Tech Check is a regular column on restaurant technology by Senior Editor Joe Guszkowski. It's also a newsletter.
The past four years in restaurant technology might be fairly described as the omnichannel era. Desperate to survive the pandemic shutdowns of 2020, operators quickly added all kinds of new ways to order, from mobile apps to third-party delivery to QR codes at the table.
Today, offering multiple ordering channels is practically table stakes. But it’s really just the first step in restaurants’ transformation into a more tech-dependent industry.
“I think the last few years in particular, it was just, ‘Get things going, try to survive,’” said Gartner analyst and former restaurant marketing director Brad Jashinsky. “Now, for the most part, restaurants are a lot more stable, and are now trying to unify all of those things.”
I believe that effort to unify disparate technologies will be a defining feature of the next four years of restaurants, separating the truly digital brands from the merely omnichannel ones. Bring on the era of unified commerce.
What is unified commerce?
As far as buzzwords go, this one is a doozy: At first glance, it seems to mean everything and nothing at the same time. But unified commerce is not just another ambiguous marketing term like “end-to-end” or “all in one.”
In fact, it has its roots in the retail world, where it is also being hailedas the future. It basically means aligning a business’ customer touchpoints with its back-end functions like inventory and staffing, creating a clear path for information to flow through the business.
For restaurant guests, unified commerce means that no matter where they order, whether it’s online, on an app or in person, the business can tell who they are. “They make sure your food comes the way you want, you can use your loyalty points easily, and you can pay or give feedback without any trouble,” said Carl Orsbourn, co-author of the book “Delivering the Digital Restaurant,” in an email.
Behind the scenes, the order information gets passed on to all the other parts of the operation, from the kitchen to the back office, giving operators a single, real-time picture of their revenue, costs, inventory and staffing.
It’s a very different arrangement from the average tech stack, which can be made up of as many as 20 distinct apps that don’t always integrate with one another. Data tends to get scrambled or stuck in these siloed systems, preventing a restaurant from getting a good look at the business without a lot of Excel number crunching.
From my perspective, unified commerce seems to be a way for restaurants to squeeze the most juice from all the data they’re collecting via digital channels. But as is so often the case with tech, it will be easier said than done. “On paper it can seem somewhat straightforward and easy, but in practice it becomes really difficult,” Jashinsky said.
Aside from the heavy IT lifting involved, it could also require ending contracts with vendors and retraining staff. For large franchises, there’s also the matter of getting operators to go along with the change.
Do I have to scrap my tech stack and start over?
Not exactly. As Jashinsky explained, unified commerce is more of a process than it is a finished product. It could involve a restaurant simply paring back its vendors or working to make better connections between them. “It’s not necessarily something where you gotta throw out everything and get a new system,” he said.
But, he added, restaurants today are often thinking about unified commerce as part of a larger digital overhaul.
For example, Auntie Anne’s and Cinnabon parent GoTo Foods (formerly Focus Brands) is shifting to a unified commerce system as part of its transition into a platform company. Wingstop, meanwhile, is preparing to launch a homemade tech stack that has many of the hallmarks of unified commerce.
Orsbourn noted that tech systems that are unified from the start tend to function better than ones that are reverse-engineered. He compared the latter to a Lego model built from five different boxes. It might work, but not as well as if all the bricks came from the same set.
“We haven't seen that harmony exist for most solutions that have been stuck together,” he said. “It is starting to emerge from those that have been built from the beginning with the interdependent utilization of data from the outset.”
What does unified commerce mean for suppliers?
A shift toward more integrated systems could drive more M&A among tech companies.
“I think a lot of vendors are thinking about consolidation as a way to be able to sell this strategy of working with fewer vendors,” Jashinsky said.
Indeed, at least one big tech supplier that refers to itself as a unified commerce solution has been using that approach for years.
As for startups that aim to solve specific problems for restaurants, Orsbourn believes there will still be room for them, even as tech stacks become more vertically integrated.
“I think it will encourage them to consider how to build themselves into the ecosystems that will eventually prosper in a unified commerce environment,” he said, like how Dropbox or Google Drive work seamlessly across many different apps.
For restaurants that may feel overwhelmed (as I do) by the prospect of another technological sea change, I would urge you not to rush. If the pandemic was a baptism by fire for IT departments, this next stage calls for stepping back and thinking strategically. And, like Jashinsky said, unified commerce is a journey, not a destination: “You’re never just done.”