Author Archives: Linda Neukirchner

Red’s Giant Hamburg on Route 66 in Springfield, Missouri, is often named as the first drive-thru restaurant in America. It opened in 1947 and rang in the start of a new era in convenience eating.  Fast and efficient, diners could grab a bite on their way home, cruise through for a snack, or quickly quench […]

When we spend time with family and friends at restaurants, picnics, at the food court in the mall to just hang out, in your own backyard for a barbecue, and wherever else you can enjoy a meal—even if it’s socially distanced, using contactless ordering—there’s something uniquely special about these moments. Why is that? Well, we […]

Contactless payments were already growing in popularity before COVID, but the advent of the virus has made this already rapidly expanding form of payment explode. And the data is proving that in many cases, guests are spending more when contactless payment options are available than when they have to hand over a card or cash. […]

This brave new world of COVID has greatly altered the focus of restaurant management over the first half of this year and beyond. Gone for a while was any semblance of dining room service and taking its place was an explosion of online ordering and mobile ordering apps. But, depending on where you are, dining […]

What with quarantines and shutdowns and curbside deliveries and reopening and reclosing and reopening again (but with a huge list of restrictions and protocols), restaurant managers could be excused for occasionally wanting to throw up their hands and just pour a drink from the bar. The ingenuity that so many across the country have shown […]

Even before the advent of COVID-19, the convenience of mobile technology was rewiring the way restaurants do business. POS systems combined with apps or web-based portals have become more and more common, and this trend toward convenience through technology has gone into overdrive since dining rooms were forced to close earlier this year. 2020 has […]

Technology continues to march forward, whether you’re paying attention to it or not. And, when it comes to business of any kind, you ignore this at your own peril. Yes, there’s some value in the old adage, “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” But it’s also true that new technologies, like contactless payment and […]

In the wake of the coronavirus pandemic, pop-up restaurants have seen a resurgence in growth. While pop-up restaurants are not a new dining concept, they are an ideal retreat for customers looking for the fun of dining out, but in a socially distant way. They’ve been found in parking lots, barns, and recently in empty […]

Mobile technology has revolutionized every industry, including the one that most closely relies on the power of human, rather than technological, interaction: hospitality, specifically in the hotel space. Already, in the years leading up to 2020, hotels were in the process of embracing tech solutions that covered everything from improved check-in methods, to mobile payments […]