FSTEC award winners were toasted Tuesday, as the 15th annual foodservice technology conference continued after two days of networking and educational sessions surrounding the latest products and services driving the restaurant industry.
Career kudos for HMSHost's Martyn Holland and Epson America Inc. retiree Bud Weist, as well as a nod to innovation by Legal Sea Foods, FourCrown Inc. and Google Inc., are key pieces of this week's FSTEC 2010 conference program.
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FSTEC 2010's Distinguished Career Achievement Awards will be presented to Holland, who is Bethesda, Md.-based HMSHost's chief information officer, and Weist, who until last July was vice president of sales and marketing for technology supplier Epson America's System Device Group.
At a session on Monday, Holland discussed the changing role of technology with customers, operators and IT professionals.
"It used to be a push and now it is a pull," he said. "Our customers are now demanding the technology -- it's a change."
A native of Carmarthen, South Wales, with an international marketing degree from Southwest University in Bristol, England, Holland has been with HMSHost since 1997. He has worked for more than three decades in the business systems, with the last 20 years spent in CIO posts, and his previous employers include Burger King, PepsiCo and Sunglass Hut International.
Acontract provider of foodservice and retail operations for airports, highways and malls, HMSHost has more than 3,400 employees in several countries and annual revenues of about $2.7 billion. In his work there, Holland, 54, aligns systems resources with business imperatives and expansion plans and recommends strategic investments in technology.
Weist joined Epson America, a division of Japan-based Seiko Epson Corp., in 1984 as a product manager in the OEM printer group after marketing mainframe computer printers for Dataproducts. Born in Salt Lake City in 1940, he earned a bachelor of science degree from the University of Utah and once worked in weapons development for the U.S. Department of Energy.
During Weist's tenure, the printer group began producing printers for point-of-sale systems, as well as the mechanisms for cash registers and ATMs for which it was previously known. It added new markets, as well as products, and was renamed System Device Group, he said.
"Bud Weist was instrumental in building and cementing Epson's dominant foodservice POS printer market share," said Mike Helm, Epson American director of sales and marketing.
Legal Sea Foods, a Boston-based, 30-unit chain of high-end seafood restaurants, will receive an FSTEC Technology Innovation Award for its use of wireless and pay-at-the-table ordering supported by PAR Technology, as well as reservation and table management technology from OpenTable.
FourCrown Inc., a 59-unit Wendy's franchisee based in Oakdale, Minn., also will receive an FSTEC Technology Innovation Award for its restaurantwide deployment of digital menu and marketing boards, including weatherized drive-thru pieces, using Wand Corp. technology.
Google's FSTEC Technology Innovation Award stems from the Mountain View, Calif.-based company's modernization of its hospitality back-office management process using Web-based tools from CrunchTime! Information Systems Inc. That upgrade enabled the Internet search engine leader to enhance efficiency without stifling the creativity of the chefs who are part of its famed self-operated headquarters foodservice program spanning 16 unique cafes, officials said.
Contact Al Liddle at [email protected].