Eateries Open Metaverse Stores in Race to Be the ‘Restaurant of the Future’

Meta, metaverse, , Vishal Shah IAB ALM

As brands continue to explore the potential of metaverse commerce, more restaurants are making moves to create digital spaces. Los Angeles plant-based burger brand Honeybee Burger announced Tuesday (April 12) a collaboration with food metaverse OneRare to create a virtual restaurant.

Read more: Food Metaverse OneRare Makes US Debut

“We like to think of Honeybee as an innovator,” Adam Weiss, the restaurant’s CEO and director, said in a statement. “This innovation extends to our business and marketing, where we were one of the first to use Regulation CF to raise funds, and now we want to be one of the first to market in the metaverse.”

Larger quick-service restaurants (QSRs) have already made moves into the metaverse. For instance, in late March, QSR giant Wendy’s announced the opening of a virtual location in Meta’s Horizon Worlds virtual reality (VR) space, which included both a restaurant space and several other branded locations.

See more: Wendy’s Announces VR Location as QSRs Race for Metaverse Primacy

Back in February, it was reported that that McDonald’s had filed at least 10 trademarks for its name, logo, McCafe and the rights to various other features for a virtual restaurant. Concurrently, news broke that Panera Bread had submitted a trademark application for a virtual cafe chain called Paneraverse.

Read more: McDonald’s New Special Sauce? McMetaverse, With 10 Trademarks Already Filed

Honeybee is also not the only small burger brand making its way into cyberspace. February also saw news break that online ordering solutions provider Lunchbox had sold a virtual restaurant on the non-fungible token (NFT) marketplace to New York-based, 35-location, full-service burger chain Bareburger.

See more: NYC Burger Chain Buys NFT Restaurant

Certainly, consumers are growing increasingly accustomed to getting their food needs met digitally. The years 2020 and 2021 saw the rise of ghost kitchens, restaurants with neither physical locations nor VR storefronts that exist to consumers only as menus on digital marketplaces. The rapid growth of this business model is a testament to consumers’ increased adoption of digital ordering channels.

According to data from PYMNTS’ 2022 Restaurant Friction Index, created collaboration with Paytronix, which drew from the results of a survey of more than 500 restaurant managers from restaurants across the United States in September, 41% of orders come through digital channels, greater than the 32% generated in-restaurant or the 26% coming in via phone call.

Get the report: New Data Show Digital Loyalty Programs Are Key Differentiator for Top-Performing Restaurants

The study also drew from a survey of a census-balanced panel of more 2,100 U.S. adults in late October, finding that 40% would be more inclined to shop with restaurants that offered the ability to order online.

In an interview with PYMNTS’ Karen Webster, Seth Gerson, CEO of interactive content firm Survios, predicted that the metaverse will be a central technology in people’s lives much as smartphones are today.

“There’ll be interim steps to get there,” he said. “The cellphone’s not going away overnight. But there are a lot of companies hell-bent on being able to own that next generation of compute and being able to own that next generation of device because they lost out the first generation of smartphones.”

Read more: Utility Will Make the Metaverse Work — and Pay — With or Without Goggles