Skift Take
The in-restaurant experience is changing, and it’s a direct result of new technologies aimed at making our lives simpler. Sometimes the tech creates a threat, as has happened with delivery. And sometimes it creates opportunity, as we see in the ways smart restaurants are addressing said threat.
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We've just released our first annual restaurant industry trends forecast, Skift Megatrends 2018. You can read about each of the trends on Skift Table as well as download a copy of our magazine here.
Speaking at Skift Global Forum in September, Union Square Hospitality Group CEO Danny Meyer made the restaurant industry sound like an easy puzzle he had already figured out.
“What’s working today is what’s always worked,” he said. “I don’t think we are going to want to stop being with people. As long as human beings remain the tribal creatures that we’ve always been, we’re going to crave high touch just as much as high tech. We provide, at our best, an opportunity to come together with people.”
When you’re New York City’s most well-known restaurateur — not to mention the man behind Shake Shack — you can get away with saying things like that. In fact, most people believe you when you do. But for a host of other restaurants, maintaining business and attracting new guests amid challenging economic conditions means coming up with ways to differentiate time spent inside a restaurant versus time spent with just the food.
In the third quarter of 2017, same-store restaurant sales declined by 2.2 percent and same-store traffic fell as well, by 4.1 percent, the second-worst rates in over five years, according to TDn2K’s Restaurant Industry Snapshot. Still, the National Restaurant Association projected industry sales of nearly $800 billion in 2017, so there are clearly restaurant dollars to be found.
At the same time,
