About Restaurant + Technology

Yes, it can be overwhelming and confusing. When there is rapid change and periods of uncertainty, decisions take longer to make. We are in a period of sustained technology innovation that is affecting how we operate restaurants, manage our businesses, connect with our customers and optimize partner relationships. While the goal may indeed be to increase sales, reduce costs and know our customers more intimately while increasing our brand/product/service footprint and enhancing our brand image, there is a lot of noise. Take a look at this map below of social web technology providers offering their various categories of products. This represents just the tip of the iceberg. There are thousands and thousands of venders seeking your business. For example, there are almost 1,000  social media management system providers alone.

So, how do you know who to choose as your vendor? What systems integrate with others? What matches up best to your social media strategy? What is the value proposition? Who says it works and is free, really free? Do rewards and loyalty products always need to be integrated? Which social media platforms should you be managing? Is a tablet menu right for you? What about stored payment solutions, mobile apps, SMS marketing, iPad POS, etc.

We have been mixing it up online since 2007 and it's hard for us keep up, learning about a new vendor several times a day. Interestingly, most of these vendors on the map above target the restaurant industry because of the obvious value proposition and the massive amount of consumer transactions and sheer number of locations. Because FohBoh is naturally positioned at the intersection of food + foodservice + technology, we are operators by vocation, we are always evaluating newest and best.

As a member of the FohBoh Restaurant Community, you are now able to benefit from our street knowledge. So, we started another company dedicated to making restaurants smarter called Smarter Restaurant.

The goal is to deliver real value to our members so you will be able to make more informed buying decisions that yield positive results. Let the tech-savvy folks over at The Smarter Restaurant save you time and hassle
 of choosing and managing vendor relationships.