Business Tech: Food Tech: Satisfaction comes from combining two of our favorite things

Food may be vital for supporting life, but I bet if you asked 10 people stranded on a deserted island if they would rather have food or technology, nine people would choose technology in a heartbeat. And you know what? They’d probably hop on Postmates or Über Eats and get food, too! With these two things being staples in today’s world, it’s not surprising the marriage of the two has been well-received.

Because you’re probably going to be hungry after reading about food all article, let's start with something to solve that problem: food delivery apps. These apps have been popping up like crazy and are probably servicing your area. DoorDash, Über Eats and Postmates are just a few of the most popular.

Even though the concept of food delivery is simple and has been around for as long as restaurants have, these companies have capitalized by bringing a delivery option to restaurants that previously were unable to fulfill that need. Along with providing drivers, they provide an easy-to-use mobile or desktop application that makes browsing menus, processing payments and tracking orders a breeze.

Along with providing a service to hungry customers and increasing business for restaurants, these companies have created jobs for all of the delivery drivers. DoorDash’s website claims drivers can make up to $25 an hour, but are guaranteed a minimum of $10 per hour plus tips. This claim has been enticing drivers (maybe even too many drivers) as their recent growth has created a saturation of delivery drivers in some markets.

Would you consider yourself more of a pizza person than people person? If your answer is yes, the new partnership between Dominos and Ford will leave your mouth watering. With the help of Ford and its autonomous vehicle technology, Dominos now offers delivery via self-driving cars in select areas.

If you live in one of these test locations, you will be given the option to have a self-driving-car delivery or a regular delivery. If you select the autonomous vehicle for pizza delivery, you will receive text updates until it has arrived. Once it has parked and you’re notified of the vehicle’s arrival, you simply walk up to the rear window and punch in your personal code. Your code rolls down the window and out comes your pizza.

Dominos and Ford are trying to grab a share of the $13 billion-plus food delivery industry. Any and all disruption of this industry will be credited to the technological advances making self-driving cars possible and safe. If this project becomes a success and can be replicated at lower costs, others will surely join the trend and drivers of all current food delivery companies are in trouble.

Sticking to the trend of not having to actually speak with a human anymore, Little Caesar’s now offers a pick-up option through their new “Pizza Portal.” Little Caesars pizza portal is the first heated self-service pizza pickup machine. Customers simply launch the Little Caesars mobile app, choose the pizzas they want and then pay. When they arrive at the restaurant, they will see their first name and last initial on one of the portals. The portal then requires their unique code, which opens up the door (or doors if they’re really hungry) containing their order.

No longer will you have to stand in line behind three other customers, staring at all of your orders as they slowly get cold. With this new pizza portal, you can get in and out quickly without having to wait or talk to any employees. These portals, combined with the mobile app, really showcase how much technology can be used, even in a pizza restaurant.

Similar to the Little Caesars pizza portal is the new touch- screen ordering kiosks appearing throughout fast food chains. These are essentially a customer- side POS (point of sale) system. These touch screen menus are set up next to your typical ordering register in fast-food restaurants like McDonalds and Taco Bell. Taco Bell plans to install them in every one of their 6,875 restaurants by the end of 2019.

Customers simply scroll through the touchscreen picture menu, add everything they want to their order and then pay right there. These kiosks are great because they reduce the chance for miscommunication or order error while leaving an employee free to help others. It is basically a full-time employee that takes orders and processes payments. And from the consumer standpoint, it can be a lot easier to order on a computer than with a person.

Starbucks isn’t exactly known for having amazing food, but they do have something amazing in their kitchen. This amazing piece of equipment is called a microwave convection oven. More specifically a Turbo Chef SOTA High Speed Convection Oven. This technology merges microwave technology with convection heating. The units have a cooking menu that can hold 256 programmed cooking recipes, making easy work of most menus. Need a breakfast sandwich? All the employee has to do is place the premade sandwich in the oven and select the appropriate cooking recipe. According to Turbo Chef, this SOTA can cook a breakfast sandwich in 50 seconds flat.

Unlike most ovens, this technologically advanced oven can have its firmware upgraded through a smart card, assuring you always have an optimum oven. And if something does go wrong with your microwave convection oven, it has self-diagnostics to pinpoint that issue quickly. Want one for your house yet? Well, this technology isn’t cheap. For just under $9,000, you could be cooking meals with the press of a button.

If you’ve got an appetite for food and an appetite for technology, then this “food tech” industry is something you should look further into. The combination of two of the most important things to human life is bound to have interesting results, and so far, the surface is just being scratched and the best ideas are yet to come. 

Bahar Ferguson is president of Wasatch I.T., one of Utah’s largest providers of outsourced IT services for small and medium-sized businesses.