DELIVERING THE DIGITAL RESTAURANT

5 stars out of 5

This book is ideal for restaurant owners, so in the interest of full disclosure, I am not one. The topic, though, is of great interest to me as a former newspaper business writer/editor, restaurant reviewer and blogger and, maybe more importantly, half of a couple who visited a restaurant at least four times a week throughout most of our empty nest years.

It wasn't always that way. When I was a teenager, the only dining out I did happened when a friend had a sleepover (back in the '50s, we called them slumber parties) and we all ate what our host's mom cooked. Contrast that to today, when there's a Starbucks on every corner - unless, of course, a Dunkin' Donuts got there first. Want Chinese? Check. Ribs? Check. How about pasta, burgers or chicken wings? Check, check and check. We can eat inside, pick it up at a drive-thru window or have it delivered. Throughout it all, though, restaurant margins have remained razor thin. And then came the unthinkable: Total shutdown for nearly a year in our state and others, thanks to a killer virus that as I write this still threatens lives around the world and prompts us to avoid going inside anything.

Moving forward, what can, should or will happen to the industry remains unclear, but one thing is certain: It ain't gonna return to the good old days. So it is that I wanted to find out what experts have to say. And what they say in this book should be a wake-up call for restaurants that aren't willing to shift gears. A digital divide is already here, and it's growing fast; those who don't get on board most likely will fall between the cracks never to be seen again. Quality food and customer relationships are here to stay, but from now on customers will expect both to happen through digital channels.

Among the eye-opening statistics is this: At the start of 2020, there were 600,000+ restaurants in this country; in the short space of six months, that number was down by 100,000 - and the industry as a whole lost a quarter of a billion dollars during the year. Besides the pandemic (and at least partly because of), what happened? "We are going from an era in which people go to food to an era in which food goes to people," the authors explain in this book. Blame it also on a drop in nuclear family eating - heck, it's hard to even find a nuclear family these days. And no whether you're in a family or not, few among us have much discretionary time - at least none that we want to spend cooking. Couple that with pandemic restrictions and it's no wonder that 70% of restaurant business today happens at the drive-thru window. As the economy zooms in on the IWWIWWIWI concept - "I want What I Want When I Want It" - the authors emphasize that delivery will be the driving factor for success (inside dining, in fact, may well drop to as low as 25% of a restaurant's total business). But, they add, the bulk of success won't come primarily by way of delivery services like DoorDash and GrubHub - which charge restaurants a substantial percentage of each order and slice already thin profit margins to the bone. And that brings us to (ahem!) Delivering the Digital Restaurant.

This is only the tip of the iceberg; the book is filled with timely, well-researched facts and figures as well as examples of how restaurants can make technology work for them, from concepts like "ghost restaurants" to shared restaurants to no restaurant at all. It also speaks to the need to tempt customers with individualized food choices, loyalty programs and enticingly branded, environment-friendly packaging. And it looks at what evolving technology could mean for the future - some of which is already being tested - such as drones that drop appropriate temperature foods on your doorstep, picnic table or, (gasp!) your dining room table. All this will be made possible, the authors say, by digital platforms that eliminate the guesswork and hone the processes down to an error-free fare-thee-well.

My take[out] on this book which, notably, was delivered to me digitally right to my e-reader, is this: For current and wannabe restaurant owners who want their establishments to be around for the next few decades, it's a must-read. For those like me, it's a deliciously enlightening and easy-to-understand look into the here-and-now and tomorrows of the industry. Many thanks to the publisher, via NetGalley, for allowing me to read and review it.

Delivering the Digital Restaurant by Meredith Sandland and Carl Orsbourn (Amplify Publishing, July 2021); 264 pp.