MURTEC Executive Insight: A Hospitality-Based Digital Revolution

What is Presto and how do you help hospitality? 

The hospitality business is tough.  Restaurants are constantly challenged with the requirement for friendly, timely and accurate service at all times.  Too often orders aren’t taken accurately, food takes too long to deliver and frustrated staff drive business away.  The addition of labor pressure, costs and competition create a glaring need for optimization.  Presto was founded in 2008 when a MIT PhD student became frustrated by a restaurant that couldn’t split a check.  Today Presto leads the hospitality-based digital revolution to solve the modern problems restaurants face.  Our platforms maximize revenue-generating experiences while offloading the commonplace tasks through digital solutions.

Presto has been leading the industry in Pay at the Table devices for over a decade.  We’ve also developed several digital solutions to improve multiple aspects of the business using artificial intelligence.  By increasing staff productivity and improving guest experience, our AI-powered voice and vision solutions are improving the way restaurants operate across the country.

What is AI-powered voice and how does it help?

When communication isn’t clear, mistakes happen.  We’re at a turning point where voice and natural language understanding are suddenly at the forefront of our life.  Clear and concise translation using artificial intelligence directly from voice is more reliable than humans.  Presto has deployed voice systems that have achieved 98% accuracy at the drive thru and has increased speed of ordering by 4X at the point of sale. 

So how does AI-powered vision improve the restaurant experience?

You can’t measure what you can’t see.  Presto Vision increases throughput in the drive-thru by watching the patterns of vehicles and informing managers before delays happen.  Managers can deploy line busters at the optimum time to improve throughput.  When we recognize a car from a previous visit we can suggest prior orders or upsell based on prior patterns.  One of the other huge benefits is the ability to analyze orders as they are being packed and flagging errors in real time, giving the team a chance to get the order perfect every time.

What do you see as the future of hospitality technology?

Everyday technology leapfrogs itself.  The industry has somehow avoided the leapfrog for decades running on mediocre technology until the pandemic hit.  The requirement for a rapid shift in technology lit a fire.  Restaurants learned that it was okay to take chances and those chances paid off.  Presto lives that lifestyle every day by continuously iterating concepts as it overlays next-gen digital solutions onto the physical world. 

Learn more at Presto.com