Blog | PAR Technology

Day 1: A Message From Our CEO, Savneet Singh

PAR Team — Thu, 02 Jan 2025 18:45:43 +0000

We have no ceiling at PAR.

Reflecting on my six years at PAR Technology, I’m amazed at how often we’ve shattered our own expectations. Every step of the PAR journey has been hard, not obvious, and was never given to us. We were the team no one believed in, burdened with debt and limited resources, yet we transformed ourselves and our business. Our Day 1 mentality has driven us to dream without limits, with the confidence to take audacious (often contrarian) swings and see them through.

In 2018, we faced countless doubts: “You don’t have the money or the people,” “What do hardware teams know about software?” “Enterprise POS is too small a market,” “You can’t combine front of house and back of house,” “Enterprise restaurants aren’t a big enough TAM,” and so on. But with every step, we broke through those ceilings.

I believe deeply that it was our Day 1 mentality that drove these outcomes. Our Day 1 mentality is rooted in the idea that there is no ceiling high enough for a team willing to believe in the collective as much as they believe in themselves, willing to believe that value created will always be rewarded, and willing to believe that if we put the right people around the table with the right direction, no problem is too large. Day 1 is our commitment to never settle for the business we have today.

I’m often asked by investors, “Where are you now compared to where you thought you’d be?” I smile because, honestly, no one could have predicted this journey. But here we are. It wasn’t through strategic planning—it was driven by the sincere belief that by attracting and retaining exceptional talent with enormous appetites, the outcomes would follow and we’d blow through any upper limit put on us.

Today, when I’m asked what PAR will look like in five years, I chuckle again and say “I have no idea!” But what I do know is that we have no ceiling and linear expectations will never align to the team we’ve built.

My father, who is often my harshest critic, tells: “A cat that dreams of being a lion must lose its appetite for rats.” My dad’s advice can take some time to digest , but this one hit fast: it’s being a Day 1 thinker! We aren’t just dreaming about becoming successful at PAR, we dream with the understanding that to accomplish our dreams, we must be willing to change and question everything we started with.

We have no ceiling at PAR because every day is Day 1, and today is Day 1 of 2025.

Let’s get it!
Savneet

This message was originally sent to PAR employees on January 1st, 2025

Unlocking Growth: Key Strategies from RLC 2024

PAR Team — Fri, 10 May 2024 14:57:46 +0000

For over 25 years, the Restaurant Leadership Conference (RLC) has remained a cornerstone event for restaurant owners, operators, and franchisees. This year’s conference in Scottsdale, Arizona was no exception. From the power of integration to the importance of the employee experience, RLC 2024 dove deep into the current state of the restaurant industry, providing attendees with insights on exciting new trends, opportunities, and recent challenges.

PAR’s own Paul Rubin, Chief Strategy Officer, led an insightful session at this year’s conference. The panel discussion featured esteemed restaurant industry leaders Kevin Bentley, Head of Technology at Jollibee North America, Jeff Caplan, Chief Information Officer at Hooters of America, and Chris Schefler, Director of Brand Management at Mr. Pickle’s Sandwich Shop. Collectively, they shared their expert insights on what strategies drive enterprise restaurant growth. The discussion boiled down to these essential growth strategies:

The Impact of Technology

To all panelists, leveraging modern and proven technology is the key to unlocking enterprise restaurant growth. Whether implementing cutting-edge point-of-sale systems or efficient back-office management solutions, restaurant brands must carefully craft a tech stack that aligns with their specific needs and goals before they can successfully scale and grow. Technology serves as the foundation for a restaurant brand’s growth, enabling streamlined operations, frictionless checkout processes, and most importantly, enhanced guest experiences. Additionally, technology opens the door for restaurants to reach guests on new channels, accept more payment methods, and enhance efficiencies.

The panelists emphasized that technology is a strategic investment for restaurants, as it ultimately helps them stay ahead of customer demand and market trends, ensures every aspect of operations is optimized for success, and paves the way for substantial growth.

Identify and Cultivate Partnerships

In addition to leveraging the right technology, the panel discussion highlighted the importance of cultivating the right partnerships. As important as it is for restaurants to leverage the right technology, it is just as important for them to ensure the vendor understands their unique challenges and is committed to establishing long-term success.

Strong partnerships lead to enhanced collaboration and innovation, ultimately enabling restaurants to adapt to changing market trends and customer preferences. Moreover, strong partnerships open the door for a plethora of benefits, including access to new technologies, additional resources, and expert insights and support. These benefits are essential for restaurants as they help drive growth and success.

At the end of the day, restaurants are doing business with technology vendors, not the technology itself. Therefore, it is paramount for restaurants to select a technology partner that aligns with their values and long-term goals.

Leverage Loyalty

The panel discussion also emphasized the importance of implementing a robust loyalty strategy in conjunction with technology and partnerships. Loyalty platforms play a critical role in a restaurant’s growth strategies as they provide access to market trends and customer preferences and behaviors. Restaurants leverage these reports to gain a comprehensive understanding of their guests and what they demand, predict sales and customer lifetime values, foster positive brand awareness, and drive frequency and repeat visits.

A key benefit of a robust loyalty strategy highlighted by the panel was the ability to provide personalized experiences tailored to each customer. By diving deep into loyalty reports and granular guest data, restaurants can create targeted marketing campaigns as well as provide personalized promotions and rewards, enhancing the overall dining experience and helping restaurants win over and retain guests.

By embracing technology, fostering strong partnerships, and implementing a robust loyalty program, restaurants can navigate the ever-changing industry landscape and drive enterprise-level growth. The Restaurant Leadership Conference 2024 underscored this, and PAR Solutions remains committed to providing the tools, support, and insights restaurants need to succeed today and well into the future.

Tips and Tricks for Success: Managing Multiple Locations with a Back Office Solution

PAR Team — Thu, 18 Apr 2024 19:23:14 +0000

Effectively managing multiple locations is one of the most challenging tasks for multi-unit restaurant brands. From staying up to date on customer preferences and market demands to combating logistical hurdles like staffing, inventory, and reporting, each location has its own set of unique responsibilities owners and operators must tackle. The number of responsibilities required to manage and maintain a consistent experience across every location can be extremely overwhelming, making success seem like an impossible feat. However, by leveraging the right technology, restaurant brands with multiple locations can overcome these obstacles, streamline operations, and optimize efficiencies.

Back office solutions, like PAR Data Central, are essential systems owners and operators can leverage to effectively manage numerous locations. PAR Data Central, a maintenance-free back office solution, provides a single source of truth for multi-unit restaurants, harmonizing complex datasets like payroll, inventory, supply chain, and more to unlock better visibility across operations, deeper insights, and smarter planning. By harnessing this back office solutions enterprise reporting, labor, and food management suite, multi-unit restaurant brands can set up each location for success. Let’s take a deep dive into some of PAR Data Central’s powerful capabilities that help multi-unit restaurants find success.

Enterprise Reporting

Leveraging data to have a comprehensive understanding of every location is crucial for multi-unit restaurant brands. With a holistic view of operations, owners and operators can gain a complete understanding of customer demand and behavior as well as uncover current trends and areas for operational improvement. In fact, recent reports indicate data has been playing a pivotal role in driving food strategies for independent and full-service restaurants. According to Nation’s Restaurant News Market Leader Survey, 48% of operators cited menu price changes and menu additions or subtractions after analyzing their data.

By leveraging PAR Data Central, restaurant brands with multiple locations can consolidate their data into one enterprise operational platform delivering one database for all users, brands, and locations, from corporate down to the store level. Owners and operators can focus on the metrics that truly matter and unlock automated data aggregation, configurable reports, and Co-pilot alerts to better understand operations in real-time. Additionally, PAR Data Central’s mobile-friendly reporting tracks store performance data, forecasts demand for high-traffic events, and delivers reliable actionable insights that can be accessed anywhere at any time.

Easy Labor Management & Scheduling

With a vast quantity of employees across operations, ensuring every location has the perfect number of staff members for any given shift is a major obstacle to overcome. However, with PAR Data Central’s labor management and scheduling capabilities, multi-unit restaurant brands can easily manage employees across locations, concepts, and shifts. Owners and operators can minimize labor downtime with flexible forecasting by shift and job duties as well as maximize employee productivity, incentivize retention, and lower labor costs with scheduling intelligence. PAR Data Central’s powerful labor forecasting model enables restaurant brands with multiple locations to optimize staffing based on historical data and current demands, ensuring each location is appropriately staffed at all times.

Optimized Food & Inventory Management

Having complete control over inventory, recipes, menus, and costs is paramount for multi-unit restaurant brands. Leveraging PAR Data Central provides a cross-location master view of recipes, menus, and costs, ensuring restaurant brands with multiple locations can maintain consistent offerings across every store. Restaurant brands can optimize food costs with accurate food cost variance, menu engineering, theft prevention tools, and supply chain accountability. Moreover, by leveraging PAR Data Central’s Food Prep Sheets, restaurant brands can have full clarity into what inventory is needed throughout operations, ultimately leading to fresher food and less food waste across every location.

For restaurant owners and operators with multiple locations, utilizing a back office solution like PAR Data Central is key to effective multi-unit management. By harnessing PAR Data Central’s powerful capabilities, restaurants can address rising supply and labor costs, improve efficiency, and streamline operations. Don’t let multi-unit management be a burden on your operations. Take control with PAR Data Central and set each location up for success.

Interested in learning more about how PAR Data Central can help you manage your various restaurant locations? Visit us at PAR Data Central or request a demo!

Crafting Seamless Ordering Experiences through Intuitive UX Design

PAR Team — Wed, 06 Mar 2024 16:00:08 +0000

Are you tired of navigating through complex ordering processes that feel more like a labyrinth than a simple food ordering app? Do you find yourself frustrated by endless steps and convoluted interfaces, to the point where you’d rather pick up the phone and place the order the old-fashioned way? In today’s fast-paced world, where convenience reigns supreme, the last thing anyone needs is an ordering experience that feels like a chore.

Imagine an ordering flow where users effortlessly navigate through the app following familiar patterns of use without encountering any unnecessary hurdles. With the right UX design, ordering a meal becomes a seamless, intuitive process that effortlessly integrates into your daily routine, fostering a deeper connection between the consumer and the product.

Food. People. Nothing in Between. with MENU Ordering

At PAR MENU, we understand the critical importance of building the connection that we refer to as the Food. People. Nothing in Between. relationship – without any barriers. By prioritizing these elements, we create an ordering environment that is not only frictionless, but also enriches the experience of both consumers and businesses alike.

Central to our design philosophy is the idea of reducing the cognitive load for users. A logical flow with minimal steps ensures that users can complete their orders efficiently, without encountering any unnecessary complexities. This not only enhances user satisfaction but also boosts conversion rates, as users are more likely to follow through with their purchases when the process is straightforward.

But that’s not all. With our innovative MENU Ordering platform, we take this commitment to excellence a step further. Our white-label mobile and web solutions are fully customizable, allowing businesses to showcase their branding while delivering a superior ordering experience. Moreover, the MENU Ordering APIs offer unmatched flexibility and scalability, empowering businesses to expand and customize their offerings according to their unique requirements.

By leveraging our platform, businesses can elevate their ordering experience to the next level, ensuring that every interaction leaves a lasting impression on their customers.

A thoughtful UX design isn’t just about creating a visually appealing interface – it’s about redefining the ordering experience. By prioritizing accessibility, simplicity, and seamless interaction, businesses can foster stronger connections with their customers while driving revenue growth. With the MENU platform, restaurants can unlock the full potential of their ordering apps, delivering unparalleled experiences that keep customers coming back for more.

Ready to take your ordering experience to the next level?
Let's embark on this journey together.

Introducing the PAR Wave: The First Eco-Friendly POS Terminal for a Sustainable Future

PAR Team — Tue, 20 Feb 2024 17:18:02 +0000

In today’s dynamic business landscape, embracing eco-friendly, socially responsible, and well-governed practices is not just a trend – it is essential for any hospitality brand’s operations. Also known as ESG, these practices have quickly taken center stage, enabling brands to lay the foundation for consistent growth, resilient operations, and long-term success.

What is ESG and Why is it Crucial for Hospitality Brands?

ESG, or Environmental, Social, and Governance, refers to the key factors that stakeholders consider when evaluating a business’s commitment to sustainability and ethical performance.

Recent studies show the significance of ESG strategies, revealing that restaurant brands within the S&P 500 that prioritize and follow these principles outperform those with weak or no strategies at all.

Moreover, another report unveils a shift in consumer behavior towards sustainability. The report found that all generations of consumers, from Baby Boomers to Gen X to Gen Z, are willing to spend more on sustainable products. In 2020, only 34% of Gen X consumers were willing to spend more on sustainable products. Now, more than 90% of those consumers will pay an additional 10% or more for a product that is “sustainable”.

With sustainable and ethical practices now being viewed as key differentiators to consumers and stakeholders, it is more crucial than ever for hospitality brands to adhere to ESG practices.

Technology is Key

At the core of any successful ESG strategy lies the technology you leverage throughout daily operations. As important as it is for your business to be aligned with ESG practices, it is just as crucial to ensure the technology you utilize does as well. Technologies aligned with ESG practices, like point-of-sale systems, are paramount for hospitality brands. These solutions are essential for curbing waste and minimizing carbon emissions all while maintaining efficiency, reliability, and scalability. Leveraging sustainable solutions will not only enable your brand to enhance its ESG performance but also improve profitability and customer satisfaction.

However, hospitality brands still face significant technological challenges when it comes to sourcing hardware that aligns with these principles. There is not a single technology vendor that offers hardware designed for sustainability.

Until now.

A POS Touch Panel Designed to Support Your ESG Goals

Meet the PAR Wave, a multipurpose and eco-friendly all-in-one POS touch panel built to align with your hospitality brand’s ESG goals. The PAR Wave is intentionally designed to be more eco-friendly through its collapsible frame, which reduces packaging (all recyclable and biodegradable) and carbon emissions from shipping by 50%.

With proven durability in the harshest hospitality environments, the PAR Wave is the only POS terminal on the market built to be eco-friendly and easily adaptable to fit your business’s unique needs. Its slim and sleek design retains PAR’s best-of-breed quality while supporting flexible mounting and guest-facing options. This POS terminal serves as a multifunctional touchscreen POS panel suitable for restaurant point-of-sale terminals, guest-facing ordering options, and table games for casinos, providing endless possibilities for hospitality businesses.

Moreover, the PAR Wave can be easily repaired (should you need it) using spare parts, ultimately leading to less overall waste, and reducing the lifetime cost of ownership. By leveraging the PAR Wave, hospitality brands can not only enhance their ESG performance but also demonstrate a commitment to sustainable practices.

In an era where consumers increasingly prioritize ethically and environmentally conscious brands, investing in sustainable technology, like the PAR Wave, is not just a strategic decision, it is a competitive advantage.

Interested in learning more about how the PAR Wave supports your brand’s ESG goals? Visit us at PAR Wave or request a demo today!

Already a PAR Wave customer? Access the Latest Drivers and Documents now!

From Wait Times to Revenue Peaks: The Power of MENU Kiosk Ordering

PAR Team — Wed, 14 Feb 2024 06:59:35 +0000

In the hustle and bustle of today’s world, we are trying to complete routine tasks like grocery shopping as swiftly and effortlessly as possible. The same applies to ordering food. Convenience has become top priority and consumer habits are rapidly shaped by the pursuit of speed and efficiency. Kiosk ordering has emerged as the go-to solution for businesses to embrace modern consumer preferences and navigate labor shortages.

The numbers speak for themselves. A significant 65% of quick-service customers prefer the convenience of kiosk-based ordering, propelling the market towards a projected value of a substantial $30.8 billion by 2024.

Optimize Your Restaurant's Efficiency with MENU Kiosk Ordering

Introducing MENU Kiosk Ordering, a dynamic ordering channel within the comprehensive PAR MENU ecosystem. Managed from the same centralized platform as digital ordering (mobile & web apps), MENU Kiosk is a powerful solution that aligns with your growth objectives, driving both efficiency and revenue growth.

Explore the unparalleled advantages of integrating MENU Kiosk Ordering into your restaurant's operations:

Minimize Wait Times with Swift Service:

MENU Kiosk Ordering ensures a swift and seamless service, alleviating the frustration of customers waiting in long lines. The intuitive interface empowers them to effortlessly navigate menus, place orders, and complete payment within minutes. This not only reduces wait times but also elevates the overall customer experience, especially during peak hours.

Maximize Revenue with Intelligent Cross-Sell Strategies:

With the right strategy, kiosks can be powerful tools for revenue maximization. The MENU Kiosk app’s intelligent algorithms suggest complementary items based on customers’ selections, leading to increased transaction values. Add-ons, combos, cross-selling and other incentives can result in an increase in check size by 30%.

Elevate Customer Satisfaction through Order Accuracy:

In the realm of human interactions, errors are inevitable. The MENU Kiosk software acts as a steadfast guardian against errors, ensuring an accurate and streamlined ordering process. This precision not only prevents mistakes but also significantly enhances customer satisfaction. Customers can order at their own pace, eliminating any language barriers and fostering a more relaxed and accommodating dining experience. Furthermore, with the integration of MENU and Brink POS, orders are automatically injected into the POS from a single backend, eliminating the need for multiple tablets and reducing the potential for errors resulting from manual order entry.

Augment Employee Productivity and Reduce Labor Costs:

Contrary to concerns about job displacement, MENU Kiosk Ordering complements human efforts, allowing staff to concentrate on tasks that genuinely enhance the guest experience. By automating the ordering process, employees can redirect their focus to crucial roles such as food preparation and maintaining restaurant cleanliness. This dual benefit of increased productivity and reduced labor costs contributes to the overall operational efficiency of the restaurant.

The Synergy of Integrated Kiosk Software and Hardware

In optimizing restaurant efficiency, the seamless integration of kiosk software and hardware is crucial for enhancing the customer experience. Choosing durable and reliable hardware tailored to specific needs and future advancements is essential, particularly in high-traffic environments. That is why MENU partners with leading kiosk hardware in the US, offering MENU Kiosk Ordering as a unified solution. With its cohesive design and intuitive interface, the MENU Kiosk app ensures a seamless ordering experience for your customers and optimizes work for your staff.

Curious to explore why MENU Kiosk Ordering stands out as your top choice for fostering business growth?

Unlocking the Power of MENU Ordering APIs for Seamless Brand Growth

PAR Team — Tue, 30 Jan 2024 15:27:35 +0000

In today’s digital landscape, where online ordering is essential for restaurant growth, large restaurant brands are looking to differentiate themselves and make an impact by delivering a unique digital experience. This can only be done through specially tailored, custom front-end experiences that conventional white-label apps are not flexible enough to support. Headless commerce unlocks a new realm of possibilities in the digital landscape. Ordering APIs represent a powerful tool that enables a seamless integration between different systems involved in the ordering process, empowering brands to optimize user experiences according to their unique vision.

But what exactly is headless commerce?

In pursuit of enhanced flexibility and control over their user-facing interface, enterprise brands are increasingly shifting towards headless commerce, which allows them to decouple their Ordering apps (front-end) from the e-commerce logic (back end) of their operations. This headless architecture enables them to choose best-of-breed platforms (Ordering, Loyalty, Payments, CRM, Analytics), without being tied to a specific system, and gives them unparalleled freedom to customize and scale their business.

Why MENU Ordering APIs?

Embracing the futuristic headless architecture approach, MENU Ordering APIs empower fast growing multi-unit restaurant brands to meticulously craft their entire first-party ordering experience atop MENU’s state-of-the-art commerce platform. This can be done using an in-house team or partnering with a development agency. The advantages are manifold:

Best-in-class custom ordering applications:

Developed and continuously enhanced by a team of seasoned restaurant tech experts, MENU powers all digital customer touchpoints including mobile, web and kiosk from one platform. Using MENU Ordering APIs, brands can leverage our modern and innovative back end to create custom ordering applications on any platform.

Unmatched extensibility:

With its unmatched modularity, the MENU platform empowers brands to effortlessly integrate leading POS, Payments, Loyalty and other solutions of their preference. What’s more, thanks to its headless architecture MENU Ordering APIs enable a smooth connection to all external partners through a single integration, as well as support a diverse array of system landscapes. This ensures that large restaurant brands are equipped with the tools they need to accelerate their digital growth.

Smooth transition and enterprise-grade support

The MENU Ordering platform guarantees a smooth transition from your existing ordering provider without any loss of customer data. It ensures enterprise-grade security measures and robust support, laying a solid foundation for a secure and reliable ordering experience across all touchpoints.

Embrace the future, where customization meets efficiency, and MENU’s Ordering APIs become the driving force behind your restaurant’s digital transformation. The possibilities are endless and uniquely crafted to elevate your brand in the eyes of your customers.

Want to learn more about how MENU Ordering APIs can put you on a fast track to success?

Day 1: A Message From Our CEO, Savneet Singh

PAR Team — Tue, 02 Jan 2024 17:38:04 +0000

To My PAR Fam,

I wanted to wish you all a Happy New Year!

While New Year’s Day is a great time for reflection, I think it’s more important for setting the tone in the upcoming the year. I spent a lot of the holiday re-reading many of the CEO letters, books, and podcasts that have inspired me over the years. It reminded that one of the most important jobs we all have is to constantly remind ourselves, that today, and every day after, is Day 1. Jeff Bezos famously coined the concept of a Day 1 mentality in his 1997 shareholder letter. He described the Day 1 mentality as a focus on being nimble, making decisions quickly and essentially never being scared to question the status quo. Every day is Day 1, because Day 2 brings on stasis. And stasis brings on a celebration of the past combined with an ignorance of the future. It’s the moment when you let paper cuts begin to erode the foundation, it’s the moment where you lower the bar from great to good, it’s the moment that you give up on a virtuous fight for the fear of stepping on someone’s toes. Day 2 is often times the beginning of a long and slow decline.

After Bezos wrote about the Day 1 mentality, it went on to become a Silicon Valley mantra, a great saying for CEOs like me, and almost a must read in business schools. Everyone from Warren Buffett to CNBC couldn’t stop talking about the wisdom in a Day 1 mentality.

But what all the quotes and sayings about a Day 1 mentality hide is that working in Day 1 business is difficult. The team members in these businesses aren’t scared to bring up the awkward questions, confront established processes and propose changes to those in different departments. In fact, these businesses actually have more problems than the average business, because they go out looking for them! They live every day thinking about how to get better by asking the tough questions, that while uncomfortable, often lead to the changes that make impact. That sounds easy, but as humans we’re wired to seek social cohesion, and the person questioning established norms is often the first person voted off the island. So, working in these businesses requires immense trust, immense intensity, but most of all, an understanding that the only way to get better is to confront the brutal facts, live in humility, and never stop believing in “why not us”.

So how do Day 1 businesses end up becoming Day 2 businesses? Scale! Scale makes things harder because it forces us to build processes, departments and layers for decision making that can quickly get stale. They turn great thinkers into GPS followers, great problem solvers into rule followers and squeeze out the ingenuity that made a business great in the first place. Scaling companies often bring in “experts” who while truly exceptional, don’t often take critique well, and social cohesion becomes far more important for advancement than actual concrete output. Simplistically, the way I think about this is the bigger a company gets the more time it spends on internal problems and not external problems (solving our customer needs). This will not and cannot happen at PAR.

So, get ready boys and girls, while today is Day 1 of 2024, tomorrow is still Day 1 for us. Our excellence today and tomorrow will be our capacity to take pain. Can we outlast, outthink and out-question our competitors and ourselves, while trusting ourselves to be open-minded towards progress? Can we live in pursuit of not perfection, but constant improvement? Can we learn to trust that while we may be the expert, it’s often the unencumbered who have the best solutions or ideas? Let’s all remember that while we all got to PAR through different avenues, our ability to succeed will be our collective commitment to get better every day.

I hope everyone had a restful and refreshing holiday. I’m excited to be back at my desk with all of you and can’t wait for Day 1!

With gratitude,
Savneet

This message was originally sent to PAR employees on January 1st, 2024

Unveiling 2024: Your Essential Guide to Restaurant Tech Trends

PAR Team — Fri, 15 Dec 2023 05:00:41 +0000

As the year concludes, it’s time to reflect on the challenges faced and prepare for what lies ahead. Economic instability looms in 2024, intensifying the financial strain on the restaurant sector. To adapt, brands are turning to technology, no longer just a supporting player but a central force for innovation and survival.

Changing consumer habits emphasize off-premise consumption and diversified revenue streams. This shift fuels innovative dining experiences, powered by cutting-edge technologies—from predictive AI to generative innovations. Modern restaurant operators now have an array of remarkable tech solutions at their disposal.

We’ve compiled a list of state-of-the-art restaurant tech trends to keep you ahead of the curve and help you make smart investments in the coming year.

Contactless ordering

The tech-savvy nature of customers and the necessity to minimize physical contact in the post-pandemic era has instigated a transformative shift within the restaurant industry, giving rise to the rapidly growing phenomenon of contactless ordering. Contactless ordering (which includes ordering via QR codes, mobile & web apps and kiosk ordering) addresses this notable shift in customer purchasing behaviour. It offers an enhanced customer experience and grants customers greater autonomy in placing orders, expanding beyond the conventional dine-in approach. This way, they are more likely to add more items to their order and increase the average check size than if they placed an order over the phone or in person. Moreover, implementing contactless ordering solutions enables the tracking of customer data for each transaction and facilitates personalized engagement through a restaurant CRM platform. This allows businesses to tailor offers, communications, and updates based on customer preferences and behaviour, ultimately aiming for a customized and expectation-surpassing customer experience.

With a constant demand for convenience and speed, operators in the quick service and fast casual dining sector are recognizing the advantages of employing voice assistants for precise and efficient food ordering. Voice-activated ordering, exemplified by innovations like ordering through Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant, or Apple Siri, showcases the potential of technology to reshape the customer experience.

“We anticipate a significant uptick in AI-powered voice and chat ordering in the coming years. Advanced language models make it easier for computers to understand and process customer orders, creating more efficient and convenient dining experiences”, said Marlon Koch, VP of Product, MENU & PAR Platform.

Robots & automation

Restaurant automation involves employing automated or robotic devices to carry out various tasks within a restaurant. These robots serve diverse functions, ranging from meal preparation to delivering food to guests. The integration of robots into restaurant operations holds the potential to significantly enhance restaurant operations.

Many kitchen robots excel in efficiently carrying out simple, repetitive tasks. When properly utilized, they have the capacity to diminish the burden of time-consuming and low-skill tasks in the workplace.

“Anticipate a restaurant revolution with specialized robots dedicated to food preparation and customer service,” said Marlon Koch, VP of Product, MENU & PAR Platform. “These robots, working in tandem with human staff, enhance the dining experience by boosting operational efficiency. Through automating repetitive tasks, they cut labour costs, allowing resources to be redirected to improving food quality and elevating customer experiences. This shift promises quicker, more accurate service, reshaping the dining landscape and enticing customers to return—an evolving trend poised to revolutionize the industry.”

Food Waste Management

Restaurants discard significant amounts of edible food daily, resulting in financial losses and contributing to environmental concerns. To address this, food retail outlets are embracing data-driven and innovative food waste management strategies, incorporating technologies like the Internet of Things (IoT), advanced analytics, AI, robotics, and chemical recycling.

Utilizing machine learning and predictive analytics, restaurants can accurately track inventory and anticipate fluctuating customer demands, optimizing resource utilization and minimizing over-purchasing. Additionally, the deployment of sensors aids in tracking food waste, allowing businesses to identify patterns in wastage.

To control food waste at its source, restaurants can also implement in-house food waste management systems. This involves leveraging advanced plastic recycling systems for packaging food waste, as well as adopting food waste-to-energy (WTE) systems and composting. These comprehensive measures collectively contribute to reducing the carbon footprint associated with restaurant operations.

The Future of Restaurant Technology: AI-driven customer engagement tools

Data has emerged as an invaluable resource, creating a golden opportunity for well-informed decision-making . With the abundance of data captured, restaurants can obtain priceless insights into customer behaviour, preferences, and operational efficiencies. This empowers restaurant brands and managers to make well-informed decisions, streamline operations, and enhance the overall performance of their restaurant. This approach is rooted in creating seamless experiences using AI-driven customer segmentation and optimization tools to enhance customer engagement. Inevitably, the restaurant industry’s future lies in AI, unlocking boundless potential and offering unparalleled opportunities for transformative advancements. By integrating AI into their operations, restaurants can leverage advanced analytics, automated processes, and personalized interactions to elevate the overall dining experience and cultivate lasting customer relationships.

In 2024, making the most of innovative restaurant technology solutions is the only way to truly prosper in this competitive market. Technology is here to help your restaurant not just survive but really thrive in the digital age. PAR MENU has a diverse range of cutting-edge solutions that can assist your restaurant on this digital path.

Let’s chat about how we can set your restaurant up for success in 2024!

Leveraging Data Pipelines for Informed Restaurant Business Decisions

PAR Team — Thu, 23 Nov 2023 19:31:59 +0000

In the current digital era, every successful restaurant is producing a substantial amount of data. However, manual data processes can lead to incorrect analyses and poorly informed choices. Data science and analytics have emerged as game-changers. By harnessing the power of data, restaurants can gain valuable insights into customer behaviour, preferences, and operational efficiencies. This transformation empowers restaurant brands and managers to make informed decisions, optimize operations, and improve the overall performance of their restaurant. Data Pipelines offer a seamless solution by automating the flow of data from various sources. Serving as a bridge, this solution ensures that information from diverse sources is seamlessly processed, maintaining data accuracy and completeness.

Here’s why Data Pipelines should be at the heart of your broader analytics strategy:

Gain Deeper Customer Insights: Data Pipelines empower you to delve into customer preferences and behaviour on a profound level. This invaluable understanding enables you to tailor experiences, optimizing customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Streamline Operations and Identify Bottlenecks: Efficiency is the cornerstone of a successful restaurant. With Data Pipelines, you can pinpoint operational bottlenecks and streamline processes. This means smoother service, happier customers, and a more profitable business.
Benchmark and Stay Competitive: In the dynamic restaurant industry, staying ahead of the competition is crucial. Data Pipelines provide the tools to benchmark your performance against competitors. Invaluable insights ensure you’re always one step ahead, adapting and innovating to maintain your competitive edge.
Amplify Functionalities through Data Fusion: Your data is a goldmine of potential. With Data Pipelines, you can merge this valuable resource with other data sources you own. The result? New functionalities and capabilities that can revolutionize how you operate and serve your customers.
Extract Meaningful Conclusions with Custom Reporting: Standard reports often fall short in providing the specific insights you need. Data Pipelines allow you to run custom reports tailored to your unique business needs.
Seamless Integration with Your Preferred Tools: The versatility of Data Pipelines extends to seamless integration with a Business Intelligence (BI) tool of your choice. Alternatively, you can effortlessly import your enriched data into other platforms, such as a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. This ensures that your data flows seamlessly through your chosen ecosystem, enhancing every aspect of your operations.

Unleash the Potential of MENU’s Data Pipelines for Comprehensive Data Analysis

As a part of the MENU backend in Management Center, Data Pipelines is not just a tool; it is a secure, reliable and scalable large-scale data transfer solution that unlocks the opportunity for brands to truly become owners of their data. It enables you to inject data into your data lake and/or data warehouse environment as part of a broader analytics/BI strategy.
The Data Pipeline feature empowers you to access data in its raw form and draw meaningful conclusions by:

Running custom reports tailored to your unique needs
Connecting a BI tool for in-depth analysis
Merging the data with other sources you own
Powering additional functionalities, such as integrating with a CRM platform

Data Pipelines are a game-changer for the restaurant industry, automating data processes, ensuring data integrity, and enabling informed decision-making that drives growth and customer satisfaction.

Reach out to explore how Data Pipelines can enhance your restaurant business today.

Streamlining Restaurant Operations: A Unified Approach to POS, Ordering and Loyalty

PAR Team — Wed, 18 Oct 2023 22:31:55 +0000

Embracing technology is the key to unlocking growth in the dynamic realm of restaurant operations. In this landscape, the prevalent challenge lies in the disjointed nature of a brand’s POS system, loyalty program, and ordering platform. The intricate dance between these crucial components often leads to many difficulties:

- Managing Multiple Vendors: Coordinating multiple vendors introduces an extra level of complexity to the operational puzzle. Disparate solutions are prevailing, extracting value with a notable lack of innovation. The burden of high fees is placing a significant strain on restaurants’ already tight operation budgets.
- Support Challenges: When a hiccup occurs in any of these systems, the restaurant staff must navigate a maze of customer support portals, often without a clear path to resolution. Resolving these issues can be a time-consuming process, potentially affecting the quality of service and guest satisfaction.
- API Complexity: API inconsistencies between these disparate systems add another layer of complexity. Differences in data formatting or interpretation can lead to errors and operational disruptions.

Achieving customer engagement without overwhelming operational capacity remains a central challenge for restaurants. To conquer these obstacles and take the lead in a competitive market, it is imperative to have a seamless integration of POS, ordering, and loyalty solutions within a unified platform.

Unlock Boundless Potential with PAR’s Better-Together Solutions

PAR’s comprehensive suite of “Better-Together” solutions are tightly integrated best-of-class products under the PAR umbrella. These integrations are meticulously designed to forge cohesive, frictionless experiences for guests, operators, and employees, ultimately driving superior operational and business outcomes.

PAR MENU, an integral part of the PAR platform, offers an empowered approach to ordering experiences. Whether your guests opt for the convenience of digital, in-store, or third-party options, MENU ensures a seamless and convenient ordering process.

MENU’s deep integration with PAR POS allows orders from in-house and external sources to flow effortlessly into the POS system, all managed from a unified backend. This eliminates the necessity for multiple tablets and significantly minimizes the likelihood of errors stemming from manual order input. Leverage real-time item availability and price updates, synchronized refunds, automatic order ready status updates, dynamic pricing, and much more!

To unlock the full potential of online ordering and loyalty programs, it is essential to strategically and purposefully integrate the two. The MENU and Punchh integration goes beyond the ordinary. What sets this integration apart is its focus on creating a cohesive mobile, web, and kiosk UI/UX experience, that delivers a winning experience for your customers. Data are collected in one system, which means brands can have a complete view of the ordering experience in a single platform. Data-driven insights help enhance customer engagement across all touchpoints and give brands the ability to gain a competitive edge.

With MENU, PAR POS and Punchh in perfect sync, businesses can expect an unparalleled POS, digital ordering and loyalty integration that improves restaurant operations and goes above and beyond to exceed customer expectations. Being under the PAR umbrella brings the advantage of a lower total cost of ownership, making it a financially savvy choice for businesses. This also means that MENU operates with greater agility and has the ability to deliver groundbreaking innovations in the realm of food service.

The restaurant industry is evolving, and so are we. With MENU, PAR Technology is revolutionizing the way you do business. Seamlessly integrated with PAR POS and Punchh and designed with your success in mind – MENU is not just a solution; it’s a promise of a better future.

Ready to embark on this journey with us?
Let’s make your restaurant thrive in this new era of dining.

Optimizing Operational Efficiency through Seamless Third-Party Ordering Channel Management

PAR Team — Mon, 16 Oct 2023 19:31:51 +0000

In our fast-paced world, the way we experience food has drastically evolved. The surge in online food delivery, largely driven by the preferences of Millennials and Gen Z, is here to stay. According to the Technomic’s Delivery and Takeout report, a staggering 36% of delivery orders are now made through third-party delivery services. Yet, behind this seemingly seamless experience lies a complex reality for restaurant staff.

Picture this: you’re running a bustling restaurant, and you’re juggling multiple delivery marketplaces. Each one demands its own tablet, and suddenly, you find yourself in the midst of what’s become known as “tablet hell.”

This scenario leads to several problems:

- Potential for errors: Manual order entry opens the door to errors that could impact customer satisfaction and your bottom line.
- Menu management challenges: Coordinating menu updates across multiple platforms is time-consuming and diverts attention from other critical aspects of running your business.
- Multiple dashboards: The absence of a unified dashboard for all orders deprives restaurant operators of the ability to make informed, data-driven decisions.

The result? Operational complexity that isn’t just a behind-the-scenes headache. It ripples through your sales figures and has a direct impact on overall customer satisfaction levels.

Seamlessly Integrate External Ordering Channels with MENU Link

Imagine a solution that not only tackles these challenges head-on but also streamlines operations and boosts your bottom line. Enter MENU Link, the cornerstone of the PAR MENU platform. By seamlessly integrating third-party ordering platforms, it transforms the way restaurants handle orders from the largest delivery marketplaces such as Uber Eats, Grubhub and Doordash.
MENU Link streamlines restaurant operations by providing a centralized hub for third-party order management and seamlessly integrates with your POS system for increased efficiency and accuracy.

Maximizing Success with MENU Link and PAR Brink POS

MENU Link is seamlessly integrated with PAR’s Brink POS, a next-gen POS software deployed in over 20,000 restaurant locations to fuel their growth. With the MENU Link and Brink POS integration, you gain a seamless, centralized platform for managing orders across various external channels. This means no more juggling multiple tablets, saving both space and the workload for your staff.

Dynamic Pricing for Channel-Specific Offers
The integration empowers you to effortlessly differentiate prices and offers across platforms using dynamic pricing. Easily set specific pricing strategies for platforms like Doordash, ensuring automatic adjustments for all items. This not only saves time, but also provides valuable insights for crafting strategies to optimize your profitability.

Real-Time Sync of Vital Information
Thanks to the MENU Link and Brink POS integration, your menu, pricing, item availability, and store information sync in real-time. This ensures that your customers receive accurate information regardless of their ordering channel.

Automatic Order Injection for Smoother Operations
MENU Link and Brink POS work in perfect sync to automatically inject orders into your POS system. This not only saves time but also enhances accuracy, resulting in a higher level of customer satisfaction.

PAR’s Brink and MENU Link have been selected by major leading enterprise restaurant brands to not only meet the evolving demands of today’s consumers but also to strategically position themselves for sustained success in the years ahead.

Take guest satisfaction to new heights with PAR’s Brink POS and MENU Link!
Get in touch with us today to unlock the full revenue potential of your business