Latest
/
Best Practices

Will 2023 Be the Year of Self Service?

Get Our 2023 Predictions - From Kiosk Ordering to Off-Premise Dining & More

We can’t say for sure, but we certainly got a few clues at the recent webinar we co-sponsored with our partner, PourMyBeer. It was a true pleasure to have our CEO Tim McLaughlin co-present with experienced hospitality and restaurant technology leaders in the 60-minute session. Co-Presenting with Tim were Jimmy Frischling, Founder & Managing Partner at Branded Strategic Ventures and Jerry Mazurowski, Director of Operations and Minority Owner at Neo Pizza and Taphouse. The webinar turned out to be a wide-ranging conversation about overall hospitality trends.

The Future of Off-Premise Dining

The pandemic spawned tremendous off-premise growth and that growth was sustained in 2022. The likely next phase of innovation will be in how operators manage the packaging and fulfillment of off-premise orders. That means pushing for better, less expensive packaging methods to keep hot food hot and cold food cold to ensure takeout and delivery doesn’t negatively impact the brand. Operators will also be pushing to move beyond efficiency, to providing an elegant and efficient food pickup experience for guests.

The Future of Automation

On average, in a traditional service scenario, it takes as many as 3 people in a full-service restaurant to bring a guest a glass of wine, a beer or even a soda. The guest places the order with the server. The server enters the order into the POS. The POS prints a ticket behind the bar. The drink gets poured and put on the service bar. The runner delivers the drink to the table. With technologies like GoTab and PourMyBeer, the guests actually enjoy the experience of ordering on their own, pouring on their own. The staff get to become ambassadors, rather than focusing on mundane tasks like entering orders and pouring drinks.

In a high-performance GoTab venue, 40 percent of guests never pay the bill … they just walk out … the system charges the check automatically and notifies them if the card on file has insufficient funds. If they don’t put another card on file, they can’t go to another GoTab restaurant until they pay their bill. Imagine how much staff time is alleviated by operating this way.

The End of First in First Out Ticket Fulfillment

Instead of retrofitting technology to the traditional service approach, operators will start to lean on their tech to do what it does well. For example, with tools like the GoTab KDS, operators can optimize logistics in the kitchen. It takes a lot of experience to be able to look at 100+ orders and figure out the best sequence to handle them based on fulfillment and running time. GoTab can analyze all of the tickets and direct the kitchen to the optimum fulfillment order. In a future state, operators could envision a KDS that will call orders, like a chef on the line, to create a more fluid experience for kitchen staff.

The Future of Kiosk Ordering

We’ve lost close to a million employees from the industry and a substantial amount won’t return. So it’s a non-trivial effort to address how to handle cashier and ordering lines. Kiosks will play an important foundational experience for guests, particularly in quick service. GoTab was started with the idea that a mobile device is a kiosk in everyone’s pocket. You don’t have to dip your card, it already knows who you are and it even knows what you ordered the last time. That being said, the mobile phone doesn’t have the advantage of a big screen, which can be compelling in certain scenarios.

The Future of Restaurant Employment

In 2023 we’ll continue to focus on ways to improve compensation for restaurant staff - recruiting and retention has been a perennial problem in the industry even before the pandemic. The trend will be toward cross-training staff so that they can take on more roles in the restaurant. 

With cross-training, General Managers get more flexibility to manage their limited staff, and it also means that staff are able to provide more value to their guests. One important aspect of this shift to cross-training is tip pooling. Operators find that tip pooling gets people working as a team, with the ancillary benefit of giving everyone an incentive to deliver a better end-to-end guest experience.

The Future of Drink Service and Beverage Sales

It’s no surprise that panelists are huge advocates of beer walls like PourMyBeer. Guests are very comfortable with serving themselves if you give them an efficient system. What’s more, using a beverage wall eliminates many of the persistent problems associated with serving beers and cocktails in a hospitality establishment. 

With a beverage wall, customers don’t have to wait for their drinks. They don’t have to flag down a server or bartender. Guests get to pick and choose what they want and how much of it they want. There’s no one stealing, and no extra foam being poured out. It basically cuts out all of the waste of a traditional bar. For Neo Pizza and Taphouse, their beer cost is lower than ever. Efficiency in ordering is better. They have full control and insight around inventory controls. They know how much product they have on hand and can control pricing on a daily basis.

The Future of Restaurant Tech is Omni-Channel

Omni-channel means your system is integrated, the parts and pieces speak and share data easily. As a result, costs will go down and operators will find it much easier to train staff. It also means that the guest experience is seamless.

Request the full event recording at https://gotab.com/event/hospitality-industry-trends-to-expect-in-2023/

Tap Room Playbook: Check Your Experience

Tap Room Playbook Episode 2: 

When you really think about it, with everything managers need to do in a tap room, the hospitality aspect is often overlooked.

Watch Now →
Tap Room Playbook: Kick A** Brands

Tap Room Playbook Episode 3: 

The best breweries pay attention to what their brand stands for. How do the best brewers bring their brand to life?

Watch Now →

Situated “in the heart of it all, yet tranquil enough to make you feel away from it all too,” The Limelight Hotel Snowmass offers 99 hotel rooms and 11 residences, as well as footsteps-to-gondola access in winter and summer — right in the middle of Snowmass Base Village.

The Situation

Especially over the last few years, the Limelight Hotels IT team had witnessed a significant shift to contactless technology in the hospitality industry. After evaluating friction points in the guest journey, aligning with modern technology platforms in their restaurant was determined to be an effective way to offer elevated contactless dining experiences to their guests while also evolving their technology platforms to continue to support long-term company goals. Limelight Hotel partnered with GoTab to provide an enhanced on-demand dining experience on par with the brand’s reputation for exceptional guest service.

The Solution

Reducing Staff Touch Points Without Sacrificing Guest Experience

Guests are now able to begin a tab from their room or the property’s restaurant by scanning a QR code, texting a link to friends or family members on the ski slope to add in their orders, then meeting up together at the patio or lodge to enjoy their meal and après ski festivities without interruption. By streamlining tasks like inputting orders and processing payments, this eliminates friction for hotel staff and allows them to focus on delivering renowned guest service for a memorable experience. Since partnering with GoTab, Limelight Snowmass has consistently seen higher check averages and sales.

“We found the Point of Sale platforms we were looking at offered the guest and staff limited opportunities to further reduce touch points or improve the traditional restaurant experience. The GoTab platform enabled the guest to take an active role over the flow of their experience while simultaneously reducing touch points and further streamlining restaurant operations.”Nick Giglio, Manager of Hotel IT Operations, The Little Nell Hotel Group

According to the Limelight Hotels team, some of the other platforms that were evaluated were either missing some of the pieces they were looking for, had weak customer support models, or had little willingness to develop integrations to existing hotel platforms already in place. To that end, GoTab integrated with cloud-based platform, Infor. Together, GoTab and Infor are providing dynamic solutions to support central, efficient service across hotel amenities and deliver exceptional guest experiences.

“Previously, guests would call down to the restaurant to begin an order from their room or while they were out enjoying the ski slopes. Using GoTab, guests can now place orders from anywhere on the resort, giving them the on-demand service they want without interrupting their day. GoTab empowers us to give control to the guest, reducing touch points and streamlining overall restaurant operations, making Limelight Hotel the resort of choice for Snowmass.”Nick Giglio, Manager of Hotel IT Operations, The Little Nell Hotel Group

Since introducing GoTab, The Limelight Hotel has seen a consistent level of upsells and items sold per check resulting in additional revenue capture. They have been able to maintain service levels in their restaurants during periods when there was reduced staffing available without significantly diminishing the guest experience.

The Benefits

Eliminate Phone Orders – Take Orders from the Slopes. Guests can start a tab from their room or on the mountain without interrupting the flow of their day.

Future-Proofed Technologies – Delivering elevated contactless ordering via integration with the Infor hotel management platform.

Eliminating Friction in the Guest Journey – Maintaining service levels during periods of reduced staff without diminishing the guest experience.

  • Eliminating Friction in the Guest Journey – Maintaining service levels during periods of reduced staff without diminishing the guest experience.
  • Eliminating Friction in the Guest Journey – Maintaining service levels during periods of reduced staff without diminishing the guest experience.
  • Eliminating Friction in the Guest Journey – Maintaining service levels during periods of reduced staff without diminishing the guest experience.
  • Eliminating Friction in the Guest Journey – Maintaining service levels during periods of reduced staff without diminishing the guest experience.

Request a Demo

Ready to experience GoTab for yourself? Sign up for a free demo and get qualified to receive a complimentary meal on us!
Request a Demo