent technological developments. These advancements include tools for customer communication, social media management, inventory tracking, and menu engineering. The tools are designed by software development companies, and they aid in enhancing customer experience — a key priority for most restaurants.

How Restaurant Technology Has Changed the Food Business Outlook: Global Statistics in 2022

• 84% of diners look up their menu online before deciding on a new restaurant, up from 59% in 2017.
• 48% of diners say a menu available online is an important factor when dining in.
• 95% of restaurants use one or more online ordering platforms.
• As many ghost kitchen trends for 2021 and 2022 reveal, 52% of consumers are comfortable ordering from a delivery-only restaurant.
• More consumers are using digital wallets and Paypal. Consumer spending on PayPal equaled $8.1 billion.
• The food automation market was valued at US$11.29 billion in 2022 and is projected to reach US$18.60 billion by 2030, growing at a CAGR of 6.47% from 2023 to 2030.
• 67% of residents preferred using online delivery services to purchase food during the COVID-19 pandemic.
• 64% of millennial respondents say that food delivery and takeout are “essential to the way they live.”
• 57% of restaurants now offer a customer loyalty program.
• 86% of diners show interest in joining a loyalty program if it offers discounts and coupons.

Given the numerous changes occurring in the restaurant industry, restaurant owners and managers must keep up with the latest advancements. If you stay abreast of the upcoming restaurant technology trends, you can ensure that your restaurant will remain competitive in today’s dynamic market.

Five Innovative Restaurant Technologies That Are Going To Explode in 2023

There are a number of innovative restaurant technologies that industry professionals must be aware of in order to fully capitalize on them and meet customer expectations. These are outlined in detail below.

1. Contactless Dining: Future-Proof Your Restaurant

Whether through an app, a website, or a QR code-linked digital menu, contactless dining and payment processing will continue to be a primary trend beyond 2023.

As we go from a pandemic to a situation where the coronavirus is endemic, many customers are trying to limit their human-to-human contact, and a digital menu is one of the simplest methods for them to do so. Digital menus are not only more hygienic, but they also provide numerous other benefits for your business. A well-designed digital menu is flexible and easy to update. Unlike printed menus, which must be redesigned and reprinted, restaurant digital menus can have seasonal meals, as well as daily and weekly specials updated regularly.

Your guests can access your digital menu in various ways, but the quickest and most convenient is with a QR code. Most certainly, you’ve seen QR codes before. They are scannable photos that can link any smartphone user’s camera app to any Internet link, including a link to your restaurant’s digital menu.

In addition to being easily accessible via a QR code on devices such as a tablet, your digital menu should also be “mobile-friendly.” In 2023, most of your guests will use their phones instead of their laptops or desktop PCs to find restaurants and look at menus. Therefore, it is equally necessary to have a restaurant digital menu that works well on smaller screens.

QR codes and restaurant digital menus don’t have to be expensive, complicated, or take a lot of time to make. There are tools on the Internet that can create QR codes for you. In the same way, you might be able to find free online menu management software that can help you make digital menus that work better on mobile devices and look better than your printed menu. Many restaurant owners are now hiring software development companies to design an effective digital menu for their business.

2. On-Demand Food Delivery App: Restaurant Technology to Supercharge Your Business

During the pandemic, changes not only occurred with technology. Many of our habits also changed. The habits we developed during lockdown, such as ordering food for delivery, will continue to be significant for the restaurant industry’s future.

Third-party delivery apps such as Grubhub, DoorDash, and Uber Eats made it simple for consumers to enjoy dishes from their favorite restaurants without changing out of their jammies. Such food and beverage software is not without its flaws. It can involve charging high costs that reduce a restaurant’s bottom line, and when the food leaves your employees’ hands, quality control is lost.

The positives, however, outweigh the negatives. On-demand food delivery apps offer a substantial amount of free advertising, allowing you to reach people who are unfamiliar with your brand. In addition to providing free promotions, delivery apps are essential because consumers in the twenty-first century demand them. Unless you offer and push your own delivery service aggressively, you will likely need to engage with delivery apps or risk losing business to local competition.

3. Ghost Kitchens and Virtual Restaurants: A New Generation of Restaurant Business

In 2022, ghost kitchens and virtual brands played a crucial role in the restaurant business, alongside third-party delivery applications. If the boom of ghost kitchens in Asia teaches us anything, it’s that the practice will likely become considerably more significant over the next several decades.

In essence, ghost kitchens are restaurants without dining rooms. They can operate from a variety of locations, but the vast majority employ commissary-style kitchens. Commissary kitchens are communal, rentable spaces. Typically, they have everything required, including a fryer, oven, and range.

Virtual restaurants (also known as virtual brands or virtual kitchens) operate within a more conventional, brick-and-mortar restaurant, but they exclusively prepare food for delivery. Brick-and-mortar restaurants can add an additional revenue stream through virtual restaurants without having to purchase new sites, cram more tables into their dining room, or hire more front-of-house staff.

In 2023, ghost kitchens will assist numerous first-time restaurateurs in launching their enterprises. However, industry veterans will not give up their market share without a fight.

As long as third-party delivery applications such as DoorDash, Grubhub, and UberEats remain in operation, ghost kitchens and virtual restaurants will continue to exist. Despite the fact that many app-based businesses have not yet discovered a profitable business model, along with the fact that some may fail in the future, food and beverage software has revolutionized the way restaurants serve their customers, and this trend will certainly continue.

4. Automation and Smart Restaurant Technology: Dining in the Digital Age

Incorporating automation and intelligent technologies is projected to be one of the most prominent and significant technological developments of 2023.

Instead of humanoid robots, robotics, AI, and the IoT will have a radically major impact on the sector. Increasing processing capability and declining computing costs are causing an AI explosion in which AI will be added to nearly everything. Adding intelligence to “dumb” kitchen equipment will enable a new level of restaurant automation systems.

Many high-end restaurants use smart combination ovens that can do various activities, such as baking, roasting, and steaming, and can be programmed to complete simple sequences. In this manner, the combination oven has already supplanted numerous culinary procedures. Increasingly, “dumb” kitchen appliances are gaining intelligence. Simple vegetable cutters now employ image recognition to chop veggies into any shape imaginable.

By connecting various kitchen appliances to a kitchen operating system, software will hasten the process of making existing equipment smarter. In many restaurants, software-as-a-service cloud applications have already replaced a significant amount of paper. Currently, these applications only perform isolated functions such as restaurant point-of-sale, accounting, and inventory control. In the coming years, an increasing number of food and beverage software programs will be fully connected, and through the use of AI, planning processes, inventory management, and revenue management will be considerably automated and optimized. Not only is kitchen equipment becoming more intelligent, but so is the entire restaurant operation.

5. Loyalty Programs: Secret Restaurant Technology in Satisfying Customers

The restaurant business will likely face another difficult year this year. Numerous experts and industry executives predict an imminent recession. If so, company owners should take precautions immediately.

Investing in your loyal regulars is one of the best ways to weather difficult times. You should use different marketing strategies to bring in more first-time customers. But when the economy gets bad and regular customers cut back on spending, it’s your loyal regulars who help your small business stay open the most. Regulars are far less expensive to retain than first-time clients. In addition to requiring much less marketing effort and spending than new customers, repeat customers often spend more every visit.

You can focus on increasing customer loyalty in 2023 by using a very basic piece of restaurant technology: the customer loyalty program. The complexity of your customer loyalty program is entirely up to you. Some companies employ digital customer loyalty programs. After a customer registers with a phone number, email address, or mobile application, the program tracks their expenditure. There are numerous digital loyalty schemes available. Some are less expensive and more user-friendly than others, but many can be connected straight into your POS system, making it simple for your customers to earn rewards and for your staff to redeem them.

If you desire a quicker and more efficient solution, a loyalty card can be a great option. A loyalty card allows you to start a loyalty program fast and affordably. The sole disadvantage of a loyalty card program is that your consumers must carry their card in their wallet or handbag and keep track of it. However, if this is not an issue for you and your visitors, the punch card is a simple and inexpensive choice. Many restaurant owners are now hiring software development companies to design effective loyalty card programs for their businesses.

Final words

Keeping abreast of the latest restaurant technology trends is essential for effective restaurant management. Adamo Software, a leading software development company, anticipates that the restaurant industry will see an increase in software development in the future.