Bite Sized Restaurant Industry Happenings # 3

More interesting tidbits currently happening in the restaurant and retail industries:

  • • Remember Amazon Dash gadgets? They were plastic buttons to press to order a specific product such as Doritos or Tide. Dash never took off the way Amazon hoped it would. Amazon’s already stopped selling them and has now announced all Dash buttons globally will stop working on Aug. 31. Not all omni channel options are appealing to customers.
  • • Taco Bell has announced a new beef policy. The fast Mexican American food chain is committing to reduce antibiotics important to human health in its beef supply chain in the United States and Canada by 25% by 2025.
  • • To coincide with the “Storm Area 51, They Can’t Stop All of Us” event fueled by social media, sandwich chain Arby’s will bring a food truck to Area 51 on Sept. 20 with a special menu.” No matter the silliness of the event (or not) Arby is successfully advertising its brand via social media.
  • • In 2013, coffee giant Starbucks pledged to hire 25,000 military veterans and spouses by the year 2025. Starbucks recently announced that they had hit their goal 6 years ahead of schedule. Starbucks has also opened 61 “military family stores” near active-duty bases, with plans to open 71 more locations by 2022.
  • • Domino’s in the UK is worried that Brexit may interrupt its supply chain and has spent $8.5 million to stock up on imported ingredients. (The UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Britain is leaving by Oct. 31, with our without a deal in place.) Domino’s imports a third of its supplies including frozen chicken, pineapple and tuna. Domino’s isn’t the only chain preparing for a worse case scenario – McDonald’s and KFC in Britain are also concerned about shortages.
  • • Food order and delivery platforms UK based Just Eat and Amsterdam based Takeaway.com  have announced they are planning to merge. A merger between of Just Eat and Takeaway would make things tough for rival Deliveroo, (which Amazon recently invested in) and Uber Eats. If the merger goes through the new company would become the largest food service delivery company in the world, with 360 million orders worth $8 billion processed in 2018 alone.
  • • Meanwhile e-commerce giant Amazon is considering a buyout of digital delivery platform Uber Eats in India. The discussions are reportedly in the early stages and the two companies may possibly explore a strategic alliance instead. While Amazon has exited (for now) the food  delivery industry in the US, they are making gigantic moves overseas.
    In fact the on demand digital food service delivery industry is consolidating. In the near future the landscape of the industry will look very different with a few main companies dominating world wide.

Sintel System offers complete omni-channel POS solutions for the restaurant industry such as the Direct-to-POS online ordering platform. This system allows restaurants of all sorts to have a custom, secure website and mobile app to support customer ability for placing orders on the go. Using our omni channel approach customers can order with an employee using a hand held device at busy drive thrus, order from a kiosk, order from their phone or order from a computer. If they prefer, they can even order inside the restaurant from staff at the counter. All transaction from devices are seamlessly sent to the kitchen display system (KDS). Kitchen staff stays completely in the know of customer orders and what order to cook them in. That’s the goal of omni channel POS, service is provided to the customer where they want it, how they want it.