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Report: Consumers hungry for more restaurant technologyReport: Consumers hungry for more restaurant technology

Online payments and wait lists are among the digital capabilities diners desire, according to OpenTable.

Bret Thorn, Senior Food Editor

August 7, 2015

3 Min Read
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Technology has changed the way we communicate, how we work, how we get entertainment, and it could have much more of an impact on how we eat, according to a survey by OpenTable.

The online reservation service asked more than 6,000 adults in 10 United States metropolitan areas about how they use technology before, during and after a restaurant meal and found that many were hungry for more tech, especially at limited-service restaurants.

Most of the survey respondents, 76 percent, all of whom had made at least one reservation through OpenTable in the past year, said they believed technology had the potential to play a “much bigger” or “somewhat bigger” role at limited-service restaurants.

Fewer people saw technology’s fit for higher-end experiences. Just 12 percent said they saw technology playing a “much bigger” role in fine dining, although an additional 34 percent said they saw it playing a somewhat bigger role. 

Before eating out

Still, most consumers engaged with the information cloud on some level before visiting full-service restaurants. Obviously all of them at least occasionally made reservations online, and 88 percent said they did so frequently.

What diners wish a restaurant knew about them

Other pre-visit activities include:

• Finding restaurants: 87 percent

• Looking at menus: 86 percent

• Reading diners’ reviews: 60 percent

• Reading professional critics’ reviews: 48 percent

There are other things consumers said they’d like to do online before visiting restaurants. Although many restaurants are working on allowing customers to pre-pay for their meals or order in advance, their customers have other priorities:

• Know how long the wait for a table is: 85 percent

• Add yourself to the waitlist before arriving: 83 percent

• Choose your table: 68 percent

• Pre-order cocktails or wine: 19 percent

• Pre-order the meal: 14 percent

• Pre-pay for the meal: 12 percent

During the meal

(Continued from page 1)

On-table touchscreens are now an accepted part of restaurant life: Over half of respondents, 55 percent, said they have used them to place an order, and four out of five of them said they liked them or were neutral about them.

Far fewer, (15 percent) have used the devices to alert wait staff, or reorder food or drink (12 percent), but 40 percent said they like the idea of a button to alert waitstaff and 38 percent said they’d like to use the devices to reorder. Only 13 percent have tried mobile payments and most found that positive or neutral, but 46 percent said that, although they’ve never tried to use a phone to pay, they like the idea.

After the meal, they’re pretty much done with you

“Once the check is paid, we see a dip in technology usage for dining-related actions,” OpenTable reported.

The most common activity, done by just 18 percent of respondents, is to interact in some way with the restaurant’s loyalty program. Other than that, they:

• Coordinate post-meal plans: 17 percent

• Share their experience on social media: 15 percent

• Post a review on a public site: 13 percent

• Order transportation from the restaurant: 11 percent

Although around one in eight respondents said they post a review, “as mentioned earlier, many more will access those same reviews prior to their next dining experience,” OpenTable’s report said. “Given the potential influence, it’s worth encouraging your guests to review their good experiences and let you know directly if things can be improved.” 

Working on an app for your restaurant? Most customers — 56 percent — said they don’t want it. They said they are “very unlikely” or “unlikely” to download an app for an individual restaurant. Just 6 percent say they are very likely to download it.

They say they don’t want to use their phone’s storage space and prefer apps that aggregate information from multiple restaurants.

Contact Bret Thorn: [email protected]
Follow him on Twitter: @foodwriterdiary

About the Author

Bret Thorn

Senior Food Editor, Nation's Restaurant News

Senior Food & Beverage Editor

Bret Thorn is senior food & beverage editor for Nation’s Restaurant News and Restaurant Hospitality for Informa’s Restaurants and Food Group, with responsibility for spotting and reporting on food and beverage trends across the country for both publications as well as guiding overall F&B coverage. 

He is the host of a podcast, In the Kitchen with Bret Thorn, which features interviews with chefs, food & beverage authorities and other experts in foodservice operations.

From 2005 to 2008 he also wrote the Kitchen Dish column for The New York Sun, covering restaurant openings and chefs’ career moves in New York City.

He joined Nation’s Restaurant News in 1999 after spending about five years in Thailand, where he wrote articles about business, banking and finance as well as restaurant reviews and food columns for Manager magazine and Asia Times newspaper. He joined Restaurant Hospitality’s staff in 2016 while retaining his position at NRN. 

A magna cum laude graduate of Tufts University in Medford, Mass., with a bachelor’s degree in history, and a member of Phi Beta Kappa, Thorn also studied traditional French cooking at Le Cordon Bleu Ecole de Cuisine in Paris. He spent his junior year of college in China, studying Chinese language, history and culture for a semester each at Nanjing University and Beijing University. While in Beijing, he also worked for ABC News during the protests and ultimate crackdown in and around Tiananmen Square in 1989.

Thorn’s monthly column in Nation’s Restaurant News won the 2006 Jesse H. Neal National Business Journalism Award for best staff-written editorial or opinion column.

He served as president of the International Foodservice Editorial Council, or IFEC, in 2005.

Thorn wrote the entry on comfort food in the Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, 2nd edition, published in 2012. He also wrote a history of plated desserts for the Oxford Companion to Sugar and Sweets, published in 2015.

He was inducted into the Disciples d’Escoffier in 2014.

A Colorado native originally from Denver, Thorn lives in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Bret Thorn’s areas of expertise include food and beverage trends in restaurants, French cuisine, the cuisines of Asia in general and Thailand in particular, restaurant operations and service trends. 

Bret Thorn’s Experience: 

Nation’s Restaurant News, food & beverage editor, 1999-Present
New York Sun, columnist, 2005-2008 
Asia Times, sub editor, 1995-1997
Manager magazine, senior editor and restaurant critic, 1992-1997
ABC News, runner, May-July, 1989

Education:
Tufts University, BA in history, 1990
Peking University, studied Chinese language, spring, 1989
Nanjing University, studied Chinese language and culture, fall, 1988 
Le Cordon Bleu Ecole de Cuisine, Cértificat Elémentaire, 1986

Email: [email protected]

Social Media:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/bret-thorn-468b663/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/bret.thorn.52
Twitter: @foodwriterdiary
Instagram: @foodwriterdiary

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