COVER STORY
BY ANNA WOLFE
MURTEC was online everywhere April 13 and 14 and featured innovative tech solutions, networking and group problem solving. In the wake of rapid digital transformation, leading brands including Taco Bell, HOA Brands, Another Broken Egg, Spyce, McAlister’s Deli and more shared their Big Shift − how they adapted and what’s next. All of the stellar 18 educational sessions are now streaming in the MURTEC content hub at HospitalityTech.com.Here are some of the conference’s key takeaways:
The Connected Restaurant: How Edge, IoT and E-commerce Can Transform the Industry From edge computing to the connected restaurant, native e-commerce and IoT, MURTEC attendees got the scoop on what’s happening now and what’s on the horizon in this thought-provoking keynote by Vadim Parizher, VP of Technology, En-
gineering & Analytics at Taco Bell. Parizher shared the QSR’s approach to edge computing and what the connected restaurant means for Taco Bell. “What a year it has been for technology,” Parizher said. “This intermediate period has launched so many conversations around technology. Our business, which has been straightforward for the past decade − customers come in or through the drive-thru ... that model has been replaced by multiple channels. And the data is hitting the restaurant all at the same time, because customers are now ordering online, through delivery aggregators, drive-thru and walk-ins at kiosks.” Connected Restaurant Defined All the technology inside the restaurant needs to work together. “Just like a team of football players, there are different positions. But at the end of the day, you got to move the ball to the finish line. Our equivalent of the ball, there’s an order and we have to execute that order,” explained Parizher. “And everything in the restaurant, all the equipment is all working together. Hence the term connected restaurant.” How Taco Bell Leverages Edge Computing “The term edge computing is still making its way through several industries including ours, and we’re all trying to adapt it to our operations,” explained Parizher. “For us − we are 100% in the cloud when it comes to above-restaurant processing. We try to process as much data as possible in the cloud. You, of course, can’t process everything in the cloud;
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