Restaurant & Bar Tech Live Round-up
After more than a year away from events, the possibility of interacting with customers and partners again during the busy two-day show, was something all at Star were looking forward to. The pandemic has accelerated the changing restaurant and hospitality landscape, with new technologies around mobile ordering and contactless payments reshaping how the industry operates.
With the exhibition hall bustling with industry professionals from all walks of the hospitality trade, it was exciting to see this expanding event once again offering the very latest innovations from cloud ordering systems to robot bar service. From a company perspective, it was also really pleasing to see Star’s range of mobile receipt, label and order printing solutions featured on such a large number of software partner stands as well as in the Excel food court itself.
With one of the main focus points of the event being frictionless customer experience, it was perfect timing to showcase Star’s innovative CloudPRNT technology for seamless online order and kitchen printing. This allows restaurants and online ordering platforms the flexibility to channel their customer orders from web sites and apps quickly and accurately to connected Star printers anywhere in the world.
With such a vast array of solutions on show, highlighting every innovation would be an impossible task but below are some of the stand-out solutions from our partners.
Online Ordering, Takeaway and Delivery
With their recent rebrand, StoreKit had a prominent position showing intuitive and user-friendly customer focused ordering software enabling businesses to get straight to work without extensive staff training.
Mr Yum were exhibiting their mobile ordering platform with exclusive features such as visual menus, tab sharing and order batching. If a table of customers order at different times, the orders are still created as one ticket for the kitchen and sent out at the same time, ensuring a simplified process for the kitchen and an improved experience for diners.
Get Tasty, with a stand right at the front of the event, were featuring their order and pay software with an intelligent user interface to create a frictionless customer journey and smart order routing. Intelligent QR codes and menus ensure orders are sent to the correct workspaces – bar, kitchen or restaurant.
KuulEats were also displaying their all-in-one restaurant management solution, featuring its three main components designed for ease of use and customer satisfaction, The ‘Back Office’, The ‘Front End’ and The ‘Consumer interface’.
Delivery management service KBox were also exhibiting, offering delivery management designed to help their users every step of the way – from research, to training to implementation.
POS & Payment
On the POS and payment side, SumUp were exhibiting their iOS based card readers, with a range of readers tailored to different applications, all designed to work in conjunction with the intuitive SumUp app which features reporting, item management, and employee profiles.
Clover exhibited their box-ready POS solution. This features three distinct POS package options for different types of hospitality customer. All allow for order management, remote management and a variety of payment methods
Jade Solutions were showing their tablet hardware solution for hospitality featuring zero touch set up with tablets that are ready to go out-of-the-box, creating a user-friendly experience.
Another provider focused on user experience is Dines, who strive for a frictionless customer experience. Their all-in-one EPOS helps to streamline ordering, payments, and operations within hospitality venues handling everything from card payments to mobile ordering to online collections, as well as managing menus with the user experience in mind.
At the Square stand, one of the main topics of conversation was how popular contactless commerce has become. Square provides the ideal solution with their self-serve ordering solution. This allows customers to scan QR codes from their table and pay from their device, whilst their order is sent to the kitchen, creating a completely contactless experience.
Accent POS featuring integrated payments, order management, reporting, analytics and inventory management were also focusing on simplifying operations for restaurant owners and managers of hospitality venues.
Kiosk & Self Service
Situated right next to the Star stand Evoke Creative were displaying their range of powerful digital signage and innovative self-service kiosk solutions, ideal for food, beverage and hospitality sectors. Their focus was on allowing customers to browse, interact and purchase products in their own time, allowing for a smoother customer experience.
All in all it was an extremely interesting and encouraging 2 days and we’re looking forward to the event returning in October 2022!
