Year of Mobile Management?

The show hasn’t even started, but a theme is already emerging for the National Restaurant Association’s mega-convention in Chicago. If the early hubbub is any indication, this may well be the Year of the Handheld.

We’ve been hit with a Duluth-scale blizzard of alerts from industry newcomers who are set to change the business come May 20. They’re using the show, still the king of industry trade expositions, to introduce apps, new uses for iPads (primarily as menus, though also as a billing mechanism), restaurant finder services (think TripAdvisor and OpenTable), and citizen-rating networks (Yelp and a host of others).

We’ve seen this sudden emergence of an industry phenomenon before. The Year 2000 was a prime example, with more computer terminals in the booths than you’d find in the programming wing of Microsoft. The exhibitors weren’t touting computers or terminals, but online services, particularly purchasing schemes of one sort or another (the buzzwords flying that year: “aggregation,” “reverse auctions,” and “economies of scale for independents.”)

Curiously, I can’t think of more than two of those companies that are still around, and they’re almost unrecognizable from what they were.

Not that this year’s handheld upstarts are doomed. Far from it, though a shakeout always follows the rapid emergence of a new product or services category. Indeed, we at Restaurant Business feel bullish enough about handhelds to devote an editor to their coverage. So now we have a specialist in social media (yours truly), food (Pat Cobe), ideas and innovation (Sam Smith) and now handhelds/mobile management (Amanda Westbrooks).

We believe handhelds will follow the path of sustainability, the big focus of NRA 2008, though everyone knew it as the green movement back then. From a minor presence the year before, a conservation sensibility had grown into something omni-present.

That hasn’t changed. Indeed, this year EcoLogic will give us what is likely the first NRA to be made of living walls (i.e., plants growing on a vertical plane) and a grass floor.

McDonald's quietly adopts handhelds

The proliferation of iPad-based menus and wine lists is generating buzz, but far more interesting is the quiet adoption of hand-held ordering devices by several quick-service giants.

McDonald’s revealed to investors last week that one advantage of its new POS system is adaptability to handhelds, “which we're beginning to implement more and more [in] the restaurants,” commented president Don Thompson. He also noted that the new POS system is compatible with dual drive-thrus.

mcDonald's is updating its sales technology in large part because the next generation requires less user input. Franchisees say an order can be input with fewer keystrokes and screens, speeding up service during crunch periods.

The operators have groused a little about the cost, which they have to absorb after investing in equipment to produce coffees, frappes and other high-ticket beverages.

Meanwhile, I can attest firsthand that Chipowithin using handhelds at some stores, including the one near Restaurant Business' headquartersb in the Wall Street area of New York. A staffer was using one recently to take orders from the queue of 35 or so people. You placed your order and payed. Then, when you got to the serving area, less info had to be provided, and the line did move faster.

The revelation about McDonald's use of handhelds came during a conference call on Friday with financial analysts. During the call executives also offered these news nuggets:

--The January offer of a 20-piece serving size of Chicken McNuggets led to a double-digit increase in sales of the product.

--McDonald's sales of hot coffee rose 17% year-over-year during the just-concluded winter.

--A frozen strawberry lemonade will be introduced in May, a part of the chain's efforts to match new drinks with the season. Thompson noted that a new smoothie flavor is also in the works.

The future checks in

In the not-too-distant future, restaurant employees will try to land a new job by showing the would-be hirer how many service compliments they’ve garnered on Foursquare. The applicants might hear of the opening from an alert their cell phones deliver as they drive past the understaffed place.

That’s not what-if stuff, but capabilities being refined right now, says Nate DaPore, a software veteran who’s about to launch a new suite of HR products for the restaurant business. He thinks the industry is poised for a quantum leap in its ability to find, train and retain the best personnel, or what HR professionals call “talent management.” The springboard, he says, will be technology based on the sort of devices the restaurant labor pool increasingly uses, like smart phones and iPads.

That’s not exactly a new world view. The a-ha to DaPore’s expectations—near-term ones, he stresses—is what personnel information those devices will generate, collect and provide on demand for employer and employee alike.

For instance, the portable databases will soon serve up detailed records of what training a job applicant has undergone, including ServSafe certification, he says. That’s in addition to a detailed work history, a resume-in-bytes, so to speak.

Some of that banked information will come from customers, he says. Through an application already being written, DaPore explains, Foursquare users will be able to rate the performance of employees at restaurants where they’ve checked in. Those “merit badges” will go into the staffer’s file, which will travel with the staffers as their foodservice career progresses. “They’ll take their merit badges and job history with them as they move from job to job,” says DaPore.

He wouldn’t say precisely when those capabilities would be introduced, which isn’t what restaurateurs like to hear. After years of hearing technology promises, many are skeptical until they see the new tools in use.

But DaPore suggests that HR technology has leapt farther than many restaurateurs realize. He notes that his company, People Matters, is about to introduce a system that determines if new hires are eligible for tax credits, which the program then automatically secures and processes.

He’s not alone in that regard. Technology suppliers stress that foodservice employers have a host of new capabilities available to them. Decisions that were once made on a purely gut level—a go or no-go on a frontline hire, for instance—are being simplified by new screening or evaluation tools. They suggest that operators were so focused on surviving, understandably, that they haven’t noticed significant advances in the HR technology available to them.
Better times, of course, could be the eye-opener.

Finally, an aside to regular readers: You’d be hard-pressed to find a mention of many other vendors in this space. Indeed, I’ve avoided it out of habit. Business writers have to avert readers’ suspicions that a company is being named because of some quid pro quo. The safest course is not to mention advertisers, potential advertisers, non-advertisers or just about any brand name you can possibly avoid. If there’s not so much as a reference, how can there be some financial agenda?

But because I don’t accept advertising here, and don’t make a dime off this blog, I’m suspending that policy. I’m in the enviable position of being able to write what I want without any taint of a financial connection. I can’t be called a whore if there’s no money on the pillow.

It’s freeing because many suppliers have a wealth of information and insight on the problems hamstringing restaurateurs. That potential assistance doesn’t get an airing because it’s suspected of being a sales pitch, if not an empty come-on.

If something worth telling should arise from the supplier community, I’m no longer going to dismiss it per se.
But you operators have to ensure I’m not misled or duped. If I fall for some supplier’s BS, please yell. Loudly.