Article

QSRs, fast casuals provide table service with RFID technology

As the restaurant industry trends toward using more and more technology to enhance customer experience, age old problems like searching for a guest’s table are finally being solved.

February 17, 2015 by Nicole Troxell — Associate Editor, Networld Media Group

As the restaurant industry trends toward using more and more technology to enhance customer experience, age old problems like searching for a guest’s table are finally being solved.

Staff need no longer wander a dining room shouting out orders and searching for table numbers with today’s innovations.

RFID technology leading the way to your table

One way table service is being made more efficient is through table tracking. Gone are the days of searching for flags that guests may or may not have remembered to place on the table. The Vuze Table Location System by HME Wireless, used by QSRs and fast casuals like McDonald’s, McAlister’s and Lyfe Kitchen, employs RFID technology so that staff can track a guest’s table.  

HME Wireless VP of Sales Russ Ford explained the way it works. "Typically guests get a flag [from a host] to take to the table. The order is placed into the system and prepared. It’s placed in the window and a runner sees on the ticket that the order number is paired with the flag number. Then staff looks for the flag number, which can be confusing with multiple dining rooms and patios, and sometimes guests don’t place it where you can see it.

"The process is the same with Vuze, except it institutes technology instead of a manual process, taking the guess work out of finding the table. A guest walks up, orders a meal, gets a tag with a number — an active RFID device — and places it anywhere on table where it transmits the specific location of the guest back to kitchen. When the food comes up in the window, the runner knows the specific location of where the table is."

If a guest forgets to place the guest tag on the table or places it in their lap, or if a baby is playing with it, it will still pick up the exact location.

That’s the difference between active and passive RFID technology, Ford explained. With passive RFID you must have a sticker or tag placed on or under the table. Then the guest tag has to be placed in very close proximity to the passive tag — passive RFID won’t track the table’s location if it’s not placed in exact spot. Active RFID allows the guest tag to be placed in the vicinity of the table tag in order to track the location of a guest.

Competition driving use of technology for QSRs and fast casuals

Fast casual, that hybrid between casual dining and quick service, is structured so that individual restaurants have a need for something like Vuze, as many of them provide table service to some degree. But why would QSRs like McDonald’s have a use for table tracking systems? 

"Over the last ten years we’ve had distinct breaks in the industry," Ford said. "QSR works through drive thru and with casual dining like Outback and Texas Roadhouse, you go in and be seated by a host and your server puts your seat in the POS location. Then what happened, in an attempt to drive labor from operations, fast casual eliminated the server and with that and a smaller footprint, an enormous amount of cost. QSR and casual dining have seen an enormous amount of pressure from fast casual taking a lot of market share.

"Companies like Five Guys are stealing away guests from places like Wendy’s, McDonald’s and even Chick-fil-A, so QSRs are raising the bar and starting to imitate fast casuals by providing order customization, fresh food and table service to combat losing market shares. There’s a strong belief that moving in the fast casual direction will stem the tide of lost revenue and keep QSRs from losing in-store dollars."

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