TECHNOLOGY
9 tech tidbits from the National Restaurant Show Technology reporter empties his notebook after a busy few days in Chicago, where restaurants showed they’re hungrier than ever for tech.
BY JOE GUSZKOWSKI SENIOR EDITOR RESTAURANT BUSINESS
T hree days spent on the floor of the National Restaurant Show in Chicago turned up quite a few tidbits on the cur- rent state of restaurant technology. Here are nine lessons from the big event. Tech is the hottest thing since free samples It’s not news, and it’s not even neces- sarily surprising, but it is worth taking a step back and marveling at just how central technology has become at the Show. At certain points, it was hard to even get through the aisles in the Tech Pa- vilion due to traffic overflow from the booths. (And wow were there some spectacular booth designs this year.) You’d think vendors were giving away hot dogs or something, but no— just software demos and the occasion- al piece of new hardware to admire. It was a testament to restaurants’ grow- ing appetite for tech.
The Tech Pavilion was a popular spot, as usual.
That’s how Square got pulled into the kiosk game. The POS company has long integrated with other kiosk pro- viders, but this year it launched one of its own. “Sellers on the Square platform were always asking, ‘When are you gonna build our own kiosk?’” said Ming-Tai Huh, Square’s head of food and beverage. “They don’t want one more integration to manage.” … But a patchwork approach has its perks Then again, some operators are of the mind that using a mix of vendors is better than going all-in with one. Grant Krueger, owner of Tucson, Arizona-based Union Hospitality Group, said diversifying gives restau- rants more flexibility if they ever de - cide to make a change. “It’s gonna be better to have a tech stack with different players rather than have all your eggs in one basket,”
Everyone wants to do it all …
The most noticeable trend while trawl- ing the tech booths was the number of suppliers claiming to be the one and only tech platform a restaurant needs. Vendors have been pushing in this direction for years, in part because restaurants are demanding more sim- plicity from their tech.
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[Restaurant operators] don’t want one more integration to manage.” — Ming-Tai Huh, Square
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National Restaurant Association Show 2024
PHOTO CREDIT: JOE GUSZKOWSKI
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