Welcome to First Bite, a Nation’s Restaurant News podcast, your daily source of news from NRN.
Today, we’re back with part two of our Tech Tracker roundup on restaurant technology.
Last month, Lunchbox and Thanx unveiled the latest version of their suite of tech capabilities for restaurants, with the former focusing on online ordering integration, and the latter focusing on the next wave of digital loyalty programs.
Meanwhile, Pepsi is making its mark on the virtual restaurant industry more lately. PepsiCo Foodservice just announced that it will be rolling out a ghost kitchen tool for restaurants that will help operators be able to “seamlessly enter the ghost kitchen space,” leveraging the company’s resources, as well as its suite of Pepsi brands.
Finally, a piece of news that broke too late to make our written roundup: Squarespace announced Wednesday that Tock founder and CEO Nick Kokonas will be stepping down from the reservations platform he built eight years ago. Kokonas — who sold Tock to Squarespace in 2021 — will leave the company effective Jan. 2, 2023 and will be replaced by former Olo chief operating officer, Matthew Tucker.
Senior technology editor Joanna Fantozzi is here to explain what all this technology news means for the restaurant industry at large.