Why technology hasn’t saved restaurants yet
Why technology hasn’t saved restaurants yet
https://restaurantbusinessonline.com/technology/why-technology-hasnt-saved-restaurants-yet
Publish Date: 2026-06-08 14:46:00
Source Domain: restaurantbusinessonline.com
Restaurant tech has been hampered by a poor foundation. | Restaurant Business image with AI
My colleague Jonathan Maze wrote a great column last week that asked “Where is all this technology getting the restaurant business?”
He pointed out that, despite all of the tech restaurants have invested in over the past six years, industry traffic and profits are worse than they were in 2019.
That’s not a ringing endorsement for tech, which is supposed to be helping restaurants increase their sales and operate more efficiently.
Of course, there are plenty of examples in which tech has done those things. And the economy has not been doing restaurants any favors lately, either.
But, by and large, tech has not translated to a more productive industry, as Maze notes.
I agree with him on that. But I’d argue that tech hasn’t failed restaurants. They’ve just adopted it in the wrong order.
Over the past six years, restaurants have been through two distinct waves with technology: The pandemic, and AI. Both events accelerated the usual process for adding tech, for better and for worse.
When dining rooms closed in March 2020 and customers hunkered down at home, tech became one of the only ways for restaurants to reach them and in turn keep their doors open.
This led to rapid adoption of online ordering and delivery, QR codes, ghost kitchens and virtual brands, even robots. And when I say rapid, I mean timelines were sped up from months or years to days.
In the near-term, this was a good thing. Tech was a life-saver for restaurants in those difficult early months of COVID and opened up a whole digital side of the business that was ripe for growth. Without it, the pandemic would have been even more devastating for the industry than it was.
But the problem was, all of this new technology got rolled out in a hurry, often on top of older systems, and without a long-term plan in mind. There was simply no time to think about any of that in those desperate days of spring 2020.
That…
