What’s hot and what’s not when it comes to technology and equipment innovations for both the front and back of the house.

“Corner!” a cook shouts while rounding the bend from the kitchen to the dining room doorway while another cook’s sweating bullets over the five-burner range with pots boiling over. Suddenly, the ops manager from the tiny back office shouts there are tax bills to pay, and the health department inspector’s due any minute. Meanwhile, the tripped fire alarm’s sounding off every five seconds while someone tries to look under the hood system to see what the heck is going on, oh, and here comes “Computer” [the name of a character on “The Bear” for those who don’t watch] to tell everyone the money’s running out and the books are shot. Later, recruits are necessary to streamline the chaos taking place at the off-premises order window — the only revenue-generating part of the business.

At some point, the executive chef tries to cool off in the walk-in cooler only to become trapped inside when the faulty door handle flies off, missing the entire grand opening night service.

Sound familiar? Netflix’s hit show “The Bear” didn’t win 11 Emmy Awards for glamorizing the restaurant and foodservice industry. It won for showing the industry as it is — a tough, touch-and-go business where expectations run high and profit margins remain slim. In the real world, it’s business as usual — figure out how to deliver superior quality food with consistency and above-par customer service; measure sales data to plan menus accordingly; find adequate staffing, and then pay them decent wages; manage costs associated with real estate, overhead, food purchasing and inventory; minimize theft, breakage and food waste; source the right equipment pieces — and maintain them over time — and then find some sort of profit in a traditionally low-margin industry. Oh, and stay on top of menu trends while keeping the excitement high so customers keep coming back. It’s no wonder everyone on “The Bear” seems to be in a constant state of panic and stress.

Finally, though, after years of big changes and little tweaks, wishy-washy adoption, inconsistent integration capabilities and price fluctuations, we have another reliable partner in this business: technology.

You won’t see robots, mechanical coffee-making arms or temperature-regulating lockers on this Top 10 list. Consultants seem to view those high-tech innovations as not-yet-ready-for-primetime innovations, largely due to high costs, reliability issues and implementation challenges. Instead, this list features innovations adopted industry-wide — or will be soon enough. They may not be as glamorous as what can be seen on the Food Network but they’re certainly as real as “The Bear.”

1. Inventory Management Solutions

This is the low-hanging fruit — er, tech — for many foodservice operators these days, and especially chain restaurants, says Carlos Espinosa, vice president of consulting for Profitality Labor Guru. “These front-of-the-house solutions provide real-time data to let the restaurant understand how much product it produces at any given moment,” Espinosa says. “Everything is automated, so you don’t have to have a manager manually go out and count items on shelves or in the coolers, and that saves greatly on labor.” Using this tech capability, operators can plan ahead and mobilize staff to prepare extra chicken tenders before service, for example, based on projections for the day. In addition to streamlining labor, this added efficiency also cuts down on over-purchasing and reduces food waste, Espinosa says.

2. CRM Systems

Whereas basic loyalty programs were all the rage in the past, these days, restaurants investing in tech often lean into customer relationship management (CRM) solutions that are more individualized to each guest, tailoring promotions based on each customer’s habit and purchasing patterns. “They generate more personalized interactions with the guest to help businesses stay connected to customers, streamline their processes and improve profitability,” Espinosa says.

These systems also integrate with other data or can pull in data from other sources — something that loyalty programs in the past weren’t able to do. Still, Espinosa says, “customer convenience hasn’t fully led to a full switch to QR code ordering and payment, and many customers in the U.S. still want that face-to-face interaction, but I think America will catch up with Asia and the rest of the world, and we’ll see a bigger wave of mobile ordering using these solutions in 2025.”

3. Geofencing

Think of geofencing as off-premises foodservice 4.0. There are more ordering solutions available to operators these days that can locate customers within a certain range of the restaurant and send a signal to the kitchen to prepare the order based on GPS data, Espinosa says. “Once you pass a certain radius toward the restaurant, it sends a signal that you’re five miles away,” he says. “This helps the [kitchen staff] balance third-party and curbside pickup orders so you’re not flooding the kitchen — but also so you don’t have prepared food sitting too long and getting cold.” For curbside, these systems can also tell the operator where customers are parked once they arrive.

This technology became available during COVID-19 when curbside pickup was all the rage, but only recently have more restaurant operators picked up on the programs. “I’ve seen the number of restaurants using geofencing double, from 1 in 10 restaurants to 3 out of 10,” Espinosa says, noting that it’s still a low number of adoptions that’s likely to grow in the coming year as restaurants look to improve the quality of their off-premises food and overall guest experience.

4. Dynamic Promise Times

The next level of off-premises foodservice, Espinosa says, is dynamic promise times, which are estimated pickup times for when to-go food will be ready for pickup based on how busy the operation is at that period.

“These systems not only gauge the peak periods of the kitchen, but they also give restaurants the power to throttle [the pickup times for customers] up and down based on how busy they are at that time,” Espinosa says. “In the past, most places just gave a blanket 10- or 20-minute pickup estimate, and it was usually a static number that had to be changed manually.” More accurate pickup times help balance the kitchen operations, prevent bottlenecks in pickup areas and prevent food and drinks from getting cold — they also make customers happier.

5. Kiosks (Again)

Some of the larger fast-food chains were the first to introduce self-ordering kiosks in stores years ago, even before COVID-19. While they caught on to some degree, there was a lull in the adoption during and in the years after COVID-19, likely due to the slowdown in in-person dining, Espinosa says. Today, however, these touch-screen stations are making a comeback. “Even though everyone has a cell phone, kiosks still help reduce the labor required for ordering and paying, and the neat thing we’re finding is that they actually can lead to higher ticket averages due to more suggestive selling than in the past,” he says. “The technology has greatly improved.”

Airports are even getting in the kiosk game. In August, the newly remodeled Chili’s Grill & Bar at Jacksonville International Airport, operated by HMSHost, part of Avolta AG, featured the convenience of self-order kiosks at the front of the restaurant.

6. High-Tech Vending

In the healthcare segment, high-tech vending is becoming all the rage. Dan Henroid, director, Nutrition and Food Services Department, and sustainability officer for UCSF Health, says his operation has invested in various vending machines that can sell salads and other fresher food as well as custom ice cream novelties and meals for hospital staff to warm up in microwaves after hours at nurses’ stations and pantries throughout the campus.

The hospital has partnered with an RFID solution provider to power the vending machines (along with campus micromarket spaces) for a more frictionless foodservice operation.

Higher-tech vending seems to be the lower-level entry to the use of robots in foodservice. Though Henroid was an early adopter of robots for food delivery, the latest investment is a ramen robot vending machine of sorts that can prepare a bowl of ramen in just 24 seconds. “As the labor issue becomes an increasingly prominent issue, we’re looking for smaller footprints and tech innovations like these in order to maximize speed of service,” he says. “[The ramen robot] is something I can offer [staff and customers] at 3 a.m. when the cafe is not open.”

7. Frictionless Tech

Amazon’s Just Walk Out technology created major buzz a few years ago when it made a debut in airports and at entertainment venues. Now, almost all new-build entertainment venues and those undergoing renovations are clamoring for this and other frictionless technology solutions, says Ryan Rongo, LEED AP BD+C, FCSI, vice president of design, S2O Consultants.

“Now that the technology has been available for years, we’re seeing some of the data that operators have been able to use to support the capital cost investment and implementation for these systems,” Rongo says, noting the overwhelming sales data showing faster service times and significant revenue growth, up to a whopping 30% year over year.

At a newly opened basketball arena in California, “they wanted frictionless tech everywhere, including in the club spaces,” Rongo says, noting that literally all of his new-build sports and entertainment venue clients want the technology incorporated into their designs.

On the design side, consultants must work with architects to build in higher ceiling clearance (up to 10 feet in some cases) to accommodate the cameras as well as a main distribution frame (MDF) server closet (up to 90 square feet) to house all the hardware and camera wires needed for the technology.

“From a labor perspective, it reduces the need for extra staff pretty significantly and as we move almost completely away from belly-up concessions,” Rongo says.

8. Connected Kitchens

Remember the “smart kitchen” talk of the past? We’re finally here, says Espinosa. “Smart kitchens that can link real-time information from the front-of-the-house POS systems and send it to various areas of the kitchen and vice versa are catching on.”

From an equipment standpoint, more operators — at least large restaurant chain clients — are investing in more programmable pieces that can be remotely controlled by managers and staff, Espinosa says. Whereas the technology for these pieces in the past mostly focused on alerting managers when they were malfunctioning, off in temperature or needed cleaning or repairs, now they’re getting smarter such that they can be programmed to prepare different types of food at different times and intervals.

“I’m seeing more smart combis where staff can load meat and set a cook cycle to cook overnight; or load at one point and remotely start the cooking time later,” Espinosa says. “We’re not quite at the robot stage yet, but this type of automation does free up staff to do other things.”

9. Temperature-Regulating Equipment

The California Division of Occupational Safety and Health passed a new regulation this summer for temperature control and heat illness, such that businesses (including restaurants and foodservice operations) not requiring workers to wear protective clothing and gear must ensure their indoor temperatures not exceed 87 degrees F.

Richard Young, director of outreach at the Frontier Energy Food Service Technology Center in Northern California, recommends certain types of equipment that produce less radiant heat in kitchens than others. “Induction cooktops and ranges produce less radiant heat than even most electric ranges, so they’re a good choice for temperature regulation,” he says. And ranges are the front-runner in this category, even above simply electric equipment, some of which can produce higher radiant temperatures than gas. Chrome griddles tend to also have lower radiant heat temperatures.

Heat recovery systems, such as those used for dish machines and other equipment, can also reduce indoor air temperatures, Young notes, as can higher-tech hood and ventilation systems with demand-controlled ventilation and the ability to take more air from the outside. “The message to operators — at least in California — is to begin thinking about modernizing your processes so you’re doing more cooking using induction, rapid-cook ovens, tilting skillets and combis rather than cooking over open flames,” he says. He adds that while these temperature regulations only apply to California businesses, they could show up in other states as worker comfort and managing indoor air quality become a bigger priority.

10. Radio Frequency Cooking

Whereas electromagnetic radiation produced by microwaves has been the main technology for rapid cooking, there’s a new technology entering the foodservice market: radio frequency.

Joe Schumaker, FCSI, founder and CEO of FoodSpace, a full-service design and management consulting firm, notes one manufacturer with an oven using this technology, which can sense different types of foods in the chamber at the same time to cook food more gently from the inside out. This is different from a rapid speed oven, which uses a combination of microwave and radiant heat technology to blast heat from the outside in.

For example, a demo for the piece showed the unit cooking a full tray of croissants in just nine minutes; meanwhile, a breakfast sandwich could be loaded in during that time for a two-minute cook, followed by ginger-glazed salmon in just six minutes. There are also multitray options for convection-type cooking and browning using a steel plate.

“I tried a stromboli cooked in one of these ovens and the center dough and spinach filling was perfectly cooked on the inside but it was still crispy on the outside, and it only took a minute to cook,” Schumaker says. FE&S