2023 Brizo Restaurant Tech Landscape

From payment systems to online ordering, AI to robotics, reservations to staffing, technology is playing an increasingly important role in helping restaurants automate labour-intensive processes, reduce error, and generally give customers the convenience they want, when they want, in the channel they want. 

At Brizo FoodMetrics we’re continually acquiring data and insights around how and where foodservice operators use technology, and we’re kicking off 2023 with some of the topline trends that we’re seeing most, both among the customers we work with and in the industry as a whole. A few key insights from our kitchen…

• Demand for delivery has remained strong, despite soaring prices. Not surprisingly, online ordering and food delivery is expected to reach almost $370B globally by 2030.
• While 2021 was a year of plenty for restaurant technology, with venture capital pouring in and rapidly growing tech firms buying other companies, all of that ground to a halt in 2022 due in large part to inflation and fears of a recession. Rising interest rates rattled investors and forced companies to focus more on profits than growth.
• Ghost kitchens continued to evolve in 2022, but the changes came more in the way of look and feel than in the technology they use.
• Non-robotic forms of automation gained steam, especially AI voice. Bots were the stars of the National Restaurant Association Show in May, and across the board, restaurants continued to invest in automation. We saw the launch of (among other things) a cheeseburger vending machine, a robotic wok, and a number of new Flippy installations. The robotics trend defies an easy summary, which is to be expected for tech that’s moving beyond the test-and-learn stage and starting to scale. Robots’ uneven year could be seen as cautionary, but it’s more likely a sign that the technology is starting to mature.