Xenial Ties the Drive-Thru and Kitchen Together
How can drive-thru technology enhance efficiency and throughput: How do these technological advancements boost productivity and reduce operational costs for restaurants?
Drive thru and kitchen enhancements together are where meaningful productivity and cost reductions can be achieved. Historically, these two areas have been treated separately.
Today, however, forward thinking restaurants are using new technologies that allow them to definitively tie the drive-thru and kitchen together. Consider this: Quick service restaurants (QSRs) are now able to see car time coupled with order taking time, payment time and food prep time – basically every step in the manufacturing process. This can be done across multiple lanes and multiple kitchen lines.
This kind of insight allows brands not to guess or interpret, but rather, know what drives speed and what detracts from it. The data and information is staggering. As we look ahead to adding more sensors in the kitchen, QSRs will rival the best tracked lean manufacturing processes in the world.
How can drive-thru tech enhance customer experience: The importance of convenience and personalization in driving customer satisfaction and loyalty.
While the benefits of features like license plate recognition seem obvious, they come with real privacy concerns. Ideally, customers will opt in to allowing identifiable data to improve their experience at a restaurant. However, this is difficult to secure before a consumer interacts with a QSR location.
That said, there are amazing things we can do to help drive convenience, loyalty and customer engagement even without identifiable data. For example, QSRs can use digital menu boards to guide customers into discovering personalization options for their order. This could be achieved by offering deals that are tailored to the likely desires of that consumer. Providing order updates in real time is another way to improve the ordering experience for the consumer while increasing order accuracy for the QSR. All of these techniques put together can drive consumer engagement and also improve a brand’s top and bottom line.
Security is always a top concern, both physical security and cyber security. What are some best practices?
We’ve seen all sorts of things happening in the restaurant market, and it can be hard to keep up with all the potential security threats that exist. One of the key areas we’re working on outside of testing, monitoring and scanning is adding and enhancing our encryption capabilities. Data encryption, whether at rest or in flight, during the entirety of the transaction lifecycle is paramount to the security of electronic payment processing. We are on a journey to encrypt all data end to end above and beyond the current TLS/SSL standards or any commercially available tools – whether that data is at rest or in transit.
Sustainability benefits: Discuss how optimizing drive-through processes can lead to reduced emissions and waste, contributing to a more sustainable future.
One of the most obvious ways to lessen the environmental impact of a QSR is through reduced idle time: Streamlining order taking and processing with advanced technologies can directly affect the time vehicles spend idling in line, decreasing fuel consumption and emissions. It’s good for customers and good for the environment.
Another perhaps less obvious way is through order accuracy. Getting an order wrong not only costs the consumer time and the store money, but it also generates waste that can easily be mitigated. All of this adds up to more time in idling and more wasted energy delivering and then throwing out the product.
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