CardFree

In just a few short years, Monty's Good Burger has grown from a music fest popup to LA's premier #plantbased burger joint. With CardFree's online ordering platform, the Monty's team has found a reliable partner to help streamline its operations while gaining valuable customer insights to help them grow even further. #restauranttech #hospitalityindustry

Strong branding is key to long-term success in the restaurant industry. Our latest post offers some tips and inspiration for you, exploring how some of the top brands in the game are pushing the boundaries of restaurant branding. #branding #restaurantmarketing #restauranttech

Spot on and in-line with my post and Jon Squire's post on this topic last week. We have touched on how wallet competitors need to provide utility to dethrone Apple Pay, but not necessarily how little Apple itself has done in 10 years to add value. This article notes that Apple “has sought to pack its wallet app with services.” If they sought to do so, they largely failed. It’s like looking at my father-in-law’s overstuffed wallet assuming it is bursting at the seams with value only to find out it’s mostly old receipts. In the earlier days of the NFC wallet hype, there was a lot of excitement for an enhanced payment experience combining loyalty, offers, and payments in a single tap. Yet, 10 years after the launch of Apple Pay, such an experience is scarcely found. This is yet another example of a company that did surprisingly little to add value to its product while it locked others out and, now that it feels it is entrenched, is moving to a limited access pay-to-play model.  The parallel in the restaurant space is POS providers. They are the gatekeepers. Unfortunately, I’ve spent countless hours across numerous POS standing at the gates, begging to be let in. In some cases, there is only a wall; in most cases, opening the gate comes with caveats, stipulations, limitations, and, of course, taxes. You can integrate, but…you must use our payment processing; only for ordering, not loyalty; only to our cloud APIs that no one uses; only if you give us a cut of your revenue. We can argue if, when, and to what extent POS should be gatekeepers; regardless, the outcome is stifled innovation and limited choices, which ultimately is to the detriment of merchants and guests. Here’s hoping Apple is a reasonable enough gatekeeper to its Secure Element that competing wallets can create true value that trickles down to merchants and their customers. PS - Shout out to a few POS that, I believe, strategically make it a point to be as open as possible based on our integrations and or conversations with them: Simphony (Robert Peterson), Qu (Niko Papademetriou), Nigel (🐧Patrick Bobrukiewicz).

Chick-fil-A Restaurants are testing out a new “elevated drive-thru” concept focused on digital orders. If there's a brand that can find the winning balance between the convenience of a digital-first experience and the human touch of traditional hospitality, Chick-fil-A is probably a safe bet. It will be interesting to see how this test concept evolves and reverberates through the rest of the industry. #restauranttech #drivethru #digitaltransformation

Chicago's BOKA Restaurant Group, one of the country's premier chef-driven restaurant groups, operates several hotel-based restaurant concepts in partnership with The Hoxton. We teamed up with the restaurant / hotel duo to create an on-site digital guest experience, enabling Order@Table + Pay@Table with a charge-to-room feature and QR code-enabled room service. Check out our client spotlight here: https://bit.ly/3X0Ag9s #restauranttech #hoteltech #hospitalityindustry

Apple opens: finally the wallet we deserve? Now that Apple has finally opened up NFC & SE, who can create the wallet we’ve imagined for over 10+ years?  The Apple Wallet is already frictionless and clearly the winner to date (sorry Google), so someone will have to bring something with considerably more utility to the table - think universal loyalty, real-time offers, seamless ordering and ecomm solutions all in one UX.  How do you solve for adoption when Apple has seemingly locked up the customer base?  Incentivize merchants with services Apple has been hesitant to provide (especially at a price that SMB’s can swallow) and drive customer adoption thru more than payments - anyone can integrate and solve for payments at the POS, that’s not going to be enough to move the needle, it’s already solved for… So who will/can step up?  PayPal?  Visa/Mastercard? Google (again)? Square? Shopify? Amazon? Someone new?  Feels like a massive endeavor for the latter…clearly an established customer base in a parallel space would give a challenger a huge lead, but with all of these larger entities they tend to believe in their own DNA and are only willing to turn the ship 10%, at best, with window dressing and PR that promises more - which is a big reason we are still where we are.  To really embrace the announcement from yesterday someone will need fresh eyes and a team that won’t be intimidated by re-thinking the approach, because this opportunity is massive, but so is the task.  Will be fun to both watch and participate.

A great combo that will continue to innovate!

Lazy Dog Restaurant & Bar is one of NRN's "100 Under 100" emerging restaurant chains! Lazy Dog has been one of our top partners and collaborators over the years, so it's great to see their team getting some well deserved recognition. We look forward to seeing more big things to come from Lazy Dog! #restauranttech #restaurantmarketing #hospitalityindustry

A 100% self-serve QSR powered by CardFree -- view our client spotlight to get the details on one of our newest partners, Brooklyn Dumpling Shop: https://bit.ly/3AiAVv7 The fully automated franchise is making waves in the industry with it's reimagined automat food lockers and a guest experience backed by CardFree, including their native app, in-store kiosks, order ahead, loyalty, and marketing. #restaurantoperations #restaurantindustry #fintech