

The Greasy Underpan of Restaurant Tech - prostoalex
http://techcrunch.com/2014/12/24/the-greasy-underpan-of-restaurant-tech/?ncid=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+Techcrunch+%28TechCrunch%29&utm_content=FaceBook

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holograham
I have seen this problem with my own eyes. My parents own several (small)
restaurants and despite my tech background I struggle to get them to to adopt
any sort of technology. The main issue is the lack of data/guarantee that
making the leap in technology will result in greater sales. Sure a huge chain
has smart business execs at the top who are trained in cost/benefit analysis
but for the vast majority of small business restaurants the owner is the chef
who knows about food and perhaps the local community.

For example my father is an extremely talented chef but he didnt own a cell
phone or a computer until I bought him one 3 years ago. Yes, 3 years ago! He
had run a very successful catering and restaurant operation for ~15 years with
pen, paper, and a land line phone. And I am not talking a 50k a year operation
-- this is around $1M in revenue. I convinced them a few years back to
simplely accept credit cards instead of cash only and their lunch sales
increased almost 50%. I pushed them to pay for yelp local advertising (after
years of resistance) and their sales went up almost 20%. Next I am working on
them adopting integrated point of sale registers and integrating them with
loyalty cards. I think the cost savings + increased loyalty is game for
another 10-20% profit increase. The overall point being that small to medium
size restaurants are woefully behind the times and are extremely slow to adopt
new technology. I have kicked around a startup idea focused on collating and
seemlessly making restaurants like this be able to move into the 21st century.
The problem to solve here is creating software to scale so it's not simply a
consulting company.

