Tapping into technology to deliver a better kitchen

The holiday season gifts to give and get in 2017 included anything with “smart” technology like the new Google^® Home smart speaker & home assistant or Amazon^® Echo Dot. In October, Apple^® announced facial recognition technology on the iPhone X, which had consumers digging deep into their wallets to pay the almost $1,000 price tag.

While consumers are tapping into this smart technology in their everyday lives to make everything from ordering their dinner to replenishing their laundry supplies or exchanging money, this same technology is now permeating to the back-of-house functionality in the foodservice industry. Starting in 2018, and the next several years, we’ll see rapid changes in the way the kitchen is managed in many restaurants.

According to a Restaurant Business^® article, “7 Predictions For What Lies Ahead For Tech In Restaurants”, voice technology will be in the driver’s seat for managing the day-to-day operations in the kitchen. Taking a cue from Domino’s^® Pizza and the Amazon^® Echo partnership, managers will be able to voice order items directly from their mobile device app making the entire process seamless and almost paperless.

But with operators giving consumers the ability to order and pay via apps or mobile websites, order management and kitchen throughput is a growing concern as the pop up rush is an ever-present reality. However, with connected equipment management systems like Welbilt Kitchen Connect^™, operators who want to grow their traffic and sales with mobile technology need tools to connect and manage their entire kitchen every second of the day.
 

Kitchen driven technology will continue to be the silent accelerator for operators across every segment of the foodservice industry and will have the greatest impact on the trends of the future.