Want to sound smart at the next restaurant tech cocktail party? Add these six terms to your vocabulary. They are popping up more often in conversations this year, and they point toward deeper trends in the restaurant tech market.
Acqui-hire
“To acquire a company in order to use its employees' skills or knowledge, rather than for its products or services.” —Cambridge Dictionary
Restaurant tech M&A is heating up, and along with bold-faced deals like DoorDash/SevenRooms, there has also been a boom in smaller transactions in which the buyer brings on the acquired company’s team.
Starbucks’ deal with Empower Delivery fits the acqui-hire framework. The coffee giant is licensing the company’s order fulfillment tech while also bringing aboard Empower’s six engineers. Previously, Starbucks hired Empower CEO Meredith Sandland as its new chief store development officer under CEO Brian Niccol.
Other acqui-hires this year include PAR/GoSkip, Qu/FourTop and SpotOn/Starfish.
The trend reflects a rush for the exits by restaurant tech startups that got started in the pandemic glory days. But it also shows that true tech talent is an increasingly valuable resource.
Agentic AI
“Able to accomplish results with autonomy, used especially in reference to artificial intelligence.” —Merriam-Webster
You’ve likely heard of generative AI, or AI that can create content based on human input, like ChatGPT. Agentic AI is the next wave of the technology in which AI will be able perform tasks while more or less flying solo.
There are already some restaurant applications for this technology, at least on the consumer side. One example is OpenAI’s Operator, a tool that can perform web-based tasks like making a restaurant reservation or ordering food from a delivery app.
AI agents will no doubt make their way into restaurants themselves, where they could be used to create schedules or order supplies, easing the workload on managers.
Edge computing
“Computing that takes place at or near the physical location of either the user or the source of the data.” —Red Hat
As restaurants begin to rely more heavily on technology, the idea of processing data on-site, rather than in the cloud or a distant server, is gaining traction.
Edge devices can process operations faster and act as a backup if the internet fails. For fast-food restaurants, where every second counts, this could be a particularly valuable tool, especially as more transactions come through digital channels.
And it will only become more important as restaurants continue to add technology that operates in real time, such as AI order takers and burger-flipping robots.
Retail media network
“A type of advertising platform that allows retailers to sell ad space on their digital channels to third-party brands.” —Amazon Ads
Retail media networks have previously been the realm of ecommerce giants like Amazon and Walmart. Now the restaurant industry is getting its own version, thanks to delivery apps like DoorDash, Uber Eats and Wonder.
In this case, restaurants are the advertisers. They can pay delivery platforms to get in front of their large audience of consumers and stand out from the crowd of other restaurants on the apps. This has become a big business for delivery apps: Uber Eats’ ads business has a $1.5 billion annual revenue run rate, while DoorDash broke $1 billion last year.
The rise of this new model could require restaurant marketing departments to change how they develop campaigns and spend their digital ad dollars.
Super app
“A mobile or web application that combines multiple services into one platform.” —TechTarget
The U.S. does not currently have a bonafide super app. But restaurant delivery companies are coming awfully close.
Wonder has already dubbed itself a “super app for mealtime” by integrating restaurant delivery and meal kits. It is also apparently developing an AI-powered app that will generate a weekly meal plan based on customers’ blood work.
Meanwhile, both DoorDash and Uber Eats now offer deliveries from a wide range of businesses, including groceries, medicine and electronics. They are getting into restaurant reservations. And Uber, of course, also has a ride-hailing service.
The super app model is attractive for obvious reasons. By offering consumers more services in one place, customers become cheaper to acquire and less likely to use other one-off apps. In return, the super apps get not only more revenue but also more data on what people are buying and where they are going, creating a flywheel effect.
Vaporware
“A computer-related product that has been widely advertised but has not and may never become available.” —Merriam-Webster
Vaporware and its close cousin, “AI washing,” are byproducts of the race to develop AI-powered tools. This has led to a lot of half-baked products hitting the market.
Earlier this year, for instance, the SEC accused AI drive-thru supplier Presto of making false statements about its technology. Among them: That its AI voice bot could take orders without human help, when in fact the “vast majority” of transactions required a human to step in.
Presto settled the charges and has since changed ownership and reduced its reliance on human intervention. But it’s claims like those that restaurants should be wary of while shopping for technology.