OPERATIONS
TECH VS. HOSPITALITY: PARADOX OR PARTNERSHIP?
WITH AUTOMATION, AI AND MORE OFFERING HELPING HANDS TO THE FOODSERVICE WORKFORCE, EVERYONE IS WONDERING WHAT WILL BECOME OF HOSPITALITY’S HUMANITY.
I s technology taking a bite out of hospitality’s human side? Who among us humans hasn’t wondered “Could I be replaced by a robot?” Well, good news is possible: There are many ways technology can make humans’ jobs easier and allow them to deliver more of that good human stuff, aka hospitality. Playing into this equation is loads of research pointing to consumers’ home- sick hearts yearning for simpler times, like those halcyon days of the early 2000s. (Does anyone else feel old?) We posed these fairly existential questions on tech and the future to experts in the onsite foodservice field, and their answers point to a surprising- ly bright future. “Paradox is a great word to frame it up at the highest level,” says Aramark Collegiate Hospitality VP of Technol- ogy and Innovation Jonathan Duffy. “There’s no going back on the tech front. Tech has the opportunity to take away from the human sort of experi- ence of dining in a group setting; but it’s amazing in the sense that tech can pro- vide access, convenience, connectivity, speed and information into all these amazing things, which is why you can’t take it away.” APPS, KIOSKS, AI AN LIFE-LIKE MANNEQUINS In a way, Skylar Flynn is living in the future. The food operations manager, along with medical students, doctors and nurses, works at Sharp Prebys Inno- vation Education Center in San Diego, a futuristic training facility for people in healthcare careers. The recently con- structed and opened education center BY TARA FITZPATRICK
exists for research, training, workforce development, innovation, education and technology for Sharp HealthCare. The foodservice is managed by Sodexo. The center includes The Terrance and Barbara Caster Institute of Nurs- ing Excellence, where nursing students can learn in-depth best practices in a setting that’s not part of an actual hos- pital, an immersion lab and a technolo- gy demonstration room, where existing and potential vendors can showcase their new gadgets. But the most futuristic medical advance at the center has to be The Brown Simulation Center, where med- ical students can practice their skills on extremely life-like mannequins that can simulate different medical con- ditions so students can get almost-re- al-life training in all sorts of situations. And that includes the mannequins … screaming. Is it just us, or would you
not want to be here alone at night? “The mannequins are super realis- tic and there’s one that simulates child- birth,” Flynn says. “It can scream, and there are fluids. There’s a two-way mir- ror where doctors can watch how the students do.” On the more appetizing side of the center, Flynn runs the café for students, staff and visitors, and also a growing catering business for the fairly robust amount of medical conferences that the center is equipped to host. Flynn’s prior career saw her at John- son & Wales culinary school, where she worked as a storeroom coordinator while she earned her MBA, something that’s she’s already put to use working on finance at the center, something that “has ended up on my plate,” she says. She’s a trained pastry chef, and when talk turns to the future of foodservice, Flynn has a clear idea about the future:
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