An NYC Native’s Pathetic Reliance on Dining & Takeout… + Bbot Investment!
Half the time I spend obsessing over new restaurants and making it my mission to snag a reservation at each new trendy NYC dining hotspot. The other half leads me to believe I’m the sole reason Seamless thrives YoY, as I’ve been known to order ~5 meals/day on food delivery apps.
In sum, as someone who doesn’t know how to turn on an oven and relies very heavily on the NYC dining and take-out opportunities, my relationship with restaurants was hit very hard by the COVID-19 pandemic. Some of my favorite restaurants and eateries were and still are closed — a few even shuttered for good; for example, Gotham Bar and Grill, Dairy Queen, Sarabeth’s (UES), Momofuku Ssäm Bar, Uncle Boons, Quality Eats (midtown), Toro NYC, Nix, TAK Room, Lucky Strike, Rosa Mexicana (midtown), the Fat Radish, and many others. The pandemic has severely impacted the restaurant industry — one that employs more than 15 million people and was projected to do north of $800 billion in sales this year.
[Special shoutout to our rockstar MBA associate and fellow Millennial Ashley Aydin, 2nd year at MIT Sloan, who collaborated to write this piece and made us both realize how old and irrelevant we have become with the pervasive influence of GEN Z 🤪🤪🤪]
As 71% of operators reported profit margins under 10% in 2019 alone, sadly, the detrimental economic effects of the pandemic will be prevalent for years to come. In fact, due to COVID, the restaurant industry will likely lose up to $240 billion by the end of 2020.
Like many others in the food-obsessed community, the pandemic has made us anxious about going to grab a bite to eat. Questions fluttering through our minds during food experiences include — Is it safe? Will it be fast? Can I easily decide on an option? It’s obvious that many diners are cutting back from their usual, carefree trips to restaurants.
More than ever before, diners want the quickest and most convenient eating out experiences. Given COVID, many industry professionals and experts are predicting how the expectations of diners have changed not just temporarily during the virus crisis but for the long term. For example, chefs and industry experts see a restaurant experience with contactless payments and sanitizer everywhere. What’s more is that professionals are looking to replace traditional menu cards via technology, reducing interaction time with servers. Why this type of thinking? There are several factors at play here. Nearly half of Americans are willing to leave home to purchase restaurant meals with the expectation of a low or zero-contact way to pick up the orders. Additionally, a good chunk of consumers (53%) are adding more mobile apps to limit their contact with on-site staff at restaurants.
Interestingly, consumer behavior around dining out started to change pre-COVID with the increasingly important preferences of Gen Zers. Gen Z’s restaurant spending tendencies will have a major impact on the industry as its cohort begins to enter the workforce. Gen Z’s current spending power is predicted to be $44 billion, and restaurants are keeping close tabs on predilections of Gen Z. According to The NPD Group, Gen Zers made 14.6 billion restaurant visits in 2018 and represent 25% of total foodservice traffic.
Gen Z likes to eat out but at places that offer convenience and quickness. So much so that nearly half of Gen Zers are willing to try out a new restaurant if curbside is an option. What are Gen Z’s expectations of their dining experiences? Tech-native and mobile first. Gen Zers are the top users of self-serve, technology enabled models at restaurants and want to settle the bill immediately after eating rather than waste their time.
With the direction the dining out space is moving, the team here at Supernode wanted to be part of the new way we’re all enjoying food. Consequently, we’re thrilled to announce our investment in Bbot, the maker of smart ordering technology.
Bbot simplifies operations for the hospitality industry by allowing restaurant and bar guests to order food and beverages from their phones. Bbot offers fast and secure payments, integrations with major point of sale systems, and tailored implementation plans and customer support, to help businesses grow, increase efficiency, and improve the guest experience, all of which benefits restaurants’ bottom lines.
Bbot’s key features include:
- Smart Ordering: The mobile ordering technology allows guests to order food and drinks from their phone to their table. Guests can order without swiping a card, signing a receipt, or waiting in line.
- Hotel In-Room Dining: Guests visit a branded menu on their smartphone and type in their hotel room number. The customer orders, pays, and tips in just a few taps. The order integrates with the hotel POS and prints out in the hotel kitchen.
- Integration: Bbot fits in with the tech stack.
The company serves more than 500 hospitality customers in categories across fine dining, fast casual, breweries, food halls, and hotels.
Our conviction in Bbot stems from tailwinds including the hospitality industry looking for efficient solutions to make operations leaner, all while digitizing experiences for guests, (particularly Gen Zers). The key drivers of Bbot’s platform selection are cost and simplicity of use, both strengths of Bbot when compared to its peers. Aside from this, the company’s technology is defensible and licensable. While Bbot is currently focused on hospitality and restaurants, it has adjacent opportunities in concierge services and ghost kitchens.
By investing in Bbot, we add a contactless, payments-enabled platform that is horizontally integrated into our portfolio — timely during and after COVID. Given steady consumer appetite, seamless ordering, and delivery automation, we believe the company has long-term tailwinds as well as enduring implications, and we’re excited to partner with the team as they scale.
