Restaurants feel pressure to go high-tech

Before long, you'll probably be able to browse a restaurant's menu, order your dinner and pay the check through your cellular telephone. One day, diners may be able to assess a restaurant's wine selection through a tablet PC at each table.

For restaurant owners who have already adopted similar technology, they've found it a powerful way to boost profits, increase efficiency, refine menus — and hopefully please customers. Some are reporting 30 percent savings in wait staff payroll, 20 percent increases in service speed and notable decline in frustration.

Systems that simply track sales and handle finances have been available for years, but a growing level of high-tech sophistication is bringing restaurants the chance to electronically monitor customer preferences, orchestrate the cooking process second by second, and even digitally monitor how much booze a bartender is pouring.

"Everybody needs an edge over their competitors at this point," said Bill Fultz, operations manager for Delaware Business Systems, a New Castle, Del., seller of restaurant technology systems.

It solved one headache for Scott Godfrey, owner of Premium's Original Sub and Steak Delicatessen.

"We were losing anywhere from $20 to $50 a day with the old cash register" because of suspected employee theft at the Milltown, Del., eatery, he said. The solution was a system that requires orders to go through the register before being sent to a display in the kitchen, along with biometric equipment that requires employees to log on with a thumbprint.

Such systems are not cheap, especially for a recent startup — Godfrey paid $11,000. But Godfrey has been convinced it will pay for itself. Switching to the tech solution seems a wise move now, he said, but came first with its complications.

"The first week was sort of like Pearl Harbor," he said. "You didn't know what direction you were running."

Once the staff mastered the system, Godfrey said, it allowed the business to cut errors in customer orders and appraise menu items' popularity.

In time, more restaurants will use computers to tailor menus and other features more closely to customers' preferences, said Frederick J. DeMicco, professor at the University of Delaware's College of Hotel, Restaurant and Institutional Management. The latest products can estimate how long it will take a party to finish a meal, producing more accurate wait times for hosts.
For now, though, some restaurants aren't using the technology to its fullest potential, according to a recent study by Hospitality Technology magazine. Most recognize its advantages in productivity, efficiency and costs, but lag in bringing technology solutions to the kitchen and other areas — only 4 percent use customer data for analyzing trends, and 2 percent for marketing.

A diner's capacity to appraise and review restaurants online has "leveled the playing field for all," and will increasingly compel restaurants to respond to those higher expectations with their own technological solutions, DeMicco said. In time, customers will come to expect more, he added.

"Guests are demanding the technology — for example, Wi-Fi, online ordering, easy-to-navigate Web sites for reservations, booking, ordering," he said. "For companies, they have to use technology to drive their profit strategy, to customize the guest experience."