Reimagining Ordering & Payment at The Market at Malcolm Yards
The Market at Malcolm Yards is a 19,000 square foot Minneapolis-based food and beverage hall, located in the historic Prospect Park neighborhood. The Market anchors the greater mixed-use Malcom Yards development, a vibrant live, work and entertainment community center adjacent to the University of Minnesota’s East Bank Campus. The Market engaged GoTab in summer 2022 to introduce an innovative, new ordering and payment experience for guests that would drive sales and efficiencies for its unique array of vendors.
The Situation
As a high-volume venue with 9 separate food concepts, a bar with 17 batch cocktails and an innovative self-pour tap wall with beer, wine and non-alcoholic offerings, The Market at Malcolm Yards is a place for people to congregate with friends and family, and find something that everyone can enjoy. With so many vendors for their guests to choose from, The Market wanted to introduce a streamlined process for guests to order and pay. They understood that the traditional food hall approach - with guests standing in multiple lines, and ordering and paying independently at each respective licensee/merchant - would fall far short of their ideal guest experience.
The Solution
With GoTab Pass radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology, The Market at Malcolm Yards is reshaping the food hall guest experience to make it faster, easier and more seamless for guests to order and pay. With a quick and simple tap of a branded RFID-enabled smart card, GoTab Pass allows Malcom Yards visitors to charge items from any of its 10+ vendors back to a single tab. Using this approach, the Market is driving increased order sizes for vendors and creating a seamless ordering and payment experience for guests.
“The traditional approach to operating a food hall is outdated. It’s cumbersome for guests and makes accounting and payouts painful for licensees/vendors. People don’t want to wait in long lines or create separate transactions with each vendor. We engineered a new model for managing multi-operator venues and integrated RFID to uniquely solve those issues.”
Tim McLaughlin, GoTab CEO and Co-Founder
Further supporting The Market at Malcom Yards’ digital-first experience, GoTab has also integrated with a self-serve beverage technology company, PourMyBeer. PourMyBeer enables self-service access by allowing guests to pour their own beer, wine and other available beverages while paying by the ounce. Thanks to the PourMyBeer and GoTab integration, all pours are added in real-time to the guest’s tab. Unique to the industry is how GoTab simplifies PourMyBeer’s integration by managing the RFID card activation and eliminating the need to sync each system’s product catalogs. Together, GoTab and PourMyBeer are empowering The Market at Malcolm Yards to increase speed of service, operational efficiencies, order size and guest satisfaction.
The Benefits
“Innovation is at the core of our business model as we seek to create meaningful experiences for our guests that are inspired by the neighborhood’s history of industry and invention. By introducing GoTab’s Pass technology to the guest experience, we’re reshaping how guests navigate and interact with our variety of chefs and local vendors. We are making it easier and more seamless to order from multiple merchants, all on one tab. What’s more, the RFID card technology is especially great for family and group dining, with the ability to pre-allocate funds, set spending limits for younger guests, or easily split tabs at the end of the visit. This is just the beginning of our digital journey to create a richer experience for our guests while supporting our vendors with more efficiencies and sales, and we’re incredibly pleased with the results so far.”
Patricia Wall, of the Wall Cos., developer of Malcom Yards, and owner of one of the restaurant concepts located within the Market.
Eliminate Guest Checkout Lines and Wait Times - Guests order from all vendors on a single check, eliminating check-out lines.
Reduced Headcount Associated with Pouring - With just one staff member assigned to the beverage wall, The Market at Malcolm Yards’ beer wall generates 60 percent of total alcohol revenue vs. 40 percent from their traditional bar.
Kitchen Display and Printer Integration - Back-of-house reduces order errors and misfires through full KDS and printer integration.
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