Fast-food dining rooms are changing as companies embrace new technology to automate tasks and speed up production.Companies today are already experimenting with new restaurant formats that better adapt to consumer demands for fast and convenient service.
Taco Bell began experimenting with a similar format that also involved a four-lane drive-thru and elevated kitchen. Panera Bread tested out its first “Panera To Go” restaurant format, a digital-only bakery-cafe, as it continues to invest in “the digital guest experience” from in-cafe kiosks, rapid pick-up as well as drive-thru pick-up.CKE Restaurant Holdings, owner and operator of Carl’s Jr. and Hardee’s, partnered with OpenCity’s AI proprietary voice-ordering platform at select restaurants in the U.S. The pandemic isn’t what spurred the change, although it did accelerate it.
Consulting firm McKinsey & Company said a “digital revolution is changing the way business is done.” The firm even went as far as to say that “restaurant companies that are slow to adapt to these developments could be left behind.” “You’re going to have a shared experience watching sports [and] interacting with people. That dining room is serving a certain kind of purpose,” he noted.