Restaurant And Hospitality News – February 15, 2016
By Christine Kern, contributing writer
In news this week, Panera 2.0’s success is assessed; the first hotel utilizing ambient intelligence technology is slated to open in New York City; and Paytronix releases research demonstrating the optimum number of marketing emails to achieve peak effectiveness.
Company Exec Assesses Digital Performance Of Panera 2.0
In a recent article from the Nation’s Restaurant News, Blaine Hurst, vice president and chief transformation and growth officer of Panera Bread assessed the digital performance of the Panera 2.0 initiative. Hurst told NRN that the chain has experienced an increase in customer count and satisfaction as a result of the introduction of technology at its nearly 2,000 restaurants. Panera 2.0 is designed to improve throughput and customer experience. The goal is to use digital technology to improve operations, and Hurst explained “we really power everything through ops integrity. As we started rolling out Panera 2.0 we realized that the operations had to work right. So in the back of a full 2.0 café, we’ve but in new technology.”
Panera ended 2015 with kiosks installed in just over 400 cafes, and the company will continue to aggressively roll out that technology in 2016. Panera has 21 million MyPanera loyalty program users, with 12.1 million email-enable users and some 16-17 million active users in between. Hurst explained, “For nearly 50 percent of our transactions, we know who ordered it because they used their MyPanera loyalty ID.” As for what’s next, Hurst hinted at the use of cognitive computing to learn based on customer ordering patterns.
Renaissance New York Midtown Hotel To Be First “Living” Digital Hotel
The Renaissance New York Midtown Hotel, set to open in spring 2016, employs groundbreaking ambient intelligence technology that creates an innovative “living” hotel. It is the first of its kind for the Big Apple. The interactive technology bring corridors to live with human interaction and digital artwork that changes with every visit, as well as providing virtual concierge experiences. Hallway displays respond to human movement, and the interaction between guests and the walls creates “a visual tapestry of subtle, organic graphics,” according to the company statement. This ambient intelligence technology is the handiwork of Realisations Inc. Montreal.
"The real-time technology used in this hotel is groundbreaking and is the future of the digital world," said Roger Parent, president, Réalisations Inc. Montreal, known for his work at the Metropolitan Opera, Cirque du Soleil, and most recently the See Forever Theater at One World Trade Center. "It's been rewarding to work with partners who have allowed us to push the boundary of the digital landscape and explore what can be done with the ambient intelligent technology. Together our goal was to create a 'living hotel,' one that can offer a different experience on every visit, yet still allows guests to feel rooted to New York City and the local scene."
The new technology also includes a virtual concierge, located in an alcove between the elevators and the 34th Street entrance. When a user steps onto words projected on the floor, a large screen will come to life providing a wide range of dining, shopping, entertainment, and other local information. The hotel will also be topped with a four-story LED clock, facing north and south, with continuously changing imagery providing a total of 86,400 images per day.
Paytronix Research Identifies Optimum Number of Marketing Emails
Paytronix Systems, Inc., a leading provider of reward program solutions to restaurants and retailers, has released the first research brief in a new series that demonstrates for peak value, email marketers should send six emails per subscriber, per month. The series is titled, “Extracting Customer Insights from Big Data,” and are designed to help restaurants and retailers better leverage their data insights and marketing innovations to up customer visits and spend. The brief is available here.
The research demonstrates that customer engagements should fall on a sliding scale based on the concept and guest visit frequency, but that 5.75 emails per month is the ideal volume to achieve peak effectiveness. "Every customer touch-point is vitally important to understanding and engaging guests, yet email campaigns remain one of the most widely-used and effective means to market to customers," said Lee Barnes, head of Paytronix Data Insights. "This research helps our customers identify where the total value peaks for how many emails to send before causing a negative impact -- the sweet spot for engaging customers without risking opt-outs and losing a subscriber forever."