On Oct. 13, Chef Robert Irvine, the host of the Food Network’s Restaurant: Impossible toured Minneapolis’s Midtown Global Market, in partnership with the Twin Cities Comcast Business team. Irvine was in Minnesota to meet with local hospitality and technology leaders on leveraging technology to enhance guest and customer experiences in a post-pandemic environment.
Irvine visited the Midtown Global Market to meet and celebrate Manny Gonzalez, the owner and namesake of Manny’s Tortas, as a 2022 Comcast RISE grant winner. The Comcast RISE program, is a multi-year company initiative to support entrepreneurs of color.
As the host of the Restaurant: Impossible and a successful restaurant owner himself, Irvine has countless stories to tell about the restaurant industry. On a mission to help restaurateurs get a second chance at success, he’s seen everything — from unruly family feuds to unappetizing frozen foods.
In recent years, many of these restaurant owners have boosted their fortunes by using technology to reduce friction for customers. Spurred by necessary changes during the pandemic, many restaurants went all in with online and mobile ordering, curbside delivery, self-service kiosks and more.
The return of in-person dining hasn’t changed the demands on network technology. Restaurants still must have bandwidth and connectivity solutions robust enough to meet customer expectations in a digital world.
“As restaurants have been opening up post-pandemic, we’re seeing more contactless technologies, like tableside point-of-sale devices, that allow diners to pay with their phones,” Irvine said. “Restaurants need to ensure their network connectivity is robust enough to handle the increase in online orders and delivery schedules in a paperless environment.”
Wolfgang Lewis, regional vice president of Comcast Business Twin Cities, echoed Irvine’s sentiment and said the same is true for the entire hospitality industry, including hotels.
Lewis recently spoke with Minne Inno about key technology trends and best practices restaurants and hotels should consider implementing to make their operations more efficient and secure and enhance the customer experience.
Boost network security
Whether providing a hotel app that can be used as a room key or one that allows a diner to have contactless ordering in a restaurant, digital tools are increasingly part of the hotel and restaurant customer experience.
“In a post-Covid world that puts a premium on touchless experiences, hotel guests will increasingly control their hospitality experience through their own mobile devices,” Lewis said. “Hotels need high-speed internet and cybersecurity applications to protect their guests against threats like malware, phishing attacks and ransomware, and to maintain their own digital-based operations.”
A solid technology infrastructure and strong network are critical to support features and functions that enable a better experience throughout a guest’s hotel stay — from the moment they book their trip to check out.
“To take advantage of smart capabilities and hotel integrations, hotels need a robust infrastructure within and beyond their own walls,” Lewis commented. “It all starts with dependable, scalable wide-area connectivity.”
Many hotels find software-defined wide-area network (SD-WAN) services are the best option. For example, with Comcast Business SD-WAN, hotels can choose the services that best suit the requirements of each application because network control functions are abstracted from the underlying network.
Configuring backup links for each connection based on which modes of connectivity are required is easier with SD-WAN, whether dedicated Ethernet, broadband or even cellular services. Network security such as built-in firewalls or services that detect, block and mitigate cyberattacks are often included with the SD-WAN appliance for hotel sites. These are important features, Lewis noted for hotels that don’t have IT personnel at each location.
Tech’s impact on operations
Just as important as implementing technology to support the guest experience, hotels must also leverage technology to support their operational needs, Lewis said. A property management system (PMS) tracks room inventory, reservations, housekeeping schedules and room assignments. PMS functionality can be extended by integrating with other tools that add new capabilities, such as the hotel building management system (BMS) or customer relationship management (CRM) system.
“These systems allow managers to more effectively schedule maintenance, minimize guest disruptions, facilitate bookings and use data to personalize future visits,” Lewis added. “PMS can also integrate with point-of-sale systems, payment providers and accounting systems to monitor hotel financial data without leaving the PMS interface. It also allows hotels to collect and track guest data to cater to guest needs.”
For restaurants, Internet of Things (IoT) technologies play an outsized role in back-office tech, helping drive efficiencies in applications such as remote temperature monitoring of refrigerators, fryolators and more. Robotics is also playing a role in everything from frying wings to flipping burgers and making salads.
Upgrade the customer experience
A 2022 survey of more than 200 IT executives in the food and beverage industry conducted by Demand Science in collaboration with Comcast Business, found the most important consideration for IT executives is upgrading the customer experience.
Respondents have technology plans that correlate with that objective. Chief among them is mobile ordering and payment applications, cited by nearly half of respondents (47%). Closely related is omnichannel customer communications, cited by 40% of respondents. Omnichannel technology solutions could involve providing various options for customers to receive marketing messages and place orders, encompassing mobile apps, websites, kiosks and drive-thru.
Tech priorities
The Demand Science/Comcast Business survey found the following operational efficiency needs are driving technological priorities for the food and beverage organizations:
- Food production.
- Automation.
- Health and safety.
- Scheduling.
- Supply chain.
- Inventory management.
Lewis believes hotels and restaurants should evaluate their current tech platforms.
“Smart technologies require hospitality organizations to have flexible and secure IT infrastructure in place,” Lewis concluded. “Whether it’s Wi-Fi in the lobby or the network in your back-office, with the right tools, hospitality businesses can leverage smart technologies as a competitive differentiator, allowing them to improve their operating efficiencies while customizing and enhancing their guests’ experiences.”
Contact Wolfgang Lewis at 651-955-5945 or wolf_lewis@comcast.com if our Twin Cities team can assist your restaurant or hotel with your technology needs.
At Comcast Business, we help our customers safeguard their networks and data via high-performance and secure architectures by leveraging secure SD-WAN via our ActiveCore℠ platform, carrier-grade DDoS mitigation, Unified Threat Management and other solutions in our extensive managed services portfolio. Our advanced security solutions (Unified Security and Unified Secure Access) protect against most ransomware, malware, botnets, network intrusion attacks, and more for an enterprise-wide network. Unified Security is a software-deployed, on-premises solution powered by Versa networks. Unified Secure Access is a cloud-based solution for organizations to help protect connections to cloud resources.