News Briefs

Sophia Learning, an online, on-demand, self-paced learning platform providing college-level courses. is partnering with Jason’s Deli,  to give its full-time and part-time employees access to Sophia’s low-cost $99/month subscription. The subscription will include access to more than 60 high-quality general education college-level courses.

The monthly subscription will be reimbursable in accordance with the tuition reimbursement policy of Jason’s Deli. Additionally, Jason’s Deli employees will be eligible to receive the tuition reimbursement benefits for multiple reimbursement cycles, including consecutively month over month.

"At Jason's Deli, we recognize that financial barriers can be an obstacle for our employees who want to meet their education goals. Jason’s Deli is proud to launch our education benefits program with Sophia to help remove this burden for our employees,” said Alex Cone, VP of Human Resources for Jason’s Deli. “Sophia's platform is a great partner for us and will allow our diverse workforce to continue to learn and excel, whenever or wherever they choose."

Sophia is an online learning platform that allows students at any stage of their higher education journey to get started on their education or finish up their college-level courses. The courses are flexible, ACE®-recommended for college credit, and available through an affordable monthly subscription that allows students to move through courses at their own speed.

Sophia currently partners with over 60 colleges and universities who have agreed to award credit for Sophia courses. Through the partnership, Jason’s Deli employees will be eligible to receive credit with Sophia partner institutions as well as apply for consideration at non-partner institutions.

“As more frontline workers consider going back to school, having access to affordable general education courses that are flexible and transferable will be absolutely critical for them,” said Shawna Thayer, Chief Executive Officer of Sophia. “We are excited to partner with Jason’s Deli to provide their team members with a pathway to help them advance their personal and professional goals.”

Starting today, eligible Jason’s Deli employees are able to apply for a Sophia subscription. For more information, visit https://app.sophia.org/jasons-deli to learn more about the partnership and its offerings.

Domino's Pizza Inc. introduces its new and improved loyalty program. 

Domino's Rewards offers loyalty members even more opportunities to earn and redeem points across its corporate and franchise store locations. Domino's enhanced rewards program allows customers to:

• Earn points for less
  • Loyalty members will now earn 10 points on every order of $5 or more
• Redeem points for even more menu items – and earn free Domino's after just two orders
  • Members can redeem a variety of points for more menu items:
    • 20 points: A free dipping cup, a 16-piece order of Parmesan Bread Bites or a 20 oz. drink
    • 40 points: An order of Bread Twists or Stuffed Cheesy Bread
    • 60 points: A medium, two-topping pizza; pasta; Oven-Baked Sandwich; or a 3-piece order of Chocolate Lava Crunch Cakes
• Earn more rewards
  • Loyalty perks are now even better, as members will have exclusive access to member-only deals, special discounts and opportunities to earn bonus points!

"We are thrilled to give the brand's loyal customers additional ways to earn free Domino's items more often," said Mark Messing, Domino's vice president of digital experience and loyalty. "At a time when most brands are scaling back their loyalty programs and making it more difficult to earn and redeem points, Domino's is doing the opposite. We want to make it easier to reward our customers and give them more options so they can get rewarded faster."

Marketing a LTO 

From now until Oct. 22, 2023, rewards members can take advantage of a limited time offer to redeem 20 points for a free order of Domino's new Pepperoni Stuffed Cheesy Bread, which is normally a 40-point redemption, in celebration of the product's recent launch. 

ItsaCheckmate's collaboration with Juicer and Sauce Pricing has strengthened its online ordering platform, resulting in AI-guided data-driven pricing solutions. 

These updates expand ItsaCheckmate’s integration marketplace – empowering restaurants to deploy effective and profit-driving strategies by optimizing pricing. Informed by data and fueled by machine learning models, these partnerships allow restaurant brands to ditch the one-size-fits-all pricing model and embrace the power of data with tools tailored to their unique operational challenges. 

Dynamic Power

Dynamic pricing gives restaurants flexibility to adjust menu prices based on multiple factors, including day of the week, traffic, demand, competitor pricing, and more. In addition, this strategy helps adapt to market changes such as item shortages, rising costs, and even weather. Ultimately, dynamic pricing evens out demand variations so restaurants can operate at full capacity more often without an overreliance on discounts and promotions to motivate customers. Unlike surge pricing – which only goes up – dynamic pricing gives restaurants greater control to adjust prices at scale and boost digital sales during slower times with automated, real-time price optimization.

Juicer offers a complete real-time restaurant revenue management and pricing analytics solution. Its delivery revenue management module seamlessly integrates with ItsaCheckmate, allowing restaurants to completely eliminate the burden of managing prices on delivery channels.  

Sauce is the dynamic pricing solution that scales for multi-unit restaurants. With Sauce, brands can leverage customer and conversion data to provide value to guests at more price points, while driving incremental sales across digital channels. Sauce launches on ItsaCheckmate within minutes, allowing  brands to turn online ordering into a profit center while converting more digital orders.  

While relatively new to the restaurant industry, airlines, hotels, and third-party delivery providers have harnessed dynamic pricing solutions for years. The collaborations with JUICER and SAUCE PRICING give restaurants even more ways to maximize efficiency and deliver better customer experiences.  For more information, visit itsacheckmate.com.

Square’s fourth annual Future of Commerce report delves into how consumers are feeling about advancement in automation and generative AI.  The report offers insights on how restaurants are shifting.

In collaboration with Wakefield Research, Square surveyed thousands of business owners and consumers on restaurants, retail, and beauty industry trends across the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia.

Oh Canada!

Decisively, 100% of surveyed Canadian restaurateurs say they plan to expand their businesses in the next 12 months through offering new products or opening additional locations, and 80% report feeling more optimistic about the future of their restaurants. At the same time, approximately three in four Canadian consumers say they expect to pull back on restaurant spending in 2024.

76% of Canadian consumers would prefer to place their food orders via self-serve kiosks. Customer satisifaction with self-serve ordering is strong; according to HT’s Customer Engagement Technology Study, 55% of consumers are very or somewhat satisfied with restaurant self-ordering technologies such as kiosks.

Canadian consumers are looking for a tech-forward approach from restaurants – 60% are supportive of local restaurants using AI-based tools.

All surveyed restaurateurs in Canada (100%) believe AI could solve some of their staffing challenges, particularly food prep robots (44%), voice ordering technology (42%), predictive ordering and inventory management (40%), and food prep and delivery management (38%).

Other key findings: 

89% of restaurants say they’ll experiment in the coming year with non-core offerings like meal kits, subscriptions, events, and more. Restaurateurs say that right now, 19% of their revenue stems from products and services outside of their core restaurant offerings.

Restaurateurs are not only investing in AI to address labour challenges – more established automation tools are also on the agenda in 2024. 56% of surveyed owners plan to increase their spending on technology and automation tools in the next 12 months, and 76% of consumers want restaurants to invest in at least one area of automation when they’re not at full staffing capacity.

“Automation and AI are going to be key growth levers for restaurants in the coming year, though not in the way you may think,” said Ming-Tai Huh, General Manager of Square for Restaurants. “The vast majority of restaurants will be integrating AI into their operations in small, iterative ways – not through flashy robots but through automation in marketing or kitchen workflows – and these minor changes will add up to saved time and more profit.”

About Future of Commerce

The retail and restaurant surveys were conducted by Wakefield Research among 2,000 retail owners and managers and 2,000 restaurant owners and managers, with quotas set within each survey for 500 respondents per market in the U.S., Canada, the UK, and Australia between October 27 and November 8, 2023, using an email invitation and an online survey.

The consumer survey was conducted by Wakefield Research among 4,000 nationally representative adults ages 18+ in the U.S., Canada, the UK, and Australia, with quotas set for 1,000 respondents per market, between November 15 and November 28, 2023, using an email invitation and an online survey. Data has been weighted. Download the report here.

Oracle announced thatMarriott International has selected Oracle Hospitality OPERA Cloud Property Management System (PMS) and Sales and Event Management as a hospitality cloud platform for Luxury, Premium, Select Service, and Midscale Properties.

“Oracle OPERA Cloud provides an integrated hospitality platform that enables companies, like Marriott, to deliver exceptional guest experiences while supporting increased efficiency and revenue growth across their operations,” said Alex Alt, executive vice president and general manager of Oracle Hospitality. “From upselling to sales and event management capabilities and hundreds of partner plug-ins, Oracle’s security-first methodology and commitment to long-term cloud investments can help properties meet their financial and operational objectives while maximizing customer satisfaction at every touchpoint.”

Built on the high performance and security of Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI), OPERA Cloud PMS will give Marriott properties the ability to streamline their hotel operations and guest-facing product offerings, while centralizing data across Marriott’s global footprint for better guest insights, planning, and customer service. In tandem, OPERA Cloud Sales and Event Management will allow the hotelier to optimize its event space, from meeting rooms to room blocks and catering. 

“Adapting to changing customer needs is essential in our industry. Technology and data platforms like Oracle OPERA Cloud are the backbone of service and empower our associates so they can stay focused on taking great care of our guests,” said Erika Alexander, Chief Global Operations Officer, Marriott International.

Marriott is also optimizing its HR processes and employee experiences with Oracle Fusion Cloud Human Capital Management (HCM) and is scaling its IT with multicloud architectures on OCI and Microsoft Azure.

Stayntouch, a global provider of cloud hotel property management systems (PMS) and guest-centric technology, announced a new partnership with Pivot, the lifestyle operating vertical of Davidson Hospitality Group. Stayntouch will implement its flexible, modern cloud PMS across seven Pivot hotels in the United States. 

Pivot caters to innovative boutique and lifestyle brands that are reshaping the hospitality industry with unique service philosophies and data-driven results. Stayntouch was selected as a strategic partner to seamlessly facilitate the change management of Pivot‘s property management system, transitioning it from legacy to modern cloud technology. This partnership brings the benefit of premier customer service, robust functionality, and comprehensive multi-property management capabilities.

Paula Weissend, regional director of revenue management at Pivot Hotels, said, “Our experience with Stayntouch has been transformative: The system is intuitive and scalable, and the Stayntouch team has simplified resource scheduling and deployment for our properties, even on tight deadlines. The platform's flexibility and comprehensive features are ideal for companies pushing the boundaries of hospitality innovation. Specifically, their multi-property and chain configuration functionalities will significantly aid our team in implementation and portfolio management.”

Reid Webster, VP of strategic growth and partnerships at Stayntouch, replied, "We are thrilled to embark on a strategic partnership with Pivot, sharing their unwavering commitment to redefining guest-centric hospitality. We designed our cloud PMS to facilitate easy scaling and usability for boutique brands, and we are delighted to witness Pivot-operated hotels fully leveraging these capabilities. Our goal is to be a steadfast partner they can rely on, ensuring they gain the maximum benefit from their new cloud PMS."