Restaurant Technology Network Could Solve Industry Problems We Failed at

We’re tried our hand at moving the industry forward with initiatives. In 2017 we worked on a Universal API that sputtered and collapsed. Mostly it was because POS companies just didn’t have their act together – i.e. timing, which is 99% of life, was bad.

Fast forward to mid-2019 and timing looks much better. Many of the US restaurant industry’s POS systems have found new homes with payments processors. The ones that aren’t directly owned by processors have made cozy relationships to improve their financial positions nonetheless. With these shorter term decisions finally made, it’s time the POS industry turn its focus towards new challenges.

This is what has us excited about the Restaurant Technology Network (RTN), a community brought to life by EnsembleIQ’s Hospitality Technology brand Launched at MURTEC this year, the RTN holds a lot of promise and is something we’re getting behind (no, we don’t get some kickback for saying this).

What has us optimistic about RTN is the fact that they have a successful blueprint by which to build the community. They’ve strategically partnered with HTNG, Hospitality Technology Next Generation – a similar industry organization for the hotel space that’s successfully conducted workgroups inside that industry for nearly two decades, including publishing 150+ industry standards (many of which have been widely adopted by a vast number of hotels and suppliers).  Some of HTNG’s achievements include standardizing customer profile information and driving adoption of fiber in hotel rooms. Here’s a list of logos to show the widespread impact these efforts had.

But anyway, back to the restaurant industry.

The RTN launched at HT’s flagship MURTEC event, because of the collection of industry executives from both the supplier ranks as well as those of the operators. “For years we’ve heard from industry CIOs who professed their silent suffering. At this year’s MURTECwe decided to launch RTN and bring industry stakeholders together to host a collaborative dialog about mutual pain points that can be alleviated, or even solved, by wrapping consensus around best ways forward,”,” shared Angela Diffy, Director of Membership for RTN.

There was a separate ideation session held at Murtec to deliberate on RTN’s initiatives. In this room the most prominent topics of the day were discussed and voted upon so the RTN would have its marching orders for soon-to-be-formed workgroups These are:

1. 3rd party delivery. The topic covers integrations, menu synchronization, accuracy of transmitted data, chain of custody and food quality. This is a huge area of concern, especially as to-go revenue centers become a material portion of a restaurant’s revenue. This leads into the fourth initiative, as you’ll see below.
2. Buyer’s guide to standard RFP for solutions. RFPs in this industry are a disaster. Often times that’s because the restaurant operator (hold your breath…) has no idea what the hell they’re actually needing. (Note: if restaurants would reply to some of their inbound solicitations from suppliers they might actually become educated, heaven forbid). RFP with 1,800 question? Sure, why not. Whittling down RFP’s to their most critical items will make it faster to evaluate options.
3. Security best practices. This topic covers PCI EMV, breach insurance, guest data and other security issues. Now, we’re on the record for stating why PCI is a giant ruse (it’s about the data, dummy). GDPR and guest data also fall into this category: nobody under the age of 30 cares, and the only beneficiaries of GDPR are the large tech oligopolies who have the capital to follow the law. So we’re curious how this unfolds, and if the industry realizes they should be keeping the data for their own marketing purposes.
4. Open API initiative. As indicated in the working group’s first goal, an open API is critical for any sort of data sharing efforts, which the industry will need to survive. We imagine much of the initial months will be educating merchants what an API is, why it matters, and then convincing companies like NCR to play along. Retail, via the National Retail Federation’s ARTS standards group, had the benefit of the work of Noah Glass at Olo in their SSOI committee. We hope that RTN can carry the torch here.

RTN is just getting started but the real work via the workgroups begins in earnest in late June. The first pass of RTN is slated to run over 12 months, and that may even be optimistic – these sorts of initiatives generally take a long time because driving consensus across a large number of players is never easy, and that’s if these issues are even the top priorities within the members. RTN will function as an evergreen industry committee though, hopefully like HTNG, where members will join annually and workgroups will continuously form to solve whatever ongoing issues the committee deems important.

Participation is open to start with and you can sign up here, but only members will be able to participate in working groups longer term. Membership comes in tiers, each with their own benefits like VIP MURTEC booth selection and private meetings rooms.

RTN really exists because restaurants are suffering under legacy systems. It’s ironic because much could be solved by switching to new, modern systems, but restaurants often don’t rationally allocate capital, no matter their size. The lack of systems modernization comes with the unintended consequences of torpidity of innovation where everyone suffers.

If you’re a restaurant you should sign up to get educated. Most of you don’t do any self-education so at least you can use this community to learn from peers and technology talent from the supplier side.

If you’re a supplier that’s touching one of RTN’s four main thrusts you should also involve yourself as well. Here’s a list of suppliers who have signed up to be RTN members to date:

It’s worth noting that Oracle jumped in, but NCR still hasn’t involved itself. What does that say about their commitment to their customers and industry innovation? Maybe the CIOs suffering in silence are mostly NCR customers.

Guess you’ll have to join to find out.