Today was the first day at the Chicago’s National Restaurant Association show. Our booth is #5563 on North level 3 in the Technology Pavilian section. The NRA show brings about 60,000 visitors and 2,000 exhibitors from all around North America together. Outside of some great food and drink to be sampled, there was an abundance of technology presented.
We had the pleasure of speaking with quick service restaurant operators from around the world and used the opportunity to share our solution and learn more about their challenges. One of the trends that caught our attention was the variety of options in mobile based solutions for quick service restaurants. There seemed to be a lack of services that were taking multi- chain store operations’ concerns and needs into consideration. Most of the solutions that were deemed acceptable by independent restaurants didn’t take into account chain requirements like ease of use, customer adoption, or operations into consideration.
We noticed that a large number of US and Canadian restaurant chains have just started looking into offering mobile based loyalty solutions. One of the bigger challenges they expressed was having too many options out there. They admitted that they just don’t know enough about mobile but would like to offer “something mobile” because it is being demanded by their franchisees and customers. We will definitely take this feedback into consideration and will do our best to educate some of our blog readers about the pros and cons of various mobile based marketing approaches out there.
Stay tuned for more updates from the show tomorrow. If you would like anything specific to be covered in tomorrow’s blog post, please let us know by submitting a comment here.