Tony Loeb

📍 Six Krystal locations in Albany, Georgia are being updated with a new look drawing from the successful Orangeburg, S.C. location opened in December and co-owned by Charlamagne Tha God. Upgrades include modernized digital menu boards, new furniture, and refreshed interiors while maintaining service. Digital boards allow for real-time menu updates, improved customer experience, and tailored promotions. Krystal, founded in 1932, operates nearly 300 locations and prioritizes hospitality over AI in its modernization efforts.

🏠 Digital twins are transforming the hospitality industry by enhancing employee training, improving maintenance, and boosting sales. Utilizing VR/AR for hands-on training with assets like HVAC and AV equipment minimizes costly mistakes. Maintenance teams use digital twins fed with real-time sensor data to anticipate failures, reducing downtime and extending lifespan. Sales teams can virtually showcase properties to secure event contracts. Joseph Callahan, CEO of Ciright, emphasizes the efficiency, safety, and guest experience benefits of this technology.

🎶 Marketers in the QSR and franchise restaurant sector leverage digital advertising, including in-app advertising, connected TV, and SMS promotions. Programmatic advertising, optimized through cloud services, has become pivotal, allowing criteria-based automatic ad placement bidding. QSR brands often utilize valuable first-party data from apps for better targeting, facilitated by advertising partners using data clean rooms to maintain user privacy. Mobile gaming, surpassing podcasting and traditional media with a $185 billion revenue in 2022, presents a significant opportunity for audio ads. It offers an extensive reach with four times the active users of Netflix's ad-supported subscribers and a 15-20% share of the 546 million global podcast listeners. Programmatic audio advertising enables creative flexibility, targeted reach, and scalability in engaging formats. Odeeo, co-founded by Elad Stern in 2021, specializes in in-game audio advertising solutions to tap into this market.

🍕 Restaurant operators are leveraging online and mobile app ordering to reduce third-party fees and improve customer satisfaction. Liner-free label printers aid in ensuring order accuracy and efficiency, particularly in quick-service restaurants (QSRs). Self-ordering kiosks are increasingly popular, enhancing guest experiences by reducing wait times, improving order precision, and offering upselling opportunities without extra staffing costs. These strategies are part of the industry's adaptation to technological advancements and changing consumer expectations.

🔮 ToDo Robotics' BellaBot Pro is reshaping hospitality by handling tasks like food delivery and bussing tables in hotels and restaurants. El Porton Mexican Group, across Georgia, Tennessee, and Arkansas, uses multiple units for improved service speed and customer engagement. BellaBot Pro integrates with POS and PMS and offers significant labor cost savings over time. Initially, older guests may face adoption challenges, but overall, reception is positive. The bot supports staff, rather than replacing them, and features customizable branding and voice options. Future AI advancements will enhance capabilities, aiming to address labor shortages and elevate guest experiences.

📈 MartechTribe surveyed 283 marketing professionals, revealing genAI applications dominate the marketing tech landscape with 2,324 tools, accounting for 77% of sector growth in 2024. Content and data use cases ranked highest, with copy ideation (50.7%), copy production (43.9%), and content optimization (28.6%) leading the content category. In data, knowledge/documentation (22.5%), and competitor research (21.4%) were top applications. Advertising tech sees lower adoption, with the highest ad-related use case ranked 28th. Monthly genAI use centers on strategic tasks like content image/video ideation (24.3%), while daily/weekly uses focus on operational tasks such as copy ideation (50.7%). Wishlist items indicate interest in exploring audio/podcast production (51.4%) and compliance/risk data (46.4%).

💼 Shiji appoints Steven Hopkinson as Senior Vice President for APAC & Middle East, announced on February 24 in Singapore. With a background in hospitality technology and business expansion, Hopkinson previously served as Senior Vice President for EMEA & AsiaPac at Groups360 and co-founded a Group Housing solution bought by Groups360 in January 2020. CEO Kevin King expresses confidence in Steven's role to enhance Shiji's regional support and expand customer relationships. Shiji, founded in 1998, now has over 5,000 employees, 80+ subsidiaries, operates in over 31 countries, and serves 91,000+ hotels, 200,000+ restaurants, and 600,000+ retail outlets.