Sam Bakhshandehpour

How can restaurants and delivery aggregators elevate the food delivery experience? The emphasis on speed and price can lead to a focus on the lowest common denominator, potentially sacrificing creativity and culinary innovation. Can it be, Live Chef Q&A sessions during delivery? Personalized meal pairing suggestions? Premium delivery with faster time at extra cost? Live streamline from inside the kitchens? Beyond delivery packaging can it be returnable boxes? Interactive Recipe Cards included with deliveries? These recipes could showcase complementary dishes that use leftover!

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The global restaurant digitization market is expected to almost quadruple by 2032 to $29.6 billion. As more SaaS solutions flood the restaurant tech sector, one in five operators said they are overwhelmed by their tech stack choices (according to the Nation’s Restaurant News’ Intelligence Tech Outlook Report) and Market.US. EMERGING

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Maximizing Sales and Customer Satisfaction with the Best Pinot Noirs of 2024. From a revenue perspective, a strong Pinot Noir selection will boost sales. By offering a range of Pinot price points and styles restaurants will appeal to different customer segments, encouraging both casual and celebratory purchases. We survey the best Pinot Noirs of 2024 for restaurant wine programs. Including a good selection of Pinot Noir on a restaurant's wine list is crucial due to its versatility and appeal across a wide range of diners. We have, therefore, curated eight top Pinot Noirs for 2024 wine lists based on judging at the London Wine Competition. London Competitions

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Carl Orsbourn and Meredith Sandland are must follows if you are a restaurant looking to stay competitive. They both have unique perspectives on how restaurants can leverage digital technology to their benefit, but what they share is a strong understanding of the restaurant business. Their latest video focuses on a common topic...delivery as well as marketing automation. One outstanding point on the delivery front are the economics behind third party. It's fascinating to learn how lower income consumers are able to use SNAP benefits for grocery delivery. Restaurants can learn a lot from other industries, especially grocery, when it comes to driving new revenue. (Note: Grocery is learning A LOT about being restaurants so restaurant owners should take notice). Carl and Meredith also cover another important third party delivery topic: consumer data. There's a lot to be said here but the point restaurants should consider is there is a path where they can stop fighting third party for data and try to find ways to collaborate. Of course, this probably requires a restaurant company that is big enough to influence the likes of DoorDash and Uber Eats. Final though on the topic of delivery in this video is this ongoing theme of restaurants taking more responsibility around their delivery. There's no clear answer but there is a strong argument to be made that if restaurants are going to find profitability around delivery they have to be more in control of their own destiny. Carl and Meredith's push to creating a seamless #omnichannel experience seems to be the right focus to me. The video ends with a great strategy around automating SMS marketing and driving loyalty. What I like best is that it shows that we get more powerful solutions when #restauranttech and #restaurantoperators work together. #thirdpartydelivery https://lnkd.in/gf2-Khx6

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Love this article from Alicia Kelso at Nation's Restaurant News. She shows with #restaurant performance data what Carl Orsbourn and I wrote about in Delivering The Digital Restaurant: Your Roadmap to the Future of Food Chapter 2: Our Tastes Are Changing. The rate of legal immigration to the United States doubled between 1970 & 2020. Within that population, immigrants themselves got more diverse. In the 1960's, immigrants to the US were 67% European. Today, just 13% come from Europe. This diversity adds so much to our shared culture. All these new Americans are bringing their diverse culinary traditions with them and teaching the entire country - and especially younger generations - how to eat differently. Can existing restaurants change fast enough to keep up with more adventurous eaters? Or will new restaurants rise to fill the demand for more diverse foods? Based on Alicia's article, it seems to be the latter. https://lnkd.in/gNkCGFmf

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I have recommended strategic low-risk M&A to many of my large USA restaurant clients as the best way to penetrate international markets but to no avail. The franchising model takes years to scale and impact a public company's EPS. Create Restaurants Holdings (Japan) and Jollibee (Philippines) are on the right track in my opinion. Private Equity groups around the world are flush with restaurant groups they would like to sell, but USA chains are not the likely buyers. They are missing big opportunities to scale in global markets. https://lnkd.in/gsdFJvYa

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An interesting snippet of data from a new Hartman study about restaurant vs. non-restaurant sourced eating occasions: "66% of restaurant-sourced occasions are motivated by a need for convenience — hence the fast-food channel being the dominant source (39%) for these occasions." Seems like there is a real opportunity to bring more convenient options to other channels like grocery, doesn't it? Of course, those options should still deliver on taste, quality, and discovery/delight.

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