Robotics, AI, Integrations Top List Of Most-Read Stories

During the dog days of summer, operators were busy reading about the promise of restaurant technology to optimize the drive-thru, to improve throughput with automation, and to streamline delivery. Check out the 5 most read restaurant stories on Hospitality Technology for the month of August.  

5)  Grubhub, Yandex SDG Launch Robot Delivery at Ohio State
Hungry students are back on campus, and more than one university is looking to delivery robots to deliver food and more. With tens of thousands hungry students and foodservice solutions on prem, compact college campuses are ideal for these efficient little robots. Students at this Big Ten school can order their favorite foods from on-campus dining locations via the Grubhub app and have them delivered by robot. Read more here.  

4)  Drive-Thru Voice Tool Raises $15M
ConverseNow made headlines for its cloud-based, multilingual solution that claims to increase average orders and revenues by more than 20 percent while adding up to 12 hours of extra deployable labor time per store per week. Fazoli's, one of HT's Industry Hero Award winners, has been an early adopter of the AI-based solution. Get the scoop here. 

MURTEC Highlight Hub 2021
Confession time: This isn’t a story but the landing page for the MURTEC content hub. Months after its debut, operators continue to check out the wealth of educational sessions and vendor information from MURTEC, which was online everywhere April 13 and 14. All sessions and vendor information are conveniently located in this content hub. Did you miss the insightful keynote with Taco Bell’s Vadim Parizher, The Connected Restaurant: How Edge, IoT and E-commerce Can Transform the Industry? Want to learn best practices from the industry’s hottest virtual brands? Bookmark this page now and check them out on your schedule. All MURTEC sessions are on demand in the MURTEC Content Hub.

3)  Hyphen Debuts Robotic Makeline for Restaurants
Formerly known as Ono Food Co., Hyphen gave a sneak peek of its new platform that fulfills digital orders and can produce 350 meals per hour with just one staff member. With the current labor issues, many in hospitality are wondering if now is the time for additional automation? Read on.

2)  Olo Teams Up With Grubhub to Streamline Delivery, Digital Orders
Much to the delight of restaurant operators everywhere, Olo has partnered with Grubhub to integrate digital orders directly into the POS via Olo Rails. Integration with third-party delivery systems is a top business driver of POS upgrades for 37% of respondents to HT's 2021 POS Software Trends Report: Accelerating Innovation. Read more about this important integration here.

1)  Restaurant Technology Study 2021: Building the Next Normal
For the third month in a row, this is among the most-read stories on HT. Now in its 23rd year, HT's Restaurant Technology Study is a respected source of strategic, data-driven insights for the restaurant industry. This year's report, Building the Next Normal, consolidates the lessons learned in 2020 and reveals the path forward as restaurants build their next normal. If you haven’t already, bookmark this report for future reference and watch the accompanying 30-minute webinar, How Restaurants are Building the Next Normal, for additional insights.