Attendees at next week’s FSTEC tech conference in Orlando should expect a hearty helping of artificial intelligence.
Vendors often use the event as an opportunity to debut new products or features, and this year, many of those launches are AI-related.
There was a lot of AI last year, too, but this time around, the tools are more sophisticated, integrated and cutting edge.
Here’s a look at some of the new tech to watch for at the event, which runs Sunday through Tuesday in Orlando. FSTEC is owned and operated by Restaurant Business parent company Informa.
AI agents
Several vendors are rolling out agentic AI tools that can perform multistep tasks on their own.
Thanx says its new product, ThanxAI, is the first agentic AI built for restaurant marketing. This “virtual employee” will be able to do things that currently take marketing departments weeks or months, the company said.
For now, ThanxAI will be able to handle audience segmentation duties, slicing and dicing data in ways that would be difficult to do manually. In the future, it will be able to generate offers and run entire campaigns. It will also be able to “talk” to other AI agents in the restaurant and take action on its own.
For instance, a restaurant’s inventory agent might alert the marketing agent that the restaurant has a surplus of strawberries, prompting ThanxAI to create a strawberry milkshake promo and launch a targeted campaign.
“The result will be a campaign that is lower cost, timely, targeted, measured in incremental revenue, and took nearly zero effort from a lean, mean marketing department,” said Thanx CEO Zach Goldstein in a statement.
Harri, a restaurant workforce tech provider, also teased an AI agent that will help operators automate scheduling and flag compliance issues.
AI-powered menu boards
New digital menu boards from Checkmate use AI to update their look and layout in real time, allowing operators to experiment with different looks and layouts and see which ones work best.
The boards can also be used to test different promotions and can generate upsells based on what customers have already put in their cart.
Checkmate says the AI allows menu boards to act as revenue channels rather than just displays.
The company built the technology “from the ground up” with AI experts and data scientists. “Every feature is backed by real experimentation and analytics” said Brett Spiegel, VP of direct ordering, in a statement.
Edge computing, with AI
Qu is touting a new edge computing system called Qu Business Edge, or Qube for short.
Edge systems process transactions closer to the restaurant itself, as opposed to in the cloud, which makes them faster and more reliable. Qube has 99.99% uptime and can also operate offline, ensuring smooth operations at all times, according to Qu.
Starting next year, Qube will add support for AI applications like drive-thru voice ordering and computer vision. Edge computing can enable complex AI processes to run faster.
An AI data analyst
PAR is launching a new AI tool that is baked into its operations management system. Called Coach AI, it allows restaurants to ask questions about their data and provides answers within minutes.
Coach is part of PAR AI, a new “intelligence layer” the company is adding across its products. Future releases will include ROI-ranked recommendations, voice ordering and targeted marketing campaigns.
PAR called the new technology a “turning point” for how it serves customers. “We’re going AI native, embedding it into everything we do,” CEO Savneet Singh said in a statement.
A familiar POS gets a refresh
In non-AI news, Global Payments will debut Genius for Enterprise, a new all-in-one tech system for chain restaurants.
Genius is both a rebranding and an expansion of the POS system formerly known as Xenial. It will bundle together features from Xenial as well as products from Global Payments, such as digital menu boards and kiosks.
Global Payments said consolidating various products under one brand will allow it to reach a broader set of customers.
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