In a recent restaurant technology podcast from Fast Casual, participants compared restaurant technology to an iceberg: Only some of it is visible on the surface right now – the invisible majority lingers underneath. Considering how tech advancements have transformed other industries over many years, the imminent growth of restaurant tech makes sense, particularly as tech natives in Gen Y and Gen Z represent a growing portion of the workforce. And if most restaurant tech is yet to come, it’s important for today’s tech to leave space for what’s in the pipeline. Looking at the platform you have now, how readily and smoothly can additional technology plug into it? Consider where you’d like to take your business in the next five to 10 years and how well your current system would allow you to adapt to that growth. Where do you expect to make your money? Look to integrate tech that can bring greater efficiencies around cost, labor and real estate to those areas of your business – then you will have a solid foundation from which to branch out into new channels, day parts or service models. When assessing potential providers, collect references, review case studies of the technology in practice, ensure the company has been in business long enough to have worked out kinks in its core products, and be aware of any long-term contracts that could make it difficult for you to swap out a product (or vendor) down the line if needed. When you’re ready to roll out new tools, incorporate a period of time for the change to happen so your team has space to digest it and make it part of how they work. This is especially important if you have operated in a different way for a long time and your new technology represents a significant departure from that. If you can, run any new functionality in a test environment that leaves room for you to make mistakes and try new approaches as part of the tech adoption process. The demand for online food delivery has surged in the past few years and is poised for continued growth, according to Statista research. The National Restaurant Association has reported that for the first time, drive-through and delivery orders account for a larger share of guest traffic than on-premises dining. While this presents new opportunities for restaurants, it also gives threat actors an appealing target for fraud – particularly because frequent, low-volume transactions can make it easier for fraud to go undetected. You can take some steps to make your business a more difficult target for these scams, however. Beyond some basic protections such as enforcing strong passwords on your website and app, prompting password changes, and having people use multifactor authentication to access their account, Security Boulevard advises businesses to use a few safety precautions to prevent unauthorized access. For example, you can limit the number of login attempts within a certain time frame, or set up alerts whenever changes have been made to an account/password. Your fraud prevention software can also help by identifying the location of login attempts and flagging locations that seem off-base or which use a VPN to disguise their IP address – common signs that a threat actor is trying to breach a network. It’s also important to keep your security software current by installing patches and updates promptly – unfortunately, fraudsters often take advantage of security vulnerabilities due to delays in installing up-to-date security measures. |
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