Toast Restaurant Success Report Finds Most Diners Want Tablets to Be a Part of the Dining Experience

5/3/2017
Toast POS released the results of its Restaurant Success in 2017 Report. The company found a disconnect between restaurant owners’ and restaurant goers’ outlook towards newer restaurant technology. In particular, this disconnect centered around tablet and kiosk use. For example, 68% of diners feel that when servers use handheld tablets, their dining experience is improved. However, only 41% of restaurants have or will soon have these tablets. Similarly, 52% of diners believe tabletop tablets improve the dining experience but only 19% of restaurants have or will soon have them. And 65% of consumers use self-order kiosks sometimes or every time one is available, yet only 13% of operators have or will soon have said kiosks.
 
As consumer demand for these technologies will only increase, Toast POS believes that this disconnect means there will be a drastic adoption of new technology in coming years as restaurants strive to meet customer demands. And restaurants that are early to adopt technology will be the ones that benefit the most. For instance, Toast POS found that restaurants using handheld server tablets increase their revenue by 20% in both quick-serve and sit-down environments, while restaurants using kiosks report seeing higher ticket sizes on average.
 
Toast POS also found that fine dining is the most techsavvy sector of the restaurant industry. They are most likely to have a website, accept gift cards, leverage an email database, and take online reservations. They stray only in the fields of using a text message/SMS database and using self-order kiosks. Diners, on the other hand, are looking to add the most technology in 2017, which is unsurprising. Diners appear most often in the list of concepts where restaurant technology is currently least common. Diners are the least common restaurant to have a website, leverage an email database, offer a loyalty program, and accept mobile payment.
 
While some restaurants expressed little interest in embracing new technology, the majority of both restaurant owners and diners agree that technology is beneficial to the restaurant industry and business operations. Features like text message marketing and restaurant smartphone apps will each be adopted by more than one-fifth of restaurants in 2017, changing the game for how restaurants interact with their guests moving forward.
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