WHAT IT IS?
“These days nearly everybody is allergic to something. That demands much more flexible menus that the traditional ones. Our menus have been very rigid. When a guest wants an adaption often we answer ‘no’, or in the best case ‘I’ll ask the chef’. That must change into a ‘yes’, or at least a ‘let me try’-attitude. After all: we have all ingredients ready in our kitchen, haven’t we? Facilitate people who want something different! “
Managing a guest’s (emotional) expectations is the more important and more sophisticated approach. I call that the boutique approach Martin B. Jones
Luckily for Mr. Jones, there is a solution that will revolutionize the F&B industry and it is called Raydiant. They just announced the 11 of August a new partnership with Square, a major milestone for restaurants and retailers. This will make menus to be easily changed and customized by employees and make them more friendly, with almost no experience needed. It will reduce the manual processes from employee’s task list and strengthen restaurants employee retention as the industry continue to struggle with labor shortage. It will also let the restaurants to turn employee sales data into contests and games to promote competition between them. All the sales now can be tracked by employee, location and other metrics to reward high performers and incentivize workers. But first things first, you’ll be wondering what is Raydiant and how does it work.
Raydiant is the leading in- location experience platform for the world’s largest brands in restaurant, hospitality, retail and banking. With this software managers, IT, marketing and communications executives can more effectively scale their brick-and-mortar operations and create more engaging and personalized in place experiences that keep customers coming back. Raydiant works with nearly 4,500 brands including Dickeys BBQ, Red Bull, Chick Fil A Wahlburgers and even First bank. With this new partnership with Square, and by integrating it with Raydiant’s Digital Menus app, square merchants now have the ability to create, schedule, and automatically update digital signage that connects to their Square POS system. This will improve a business efficiency by eliminating manual updates to menu items. They will also have access to Raydiant’s self-service kiosk outfitted with the POS system. This will cover a recent study that showed that nearly 60% of consumers preferred a self-service check out option than a cashier assisted one. This will create a seamless, streamlined ordering experience and could be adapted to be an almost “boutique experience” for the hotel restaurant.
But the cherry on top is not only what I have mention above, the crazy, game changer idea comes with the integration of AI to this Raydiant’s kiosk. Soon you’ll walk up to this self-service kiosk or tablet, and a tiny camera will scan your features, registering your height, age, gender, and mood. Instantly, it will adjust its display, selecting meal options picked just for you. Once you’ve ordered and moved on, the person behind you will step into the menus gaze, and the process will start again. This is the new idea and most recent innovation behind the new software from Raydiant that plans to roll out this AI driven kiosks by end of this year. According to CEO Bobby Marhamat, “the intention is to create a personalized experience for customers, while helping restaurants boost sales”. So, this could be the start of that boutique approach that Mr. Jones is looking for, by applying AI and letting his customers at the hotel choose a menu created for them, or even personalized the one presented to them. This might be the solution and the future for hotel restaurants to make their menu “less rigid” because you can have every single ingredient on the back end of this app, real time updated, and tons of different menus and recipes uploaded as well, so you can start your dining experience by choosing what you feel like eating that day. For example, you start with a “disassembled” menu, by choosing a protein first, then the vegetables and from which part of the world you’ll like it to taste like. So, you get to the restaurant and you choose, chicken and some squash, onions, red pepper and tomatoes, with an Indian/ Asiatic flavor; boom you got yourself a red curry chicked breast with hints of ginger and baslmati rice. The whole experience will be cool and exclusive not to say memorable. They are creating this boutique, made to measure menu for what you are craving by that time and managing their emotions. It is like reading their mind, and with this software that even reads your mood, the options presented to you on the menu will make life easy when it comes on choosing from a menu. This will also make the experience unique and personalized, making it the best example of experience economy. Influencers will get crazy with this idea, that could even incorporate robots connected to this AI and software on a future. Kitchens in hotels could end up working as Mezli’s, the fully automated restaurant that is integrated with robots and AI, so all ingredients can be ready and the customer can have this unique experience and manage their emotional expectations as Jones says, in a more sophisticated approach. Al this will reduce labor cost, make the experience less rigid, reduce left overs and the use of ingredients that does not rotate as much since you’ll have all the data, numbers and everything of what people likes it more, orders more and has allergies to. It is an experience that will be anything, but boring and a DIY option highly personalized like no other. As Mr. Jones says, “They can only evolve to the next level with substantially more flexibility, with leaving standardization behind. Of course, standardization means efficiency, but combining it with flexibility is the future”.
WHY IT´S COOL?
It combines this idea of flexibility, with a personalized and unique way to choose your menu, by applying AI
It will help reduce time and costs in the whole operation, as well as labor costs and food waste, so it’s basically the future
It is connected to one of the biggest platforms Square, and has been tested and back up by one of the best AI and IT companies in the world with almost 4,500 brands
WHY IT HAS FUTURE GROWTH POTENTIAL?
It will give a solution to an expert in the industry (Martin Jones) identified well know problem, so the hotel industry is not taken again by surprise, and can adapt an use all this million dollar data that AI gives you. Everytime the F&B industry is more about cost efficiency and more personalization, so implementing and managing AI to follow all the feedback is a the best way to stay on top of your competition and innovate.
https://www.restaurantdive.com/news/square-integrates-with-digital-signage-provider-raydiant/629294/
https://www.yahoo.com/lifestyle/restaurants-using-ai-guess-want-160000775.html
Carl Rohde
Naila Kaplan