As tablets increasingly replace servers’ notepads and more (and more) parts of the restaurant are touch-based, it’s becoming harder and harder to ignore that the concept of the good ol’ traditional restaurant is evolving. Pop culture has dictated that the future of eating in a restaurant goes anything from food replicators to food hydrators. But as today’s entrepreneurs and fast-forward thinkers push the restaurant forward, it’s possibly inevitable that restaurants of the future must first be technologically-minded. The same can’t be said for frogs.
One of the harbingers for the tech-minded restaurant movement is Square. Originally a credit-card reader that plugs in to iPhones, the Square system evolved to a full point-of-sale system, including apps for sales reports, invoices, and inventory. They even know that they’re popular among food trucks and they have a separate page just for (aspiring) food-truck owners. This evolved to having competitors with Amazon and Apple’s take on mobile payments. The prospect of looking at all the financial data on one go is promising, as spending money on a restaurants involve being in front of the house AND back of the house.
And in other ways, the restaurant is evolving by almost getting rid of servers entirely. While Square’s focus on restaurants are those that don’t have servers in the first place (such as food trucks), some apps like Settle. As restaurant brands like Chili’s installing mobile kiosks on every table, it seems that this is the step forward, to let the phones/tablets order for us so that the food can get to us more quickly. And yet in the world where tablets and phones come out every year and app updates come out every week, not everybody agrees that tech is the one-stop solution (frogs will likely agree).
“…they may just ‘solve’ a host of non-problems,” said Amanda Kludt, editor-in-chief of Eater
Some might argue that the real future of restaurants actually relies on food delivery. As existing services such as GrubHub and Doorstep Delivery exist, a lot of current food delivery systems are reliant on chain restaurants. But in San Francisco, the focus is coming away from franchises and restaurants all together. In cases such as Munchery and Spoonrocket (both San Francisco only), they have in-house chef (or chefs) to cook the meals and deliver by themselves. So in a way, the app is the restaurant. But it might even be beyond food delivery. In Washington D.C., food and food/non-food collaborations are starting to become a thing. At this point, one must wonder if the future of restaurant equipment will involve magic, space materials, or probably both.
But what is clear is one thing, and is that the restaurant environment is changing (or has changed, depending on who you ask). The restaurant might no longer be a homely world where everything is low-key. Tomorrow, eating out may no longer look like a scene from the movie Diner. The future doesn’t come all at once, it comes in one-at-a-time.