TECH: 5 Ways Mobile Payment Solutions Can Elevate Your Restaurant
These days, the landscape of the restaurant industry seems like it’s constantly in flux. Whether it’s the changing reality of how we serve our guests, or the evolving way technology interacts with food service, there are a lot of innovations your team should be keeping up with. One of the most impactful advances in restaurant technology in the past few years can be seen in mobile payment solutions. Mobile point of sale (mPOS) systems are among the most dynamic tech tools on the market, and it’s time your restaurant understood their potential.
DID YOU KNOWS…
Korn Koffee
KoЯn, the nü-metal band from the early-2000s, has partnered up to release its own brand of coffee. Korn Koffee has been in the works for over a year now, according to the roastmaster, and has a medium roast taste. The “Nü-Metal Beatles” have also teamed up with Umami Burger to release Korn Burger which had the bun branded with the KoЯn logo, and Urban Outfitters for a series of Korn graphic tees. The band says they’re trying to build a “lifestyle brand” surrounding their music careers. Watch their coffee debut video here.
Smart Home Growth
Among the devices Google announced at its big hardware event on Tuesday was the Google Home Hub, a Google Assistant device that resembles Amazon’s Echo Show by adding a screen to create what is essentially a smart speaker on steroids. As its name suggests, the Google Home Hub is supposed to be at the center of the connected home with the ability to control smart home devices from more than a thousand brands. With smart speakers and smart TVs already seeing mainstream adoption, the fully connected smart home no longer seems like a futuristic dream. According to a recent forecast from IDC, the market for smart home devices is poised for strong growth over the next few years.
PGA Champs Go to ESPN
ESPN has won the cable rights to the PGA Championship from 2020-2030. The golf tournament will air on both TV and on ESPN+, ESPN’s streaming service. Starting in 2020, CBS will carry weekend afternoon coverage but ESPN will have Thursday and Friday rounds exclusively and carry weekend rounds before CBS goes on the air.
#USTOO?
Why it matters to you: It’s a really good idea to test your marketing before you publish.
Two stories this week have put a fine point on the current political climate for restaurants and it wasn’t pretty. Start with the Australian Hotel getting blasted for showing what was perceived as a sexist image in an ad. It depicted a woman reading a coffee table book at the hotel, while the man read the Financial Review. Folks got angry because it reinforced a stereotype about women and men that appeared to some as sexist.
Also in Australia, a restaurant added a new cocktail called To-Kill-Her. The bar claimed it was a play on the word Tequila (“to-kill-ya”). The bar subsequently renamed the drink to To-Love-Her, but the damage was done.
Now there are only two conclusions we can draw. Either Australia is a really misogynistic place or people are being really sensitive. The good news is that neither conclusion is relevant if you are restaurant, so what is?
The relevant part is that our marketing (and yes cocktail names are a form of marketing) is a way to tell guests what type of place they are entering. If there are images and branding that appears to be sexist then someone will take it as such. These are your decisions, but do you really want to alienate 50+% of the population? If so, carry on. However, if not, before you launch an ad, ask staff, guests and vendors (of both genders) what they think. If you get all thumbs up, then fire away.
IT’S CALLED A COFFEE BREAK FOR A REASON
Why it matters to you: These productivity tips are both relevant for our industry…and not!
We are all restaurant managers and, for that reason alone, we have to be more efficient and productive than most folks in business. Whether you are multi-tasking by receiving an order while simultaneously taking a guest reservation or training a new staff member while dealing with a guest concern, you are called up on to do many things at once – and to do them well. If you are finding your productivity feels lacking, then maybe this infographic from Entrepreneur magazine may help you sort out your frustration.
The premise is there are strategies productive people follow to ensure their productivity. Some of them are as simple as when to take caffeine, some are more complicated like doing one thing at a time (good luck with that in a restaurant). Whatever your business circumstances, great managers are compelled to be productive if they want achieve the results they desire. Maybe the infographic will help you in one of the nine strategies it proposes…or maybe you are too busy to read it.
[Source: Entrepreneur]
