News Briefs

• The study surveyed 502 IT decision-makers from the software/technology, financial services, retail, and e-commerce sectors across the UK, US, and ANZ. 
• *DMARC, which stands for Domain-based Message Authentication, Reporting, and Conformance, is an email validation system that detects and prevents email spoofing, preventing phishing attacks  
• ** Requirement 5.4.1 of the new PCI DSS v4.0.1 introduces stricter anti-phishing measures requiring organisations to implement DMARC, Sender Policy Framework (SPF), and DomainKeys Identified Mail (DKIM) to protect payment-related emails from spoofing and fraud. 

Paytronix has launched its partnership with multi-unit guest feedback and guest experience platform, Ovation. Together the two platforms aim to provide brands with deeper analysis and insight from customer feedback.

Jake Levine, VP of Partnerships at Ovation expressed how the integration benefits restaurants: “At Ovation we always say, ‘The value is in the volume’. You need to hear from a good amount of your guests to truly get a clear understanding of what’s happening in your stores. Our partnership with Paytronix aims to provide restaurants with another avenue for seamless guest feedback.”

The partnership will prove to be particularly valuable for Paytronix customers with loyalty integrations and strong mobile presences. By capturing in-store and online orders, brands with both solutions enabled will be able to automatically send customized surveys to customers thirty minutes after a transaction.

Through text, guests are directed to a brief survey about their experience. Happy guests are prompted to engage further with the brand, while unhappy guests are asked to provide additional insights. These insights are sent directly to the company, allowing them to respond and win the guests back in real time. From there, an AI-driven categorization algorithm turns the feedback into exactly what operators need to know: data on what’s going well and what needs work.

“At the heart of integrations like this is the desire to go beyond the initial interaction”, said Kalani Stephens, Director of Strategic Partnerships at Paytronix. “The ability to immediately increase the volume of feedback, is extremely valuable. With Ovation, we aim to help brands learn from the data, improve their relationships with the guests and reward loyal, positive behavior with unique opportunities.”

Fishbowl and Onosys announce a strategic partnership.  

By integrating Fishbowl's iGuest Relationship Management, loyalty, marketing automation, and analytics with Onosys' omnichannel online ordering capabilities, this partnership creates a seamless ecosystem for restaurant operators. The collaboration will empower brands to leverage customer data more effectively, deliver highly personalized marketing campaigns, and optimize the digital ordering experience.

A Unified Solution for Restaurant Growth

Through this partnership, restaurant operators will benefit from:

• Enhanced Customer Insights – By combining transactional data from Onosys with Fishbowl's marketing intelligence, brands can gain deeper insights into customer behavior and preferences.
• Personalized Marketing Campaigns – Restaurants can deliver hyper-targeted promotions and loyalty programs, increasing guest retention and order frequency.
• Seamless Digital Experience – A frictionless transition from marketing campaigns to online ordering reduces drop-off rates and improves conversion.
• Increased Revenue Opportunities – Data-driven promotions and an optimized ordering experience help restaurants maximize order values and drive incremental revenue.

"At Fishbowl, our mission is to help restaurants build stronger connections with their guests through data-driven marketing. Partnering with Onosys allows us to extend this value by ensuring that the guest journey from engagement to transaction fits the brand's standards and elevates the guest experience," said Adam Ochstein, CEO of Fishbowl.

"Onosys is committed to providing restaurant brands with the best digital ordering experience while reducing operational friction. By collaborating with Fishbowl, we're equipping operators with the tools they need to drive guest loyalty marketing and long-term success," added Chris Anderle, President at Onosys.

This collaboration marks a significant step toward the future of restaurant technology, where marketing and digital ordering work together to create a more personalized and profitable guest experience.

Qu released its sixth annual State of Digital Report, unveiling critical insights for fast casual and quick service restaurant (QSR) operators. Based on data from 170 brands across 85,000 locations, the report uncovers a growing shift as brands reclaim the guest relationship and streamline systems to fuel profitable growth.

The findings reveal that restaurants relying on fragmented, third-party ordering platforms face hidden challenges that erode margins and complicate operations — making it harder to meet guest expectations and accurately forecast performance. By consolidating systems and moving to direct ordering, operators can eliminate the disconnect created by multiple ordering channels, third-party marketplaces and piecemeal tech providers. This shift unlocks real-time business insights, empowering smarter decisions, more efficient operations and a deeper understanding of guest preferences. First-party ordering isn't just about cutting fees — it's about owning the guest experience, building real loyalty and creating sustainable growth that boosts corporate and franchise value.

"When restaurants own the guest relationship and bring all their data together, they stop operating in the dark," said Amir Hudda, CEO of Qu. "Our report's findings make it clear: holistic, integrated tech gives brands the clarity and agility they need to navigate changing market dynamics and stay ahead of the competition. For franchise systems, this connectivity translates into stronger P&Ls, justifiable tech fees and a more compelling pitch to prospective franchisees."

Six trends driving fast casual and QSR profitability this year:

1. Shift from third- to first-party ordering: Forty percent of brands say first-party digital sales represent their biggest revenue growth potential in 2025, followed by catering (24%) and on-premises ordering (14%). For QSRs, 55% eye first-party ordering for revenue growth, outpacing drive-thru and third-party apps. Fast casuals follow with 36% prioritizing direct digital channels. By reducing reliance on third-party platforms, brands can control costs, improve unit-level economics and lay the groundwork for more personalized loyalty and marketing efforts.
   
    
2. Consolidating tech systems unlocks efficiency and prepares brands for AI: Sixty-four percent of brands are simplifying their tech stack, transitioning to unified systems to reduce costs and eliminate tech debt, while aligning the underlying data infrastructure and models. This simplification is freeing up resources for growth and accelerating access to richer data insights — critical for both operational efficiency and AI-powered innovation. For franchises, streamlined systems reduce onboarding time, lower training costs and make scaling easier.
    
3. Data-driven personalization unlocks guest engagement: While loyalty program participation lags, with 85% of guests still unreachable through traditional programs according to Paytronix, operators are shifting investments. Loyalty spending dropped 8% year-over-year, but investments in guest data platforms increased by 11%. As Chris Demery, CTO of Blaze Pizza – a Qu customer, noted at MURTEC 2025, leveraging real-time data is key to anticipating guest needs and driving satisfaction.
   
   "At Blaze, we use Qu's cutting-edge tech to enhance hospitality — texting guests when orders are ready, delivering tableside and capturing real-time feedback," said Demery. "This kind of data helps operators and franchisees forecast demand, manage surges and streamline orders — all of which drive better guest experiences. Even one extra visit per guest each year can boost revenue by 5 to 10%."
   
   Hudda added, "When brands unify their data, they can create more relevant and personalized experiences that keep guests coming back. Without real-time, connected data, loyalty programs are bound to fall short."
    
4. Kiosks ease labor strains: Sixty-two percent of brands are adding kiosks, with adoption even higher in QSRs (80%). While kiosks are becoming ubiquitous, operators are primarily using them to reduce labor pressures and give guests more flexibility — speeding up service while enhancing the in-store experience.
    
5. Smart kitchens drive accuracy and productivity: With 70% of brands citing order accuracy and team productivity as key operating challenges, many are adopting smart kitchen tech that uses unified data and AI to optimize workflows, minimize errors and improve speed of service, leading to a more consistent guest experience.
    
6. Digital sales level off, pushing brands to focus on profitability: After years of rapid growth, digital sales have plateaued, rising just 4% over the past three years. This signals a shift from chasing volume to refining operations, balancing on-premises and off-premises channels and using data to build sustainable, long-term profits.

Unified data is the foundation of future success

The Qu report underscores one overriding takeaway: success in 2025 hinges on how well brands unify and activate their data. Restaurants that build a connected technology ecosystem that effectively centralizes and unifies their underlying data — integrating first-party channels, AI-driven insights and operational tech — will gain a lasting competitive edge. For franchise brands, this level of connected intelligence isn't just a growth driver — it's a powerful tool for recruiting franchisees and accelerating market expansion.

"In the rush to 'go digital,' many brands built their tech stacks like a Jenga tower — unstable, ready to topple and blocking innovation," Hudda said. "With digital sales growth now stabilizing, restaurants must focus on dismantling these disconnected, legacy systems and adopting more modern, flexible approaches. The next phase of growth lies in using unified data to create more value for guests, improve staff efficiencies and drive lasting profitability."

The Qu 2025 State of Digital Report is available as a free industry resource. For more information and to access the full report, click here.

Stayntouch, a provider of cloud-based hotel property management systems (PMS) and guest-centric technology, has partnered with Revival Hotels, a forward-thinking hospitality management firm, to empower its independent properties with a Best-in-Class cloud PMS.

Founded by hospitality veterans, Revival Hotels blends deep industry expertise with a fresh, hands-on approach to hotel management, ensuring every property operates efficiently while delivering outstanding guest experiences. In choosing Stayntouch, Revival Hotels sought a PMS partner that aligns with its hospitality-first mindset—one that offers powerful automation, cloud-based flexibility, and an intuitive interface that hotel teams can quickly adopt to enhance daily operations. 

Revival Hotels’ independent properties now benefit from a Best-in-Class PMS that offers:

• A user-friendly design for quick staff adoption and seamless training in just two days.
• Cloud-based flexibility, enabling teams to manage operations from anywhere and maintain peak performance.
• Automated workflows that streamline check-in, real-time room updates and back-office operations.
• Dedicated support and partnership, ensuring smooth implementation and continuous optimization, with support response times under one hour. 

Saxton Sharad, Founder & CEO of Revival Hotels, said: "We chose Stayntouch because it’s built for the way modern hotels operate—efficient, intuitive, and designed to work for our teams, not against them. Having worked with nearly every PMS on the market, we know that a system is only as good as how well the team can use it. Stayntouch’s ease of use, combined with its cloud-based flexibility, has allowed us to streamline front desk operations, reduce training times, and ultimately enhance the guest experience. Seeing our hotel teams thrive with this system confirms that we made the right choice."

Priya Rajamani, VP of Implementation & Support at Stayntouch, added: "Revival Hotels is the perfect mix of hands-on hospitality and strategic innovation, making them an ideal partner for Stayntouch. With our platform, we’re helping transform their operational framework to drive greater efficiency, streamline workflows, and deliver an exceptional, guest-first experience across their independent properties. We’re proud to work with a team that truly values both operational excellence and the technology that drives it.”

Yum! Brands, the parent company of KFC, Taco Bell, Pizza Hut, and Habit Burger & Grill, announced that it is partnering with NVIDIA to accelerate the development of innovative AI technologies for Yum! restaurants around the globe. Yum! Brands, the world’s largest restaurant company with over 61,000 locations, is NVIDIA’s first AI restaurant partner. This collaboration brings the two powerhouses together to integrate AI into the restaurant and retail industry at an unprecedented scale.

“At Yum, we have a bold vision to deliver leading-edge, AI-powered technology capabilities to our customers and team members globally,” said Joe Park, Chief Digital & Technology Officer, Yum! Brands, Inc. and President, Byte by Yum! “We are thrilled to partner with a pioneering company like NVIDIA to help us accelerate this ambition. This partnership will enable us to harness the rich consumer and operational data sets on our Byte by Yum! integrated platform to build smarter AI engines that will create easier experiences for our customers and team members."

Yum! and NVIDIA are planning to transform the future of dining by unlocking scalable AI applications quickly, reliably and affordably. The technology will power and scale Yum!'s existing proprietary Byte by Yum!™ platform. Through a direct collaboration at the developer level, Yum! was able to deploy NVIDIA AI-powered voice AI agents within three months. This partnership will harness easy-to-use NVIDIA NIM microservices, part of NVIDIA AI Enterprise and available on Amazon Web Services (AWS), to optimize and create efficiencies in restaurant operations, enhancing team member and customer experiences. The AI solutions will be instrumental in three key areas across Yum! Brands:

• Voice Automated Order-Taking AI Agents: Advancing drive-thru and call center operations with conversational AI, powered by NVIDIA Riva and NVIDIA NIM microservices, that adapts to human speech patterns, understands complex menus and customer preferences, and enables a more natural, seamless ordering experience.
• Computer Vision Enhanced Operations: Deploying NVIDIA-powered computer vision to optimize drive-thru efficiency and back-of-house labor management through real-time analytics and alerts.
• Accelerated Restaurant Intelligence: Utilizing AI-driven analytics and agents to assess restaurant performance, generating personalized action plans for restaurant managers based on best practices from top-performing locations.

Yum! Brands has already begun piloting multiple AI solutions in select Taco Bell and Pizza Hut locations in the United States using NVIDIA technology. Following a successful pilot, a broader rollout of this technology targeting 500 restaurants across Pizza Hut, Taco Bell, KFC and Habit Burger is planned for the second quarter of this year. The partnership highlights the importance of NVIDIA technology to optimize inference costs at scale (the ability to run machine learning models on large volumes of data rapidly and efficiently) and enable AI to tackle increasingly complex tasks, enhancing operational efficiency and customer engagement. The goal of Yum!’s digital and technology strategy is to better serve its franchisees, providing them with better, faster, cheaper and safer technology while delighting consumers and maximizing shareholder returns.

“NVIDIA's software makes it affordable for even the largest restaurant company to improve operations and customer experiences, proving AI can pay off at every location,” said Andrew Sun, Global Director of Retail, CPG and QSR Business Development, NVIDIA. “Working with Yum! Brands’ best-in-class Digital & Technology team and proprietary Byte by Yum! platform to integrate NVIDIA AI software breaks barriers to AI innovation in the restaurant industry - delivering real-time, context-aware intelligence, powered by a scalable inference platform.”

Looking ahead, Yum! is expanding AI to help team members manage complex tasks, including AI agents that plan, reason and act to assist across restaurants. The intelligence built with the latest NVIDIA software will be proprietary to Yum!, giving the company full ownership to customize and evolve its technology stack. This will enable Yum! to integrate more advanced AI models, such as large language models, into its operations, and pave the way for innovative applications, including sentiment analysis and personalized customer interactions.

The technology will be integrated into Byte by Yum!™, a proprietary AI-driven SaaS platform that consolidates essential restaurant systems ranging from ordering and delivery optimization to inventory and labor management. The NVIDIA partnership strengthens Yum! Brands’ leadership in restaurant technology, as a company with proprietary platforms and talent to address industry challenges at scale. Leveraging NVIDIA’s advanced AI and accelerated computing, Yum! Brands aims to become the leader in integrating technology into every touch point, across every restaurant, around the world.

The terms of the strategic partnership are subject to mutually agreeable definitive agreements.