Technology

The latest news and trends in restaurant technology
Technology

Make it funky: "What's on your current playlist?"

For chefs, music is often as important as the knives they cart around. While chefs tend to avoid music during restaurant service, prep is another matter.

Technology

Today's restaurant tech may need some catch-up

Imagine if the course of food trends was reversed and home kitchens suddenly became the source of the best and most interesting culinary ideas. In that alternate reality, restaurants would be the followers, not the innovators, hoping to catch up with customers who were routinely more inventive and advanced.

Mobile payments have been high on the list of "next big things" in technology for quite awhile, but it’s only recently the market has started to heat up. Mobile payments promise convenience and speed for consumers, while lowering costs and generating more customer data for businesses.

When a New Orleans journalist reached out to an enthusiastic beer blogger and a trend-bucking restaurant owner for an article on restaurants offering better beers, little did he know he’d be playing matchmaker.

Jeffrey Gates gets a $12,000 monthly bill from OpenTable for accepting online reservations for the seven Boston-area restaurants in the Aquitaine Group.

Once the intruders find a way into the technology of a certain chain, they’ll proceed franchisee by franchisee or restaurant by restaurant.

Dunkin’ Donuts and Baskin-Robbins have joined a consortium of retail businesses that’s developing a standard way for consumers to pay for purchases with smart phones.

Launched in late 2011, the free Chefs Feed app for iPhone and iPad has quickly become a favorite with chefs and their fans, registering more than 100,000 users in less than a year.

In April, T.G.I. Friday's released its own mobile payment app. While many foodservice operations have embraced mobile apps for location services, coupon offers or linking into reward programs, proprietary mobile payment apps are still somewhat unchartered territory. In the quick serve arena, Dunkin Donuts just released its own mobile payment system, and Starbucks partnered with Square for its system.

Can you say digital tablet? Even though the mjaority of restaurants have yet to incorporate technology in their operations, consumers are very interested in the latest technology applications when dining out, according to a new study by Technomic

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