10 Minutes News for Hoteliers 10 Minutes News for Hoteliers
  • Top News
  • Posts
    • CSR and Sustainability
    • Events
    • Hotel Openings
    • Hotel Operations
    • Human Resources
    • Innovation
    • Market Trends
    • Marketing
    • Mergers & Acquisitions
    • Regulatory and Legal Affairs
    • Revenue Management
  • 🎙️ Podcast
  • 👉 Sign-up
  • 🌎 Languages
    • 🇫🇷 French
    • 🇩🇪 German
    • 🇮🇹 Italian
    • 🇪🇸 Spain
  • 📰 Columns
  • About us
10 Minutes News for Hoteliers 10 Minutes News for Hoteliers 10 Minutes News for Hoteliers
  • Top News
  • Posts
    • CSR and Sustainability
    • Events
    • Hotel Openings
    • Hotel Operations
    • Human Resources
    • Innovation
    • Market Trends
    • Marketing
    • Mergers & Acquisitions
    • Regulatory and Legal Affairs
    • Revenue Management
  • 🎙️ Podcast
  • 👉 Sign-up
  • 🌎 Languages
    • 🇫🇷 French
    • 🇩🇪 German
    • 🇮🇹 Italian
    • 🇪🇸 Spain
  • 📰 Columns
  • About us

Unpacking Restaurant Tech Integration: Why Friction is Still Real

  • Automatic
  • 30 June 2025
  • 5 minute read
Total
0
Shares
0
0
0

This article was written by Hospitality Technology. Click here to read the original article

image

He didn’t mince words: “The payments are the bane of the existence of restaurants. They’ve gone nothing but up.” Mackay has even lobbied in Washington, D.C., on the issue, sharing this alarming fact: “Credit card processing fees have now exceeded as a percentage of my revenue—more than all of our 401K, all of our healthcare, all of our dental care for all of our employees. It’s a bigger percentage now. And it just is getting bigger. And I want to change how that happens because we cannot live in this ecosystem forever.”

Call for Transparent Pricing

Mackay called for transparent, up-front pricing. “Ultimately, the software vendors have to make money, too. As an industry, we’ve got to figure out an ecosystem where everybody makes money…And so just being more intentional as an industry about how the heck are we going to build all this great stuff, and how do we pay for it. And our budgets are not going to be going down on tech. They’re going to go up.”  

Patrick Bobrukiewicz, from Nigel POS/Thrive Restaurant Group, strongly agreed with Mackay, pointing out that operators contribute to the problem by always seeking the cheapest software. He described an early question when joining Nigel, a cloud-based POS: “Do you want to make money in payments, hardware, or API fees?” His answer was “no, no, and no. We provide innovative SaaS solutions to restaurant operators.” This highlights the conflict when “everybody wants to augment their income stream with payments.” Bobrukiewicz emphasized, “We absolutely have to find a way to collectively get really great software into our stores in a way that makes sense for both our vendor partners and for the restaurant side and do it transparently.”

Country estate hotel gives nature a buzz with new beehives
Trending
Country estate hotel gives nature a buzz with new beehives

 

The Need for Flexibility

Henshaw of In-N-Out Burger shared his frustration with locked-in solutions. For a decade, he’s worked to select hardware that fits In-N-Out’s unique operational flow. “What we try to do… is customize for what our operations flow that works for us, hardware-wise, software-wise,” he explained. “When we are looking for solutions, we are looking for stuff that is not going to lock us in. We need something that gives us the flexibility to take this cable and go with this printer and go with this terminal, so we can kind of mesh it all together and customize it the way we need it.”

Epson’s Livesay, transitioning from the consumer side, found it “eye-opening” to discover how flexible options, like different APIs for operators and partners, could empower customization. “One solution may not be the best solution for everybody, and then there’s got to be different ways to get around it,” Livesay noted.

Rom Krupp, CEO of OneDine, who’s overseen over 150 integrations, identified three primary areas adding complexity:

  • Lack of standardization: “This creates numerous complexities, though organizations like RTN are trying to address it.”
  • Business openness: “Some service providers choose not to be as open as one might desire. This can be for a few reasons: they might want to better control their ecosystem and monetize their client base, or they could have significant technical debt, making it a substantial investment for them to become more open – an investment they’re not yet willing to commit to financially or timeline-wise.”
  • Economics: “We’ve been in a race to the bottom on SaaS pricing for a while, forcing service providers to become more and more affordable… They might do this upfront by requiring customers to purchase payment services from them, which essentially supplements their profitability. Alternatively, it could be a backend relationship where they tax integration partners with large revenue shares, one-time fees, or ongoing fees… This, in turn, increases costs that get passed back into the market.”

Krupp summarized, “These are the three major challenges we constantly struggle with when trying to create openness in restaurant tech. It’s just the current state of the union of what’s happening in restaurant tech.”

Oracle’s Amber Trendell echoed Krupp’s call for standardization. “It’s going to be even more challenging for brands to adopt new capabilities, particularly AI, if we don’t prioritize openness, documentation, and standardization. Now is truly the time to get serious about these things.” She also stressed the “immense importance of data structure, data schema, and data integrity as we move towards an agent-led world,” noting that “if we don’t get these fundamentals right… it will be incredibly difficult for brands to adopt new technologies.”

 

The Operator’s Challenge

Russell Cotter, Enterprise Architect at Chipotle, emphasized that operators must properly assess their needs and vet solutions. “For the most critical capabilities of your enterprise, as much as you have a tech-first problem to solve with interfaces working, you really need to step back and say, ‘This is a critical part of our business.’ You need to fully understand its value, risk, changeability, and interoperability for the future.” He cautioned that a lack of upfront design leads to “scrappy workarounds.” When evaluating vendors with open APIs, Cotter advised, “you have to look at what you’re trying to get out of it. Make sure you understand the cost, if there is one, along with the data transmission times, restrictions, and how the rules work so you aren’t surprised in the end.”

Tony Fernandez, CEO of MTech Mobility, thanked RTN for hosting the eye-opening discussion. “This discussion has been great so far. I’ve been quietly listening, and the feedback coming from the restaurant operators is absolutely excellent. It’s truly stuff we all deal with every day. It’s interesting how the conversation shifted to the financial side, and thinking about different ways of paying for things—I totally agree with and support that dialogue.

“Ultimately, it’s not a one-size-fits-all world for restaurant technology solutions. At the end of the day, restaurant operators are trying to find the right solution set for their specific operations, their specific brand, and their specific customer experience. As a solution integrator, we’re kind of like a fish out of water. We work with restaurants and all the different suppliers and vendors to help them navigate what we call the ‘Rubik’s Cube.’ Everyone has a different Rubik’s Cube, and their colors are all different at any given time regarding the various solutions. But ultimately, it always comes back down to the objectives of that restaurant brand and the customer experience they’re trying to achieve.”

Driving adoption of RTN’s industry standards, developed by the industry for the industry, is crucial, as Cacy Bedoka of Jack In The Box pointed out: “We absolutely need to encourage our vendor partners to leverage the standards that the RTN Work Groups have developed.” However, she added, operators also bear responsibility. “I think we need to have more operators being part of this and helping drive adoption. Creating standards without adoption is a waste of everyone’s time.” She urged treating standards as “iterative development like a living document,” acknowledging the “paradigm shifts” required within companies to truly embrace them.

Lorden reminded attendees that RTN Standards, including the RTN Open API Framework, were developed through vendor and supplier collaboration within RTN Work Groups and are publicly available on the RTN website under Technical Documentation. “It is a mission of ours to make sure that folks know how to get their hands on it,” she said, adding to reach out to RTN with any questions.

Get Involved

This is just an excerpt from the hour-long RTN Town Hall. You can watch the full video recording below.

Questions about RTN?  Reach out to RTN’s Membership Experience Manager Tammy Hanson.  

Follow RTN to stay in the loop.  Join the conversation on LinkedIn.

Please click here to access the full original article.

Total
0
Shares
Share 0
Tweet 0
Pin it 0
You should like too
View Post
  • Innovation

Travel Tech Essentialist #180: Taste

  • Mauricio Prieto
  • 26 July 2025
View Post
  • Innovation

Finding Creative Inspiration Beyond Hospitality: How Sage’s Chief Creative Officer Stays Ahead – Jessica Werner, Sage Hospitality Group

  • Automatic
  • 26 July 2025
View Post
  • Innovation

A Growing Cost Center: Monitoring and Managing the Rise in Technology Expenditures 

  • Robert Mandelbaum John Pomposello and Adam Barry
  • 25 July 2025
View Post
  • Innovation

TrustYou at RBOT 2025: Empowering Tourism Observatories with Smart, AI-Driven Solutions

  • Cara Lai Miles
  • 25 July 2025
View Post
  • Innovation

Maestro PMS Alternatives in Canada – Enterprise-Grade Cloud PMS for Hoteliers

  • Vanshikha Dhar
  • 25 July 2025
View Post
  • Innovation

AI in Hospitality: How Sage’s Chief Creative Officer Uses Tech Without Losing the Human Touch – Jessica Werner, Sage Hospitality Group

  • Automatic
  • 25 July 2025
View Post
  • Innovation

From Grand Lobbies to Micro Living: Inside A Few of Sage Hospitality’s Innovative Denver Projects – Jessica Werner, Sage Hospitality Group

  • Automatic
  • 25 July 2025
View Post
  • Innovation

KE Hotels acquires The Queens Hotel Cheltenham

  • Cynera Rodricks
  • 25 July 2025
Sponsored Posts
  • The Future of Revenue Management Is Strategic Leadership – LodgIQ

    View Post
  • Influence Society Publishes Q2 Edition of Societies Quarterly for Visionary Hoteliers

    View Post
  • Case Study: Refinery Hotel Redefines Revenue Management with LodgIQ

    View Post
Last Posts
  • Travel Tech Essentialist #180: Taste
    • 26 July 2025
  • Finding Creative Inspiration Beyond Hospitality: How Sage’s Chief Creative Officer Stays Ahead – Jessica Werner, Sage Hospitality Group
    • 26 July 2025
  • New on the Menu: Four summertime dishes in New York City
    • 25 July 2025
  • Renaissance Chicago North Shore Hotel Completes Renovation
    • 25 July 2025
  • Crescent Hotels & Resorts Announces Opening of The REMI Scottsdale, Autograph Collection
    • 25 July 2025
Sponsors
  • The Future of Revenue Management Is Strategic Leadership – LodgIQ
  • Influence Society Publishes Q2 Edition of Societies Quarterly for Visionary Hoteliers
  • Case Study: Refinery Hotel Redefines Revenue Management with LodgIQ
Contact informations

contact@10minutes.news

Advertise with us
Contact Marjolaine to learn more: marjolaine@wearepragmatik.com
Press release
pr@10minutes.news
10 Minutes News for Hoteliers 10 Minutes News for Hoteliers
  • Top News
  • Posts
  • 🎙️ Podcast
  • 👉 Sign-up
  • 🌎 Languages
  • 📰 Columns
  • About us
Discover the best of international hotel news. Categorized, and sign-up to the newsletter

Input your search keywords and press Enter.