News Briefs

sweetgreen released its first 2022 Impact Report, detailing the company’s ongoing initiatives to build a sustainable food system and responsible business.

The report highlights sweetgreen’s Fiscal Year 2022 progress towards their Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) goals, including their commitments to becoming carbon neutral by 2027 and broadening workforce representation across all levels by the end of 2025.

Sustainability Matters

Sustainability matters to today's consumers and restaurant operators. Two out of three (66%) consumers surveyed feel it’s important that restaurants are open about their practices to limit food waste. According to the National Restaurant Association’s annual What’s Hot Culinary Forecast, sustainability will continue to influence menus and how restaurants make decisions.   Just last week, Chipotle revealed its new sustainable restaurant design.

sweetgreen's Progress

•  Together with  Watershed, sweetgreen calculated the emissions of their menu items and published the emissions data and methodology on their website.
• Introducing carbon-friendly items: The Hummus Crunch Salad at 0.3 kg CO2e is their lowest carbon meal to date.
• Reducing emissions intensity: Since announcing its commitment to becoming carbon neutral in February 2021, sweetgreen has decreased emissions intensity by 12% from their 2019 baseline while maintaining company growth.
• Investing in clean energy: 100% of operations are powered by clean electricity purchased from solar farms in North Carolina certified by Watershed, reducing their Scope 2 emissions to zero.
• Mitigating environmental impacts: 79% of waste was composted or recycled based on restaurants where their partner, Rubicon, manages landfill, compost, and recycling streams.

 

QSR Automations earned recognition for excellence in customer service and support.

At MURTEC, QSR Automations’ VP of Hardware Solutions and Support, Kathi Klein, received fHospitality Technology ’s 2023 Top Women in Technology Lifetime Achievement Award. 

During her more than 30 years in the restaurant technology industry – half of those at QSR Automations–Klein has amassed incomparable knowledge in understanding and troubleshooting kitchen display, front-of-house, and the associated hardware and networking platforms needed to run them. 

But what truly sets Klein apart is her natural ability to nurture relationships and foster talent, which has made her an effective leader in QSR Automations’ Support Services Team. During her long tenure at QSR Automations, Klein has built one of the industry’s strongest and most effective support teams. In fact, under Klein’s guidance, the team has received a 99 percent satisfaction rate from customers in 2021, and last year handled more than 16,000 inbound and outbound calls, which earned them a bronze award for Excellence in Customer Service from the 2022 Stevie Awards. 

This was the third bronze Stevie award for the team, as last fall, Klein accepted two additional bronze awards from the Stevie Women in Business Awards on behalf of QSR Automations–one for excellence in customer service, and the other for growth. QSR Automations was selected for these honors from more than 1,500 nominations from around the world.

“Just as our technology is the heart of a restaurant kitchen, our people are truly the heart of this business,” said Angela Leet, CEO of QSR Automations. “My colleagues are passionate about innovation both in and out of the office, and it’s immensely gratifying to see them recognized for these achievements.”

QSR Automations, headquartered in Louisville, Ky., with offices in the United Kingdom, is a global industry leader in kitchen automation and guest management services.

Up and coming QSR  Salad and Go  is expanding in Texas with three new locations opening in February in the Houston markets of Katy, Richmond and League City.

The Katy store located opened February 1, the Richmond location at  is set to open February 17, and the League City store plans to open its doors on February 22. These new locations will mark the start of rapid brand expansion across the Greater Houston area.

These suburbs were strategically selected as ideal markets for Salad and Go as some of the fastest growing communities in the region. Conveniently located in some of Houston's most popular suburbs, the new locations will provide fresh, high-quality meals with quick and easy convenience at an affordable price.

As Salad and Go continues growing its national presence with a strong focus on Arizona, Texas, Oklahoma, and Nevada, the brand's expansive growth has it on a positive trajectory to provide fresh and affordable food to communities in more than 125 locations by the end of 2023. Houston is the next step in the brand's expansion across Texas with plans to open additional stores in the market throughout the new year.

Salad and Go's chef-curated menu provides guests with food for any time of the day by offering a variety of delicious and healthy items including salads, wraps, breakfast burritos and soup as well as beverages including hand-crafted lemonades, teas and cold brew coffees.

Salad and Go ensures each meal contains fresh, quality ingredients while keeping prices low by vertically integrating operations and distribution, and sourcing ingredients directly from high-quality local farmers and suppliers whenever possible. The brand's mission to make fresh, nutritious food convenient and affordable for ALL extends beyond its stores and is demonstrated in the work the brand does to donate 4,000 meals every week to those in need, as well as in partnerships with nonprofits to support and fundraise for various worthy causes.

Valyant AI, a provider of AI-powered customer service solutions, has announced the incorporation of language-learning models to enhance its artificial intelligence technology for restaurants. This application is set to utilize the latest advancements in LLMs (similar to ChatGPT and Google’s LaMDA) for improving the comprehensiveness of its voice assistant system’s responses, speed and efficiency.

17% of restaurants plan to add in-car ordering this year, according to Hospitality Technology’s 25th annual Restaurant Technology Study.

The LLM technology utilized by Valyant AI is a type of artificial intelligence that allows computers to understand natural language and context in a previously impossible way. This technology has been trained on vast amounts of language data, allowing the platform to provide users with more accurate responses in less time, positively impacting customer satisfaction, reducing wait times and delivering a more efficient user experience overall.

A key distinction of Valyant AI's usage of LLM technology is that it ensures customer data security and privacy by not sharing that information with any third-party external entities. This level of protection is  crucial in maintaining customer trust and building a positive reputation in the industry.

Valyant AI is committed to staying at the forefront of technological advancements in artificial intelligence, and the incorporation of LLM technology is just one example of the company's ongoing dedication to innovation.

The Retail & Hospitality Information Sharing and Analysis Center (RH-ISAC) and the National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD), the authority on boardroom practices representing more than 23,000 board members, have launched a new alliance to promote NACD Accelerate™ to cybersecurity professionals, an educational program for aspiring boardroom leaders and executives that delivers the critical foundation needed to become a prime candidate for directorship.

As the cybersecurity threat landscape continues to evolve, corporate boards are under increasing pressure to provide oversight of cybersecurity risk, but many boards lack directors with relevant experience. Forthcoming regulations from the SEC related to cybersecurity disclosures are expected to further increase the demand for corporate directors with cybersecurity expertise.

“Corporate directors play a critical leadership role in ensuring the security and resilience of their organizations,” said Suzie Squier, president of RH-ISAC. “We are thrilled to partner with NACD to promote the NACD Accelerate™ program to CISOs at our member companies and help close the cybersecurity knowledge gap in boardrooms across industries.”

The RH-ISAC is a non-profit organization dedicated to sharing threat intelligence and best practices related to cybersecurity in the retail and hospitality industry. NACD is the premier membership organization for board directors who want to expand their knowledge, grow their network, and maximize their potential. By joining together, the RH-ISAC and NACD are leveraging their unique strengths to help organizations develop well-rounded boards with cybersecurity expertise.

Through this collaboration, RH-ISAC is promoting the program to CISOs and other cybersecurity leaders and has already enrolled a cohort representing companies from across the retail and hospitality sectors.

 

Alertify, an all-in-one noise and indoor smoking sensor for short term rental operators, property managers and hoteliers has begun taking pre-orders in the US and EU. 

Alertify devices monitor noise decibel levels, indoor smoking, elevated occupancy, temperature changes, air quality levels and more. The device is GDPR compliant and ensures 100% privacy for guests - for example, audio is never recorded. Users can set custom thresholds to receive real-time notifications whenever violations take place. With Alertify, hosts, property managers and hoteliers can intervene before receiving noise complaints or things get out of hand.

“As an STR [Short Term Rental] Operator, you don’t usually have staff in the building and can’t easily or accurately monitor for guest misbehavior. A lot of the time, you only find out about smoking or parties when the neighbors or property manager call you, or upon check out. Alertify has been a great solution to this problem, notifying us of violations as they occur so that we can contact guests and remedy the situation immediately and remotely,” said ENVITAE CEO Josh Rogers. 

Alertify comes with access to an online dashboard containing all live and historical data for each property or device. Users can download after-incident reports containing details on violations that took place and, if integrated with a PMS, which guest was in the property at the time. Alertify’s after-incident reports can be used as documentary evidence in the event of (deposit) disputes with guests, and submitted as evidence for Airbnb support cases and credit card chargeback disputes.

The company is currently taking pre-orders slated to ship in May. Short term rental owners, hoteliers and property managers are encouraged to contact Alertify to schedule a demo and learn how Alertify can help their business.