Serving Up Technology

For decades, pop culture has hinted at restaurant industry changes that are now beginning to gain traction.

It’s not “Back to the Future II” or “The Jetsons,” but tech-heavy programs such as Panera 2.0 will bring about kiosk and digital ordering options throughout the bakery cafe chain.

In Springfield, Panera Bread Co. (Nasdaq: PNRA) franchisee Traditional Bakery Inc. is kicking off the changes this month with the addition of a catering call center.

“Panera 2.0 is all about personalizing everything for the customer,” said Claudine Stark, Traditional Bakery’s marketing director. “If I walk in a place and 50 people are waiting in line, I’m not going to wait. I’m going to turn around and walk out. With 2.0, we are trying to address that.”

The centerpiece of the program is touch-screen ordering through in-store kiosks.

“The way of the world is technology. Even though sometimes this 54-year-old girl may want to stop that, that’s not how this works,” Stark said. “We have to keep up with the times.”

Panera is not alone. Tablets at tables could be the next big trend in dining, according to Jackie Rodriguez, a senior manager with Technomic Inc., a restaurant research and consulting firm.

She said several major chains with a presence in Springfield already are utilizing similar tech options or have plans in the pipeline.

“Companies like Applebee’s, Chili’s and Buffalo Wild Wings are finding in their tests that consumers really enjoy having control over their transactions. Through tablets, customers can thumb through the menu and then ask their servers when they have questions,” she said. “Also, at the end of the meal, one of the biggest complaints of consumers at peak times is that they have to wait for the check. If you are on a tight lunch hour, that can be frustrating. With the kiosks on the tabletops, customers could just swipe their cards.”

It’s all in the name of speed. Companies such as Chipotle also have smartphone apps for placing orders ahead, and plenty of others are looking to follow suit, Rodriguez said.

“Almost every major restaurant company these days is taking a look at this type of technology because it really addresses a lot of their key issues,” she said.

One of the top concerns, Rodriguez said, is staffing.

Restaurant operators have identified the difficulties in meeting customer needs during peak hours, and the technology can relieve some of the pressure on workers to meet demands on their time. Stark said employee layoffs are not part of the 2.0 plan, but nationally, it seems some companies can use the threat of technology in an escalating battle over wages.

Rodriguez said fast-food companies are particularly receptive to automation, both as a way to save money and add convenience. And given an environment where wage concerns have garnered local protests for brands such as McDonald’s, technology seems an attractive option.

In 2013, University of Oxford researchers estimated there is a 92 percent chance fast-food companies will automate food preparation and serving in the coming decades.

Rodriguez said Panera 2.0, like similar efforts, is designed to attract patrons and boost the bottom line.

“Through Panera 2.0, the company is looking to improve the customer experience,” Rodriguez said. “They realized they had a bottleneck when it came to actually delivering food to the customers, especially during peak hours, so they were looking at what they could do to improve the efficiency of the ordering process – the accuracy and timing of it. Technology can really help with that because if you are able to allow customers to place their own orders on kiosks, that feeds the order directly into the kitchen.”

Last year, sales at established Panera cafes increased 2.3 percent systemwide, a sizable dip from the 5.7 percent sales growth the prior year.

Stark said the catering service will help Panera handle more calls and handle each of them the same way regardless of the store a customer has called. She said questions for catering will be routed to the call center at the East Sunshine Street store, where existing employees will be trained to direct services.

“What this will do is help us with our volume and help us make sure that every single cafe does every single order the same way,” Stark said. “It’s all about consistency.”

Through an April market briefing, Technomic found early adopters view the changes favorably. In a limited survey, the researchers found 83 percent of patrons who had visited a restaurant with tabletop tablets used them and 93 percent of those visitors were likely to order that way in the future.

By the end of the year, local Panera stores are expected to have Rapid Pick-Up in place – the second phase of the 2.0 initiative. The system allows customers to order and pay from a smartphone or computer, and then pick up at the location they choose without waiting in line.

Stark said Traditional Bakery is working to have ordering kiosks at its cafes by the end of 2015. Panera 2.0 is estimated to cost the Springfield-based franchisee $500,000 as it rolls out the technology across its 36 Panera cafes in four states. The corporation expects the full deployment to cost $42 million.

Industry officials say the technological moves are not leaving personal interaction by the wayside.

“If you are like my husband, who is 61 and won’t really use technology, you can still get in line and have that personal service,” Stark said.

Rodriguez acknowledged not everyone wants to treat dining out like a visit to the ATM. “They’ll never take the personal aspect out of it,” she said. “It’s too important.”[[In-content Ad]]