In our latest installment of This Week in Restaurant Technologies, Nate and I tackle four important news developments restaurants need to stay on top of:
- Remember when we talked about Panera 2.0 rolling out? The massive investment. The careful consideration of customers’ mobile and in-store experience. The efficient operations that would result. Well, maybe franchisees aren’t fully on board with it! Is this typical? Watch to hear our opinions.
- Yelp reviews. Yes, you can read them and groan or celebrate to your heart’s content. Now, how about WATCHING those reviews as videos, right within the app? That feature is getting tested starting with the next app release — allowing Yelpers to leave video reviews. Ridiculous? Listen in on what we have to say on this.
- Let’s stick with Yelp for another minute. The company has had its SeatMe reservations service already running for sometime. But they’re now moving deeper into the reservations space by allowing customers to book a reservation directly from an establishment’s Yelp listing via smartphone or desktop.
- And speaking of reservations, there’s a new player on the horizon. Gary Vaynerchuk, of video marketing, social media, and WineLibrary.com fame, is partnering with Ben Leventhal to launch a new company: Resy. Resy will offer a paid-reservations service. As stated at Eater.com: “Resy allows diners to pay for access to hot tables on tight timelines.” I think this could catch on…in certain situations.
Give this week’s episode a watch and enjoy the conversation. Want to join in? Got an opinion. Feel free to share in the comments or via Twitter (use the hashtag #TWIRT).
