Today in Restaurant and Grocery Tech: Fast-Casual Chains Leverage Data to Compete With Aggregators

Today in restaurant and grocery tech news, fresh foods get vending machine boost, and Kroger’s Home Chef announces a new gifting platform. Plus, Kevin Flaherty, vice president of digital marketing at MOD Pizza, speaks with PYMNTS about the next frontiers for the brand’s direct ordering platforms.

Restaurants Fight Back Against Aggregators With Promotions and Loyalty Programs

PYMNTS’ Digital Divide: Aggregators And High-Value Restaurant Customers, a collaboration with Paytronix, discovered that nearly one-quarter of all restaurant customers are classified as high-spending, high-frequency diners. These customers buy meals from restaurants at least once a week and spend more than $40 at a time when they do, making them a particularly appealing demographic to keep tabs on.

Restaurants’ Best Customers Nearly Three Times More Likely to Use Third-Party Aggregators

In the early months of quarantine, the relationships between restaurants and third-party aggregators shifted quickly from symbiotic to parasitic, with the economics quickly proving unsustainable for restaurants as digital order volume skyrocketed. Rather than providing an extra revenue stream, delivery orders became part-and-parcel of the business, and the challenges posed by aggregators, which charge restaurants steep fees and keep from them valuable data about their customers, became pressing.

Street Robot Vending Machine Cooks Healthy Food Fast

A street robot vending machine can prepare healthy food from vegetables and cereals in under one minute, and can cook as many as 1,000 different dishes using 16 basic ingredients and 20 dressings and toppings. The prototype of the SalatOmat vending machine was developed by Russia’s National University Science and Technology (NUST MISIS) engineers, together with Karfidov Lab, and was commissioned by a private company, AFM, according to a press release on Wednesday (Nov. 24).

CPG Brands Turn to Personalized, Digital Gift Cards to Boost Holiday Sales

With the trend across the restaurant and grocery industries toward digital personalization, eCommerce gift cards may be more important than ever this holiday season, especially for brands for which consumer choice is central to their value prop. On Tuesday (Nov. 23), Kroger-owned meal kit and prepared meals delivery service Home Chef announced the launch of new digital gift cards in partnership with GiftNow, a gifting service from Loop Commerce, a Synchrony solution.

Gearing up For IPO, MOD Pizza Looks to Voice Commerce, Data Analytics

“As much as we’ve worked on ordering channels, really where our business is pivoting is making sure that we’re optimizing the handoff methods that we’re using,” Kevin Flaherty, vice president of digital marketing at MOD Pizza, tells PYMNTS in an interview. “You’re seeing a lot of innovation around curbside pickup, drive-thru lanes, pickup lanes — these handoff methods are becoming as important as the as the ordering channels that we were originally so focused on.”