The Tech Stack for Food Halls
What is the appropriate tech stack for food halls? Well, let’s start with the fundamentals. Buckle-up, we’ll try to be brief, but there is some serious ground to cover:
Must-haves:
Wifi access with an intercept
Networked POS
A call system for food pickup
An online ordering process
An automated rental collections system
Email marketing (guest)
Email list-serve (vendors)
Repair ticketing system
Website management platform
“Shift note” system
Background music
Lighting
Security cameras
Some nice-to-haves:
A reservations system
An internal Slack
Wifi Access
Wifi access with a customer intercept is crucially important. First off, a good telecom provider can help with the right setup, but, in general, you need at least 200MB download. You need upload ability turned off or severely throttled. Download should be separated into a guest wifi that has an intercept to collect emails for marketing and so you don’t find the neighbors scheduling pirate downloads on your wifi. Some options we have used in the past are Beam Box, Adentro, and Bloom Intelligence. This also allows for some level of tracking reporting, typically a MAC address and an email account. As for POS, you may opt to do these wirelessly or wired. In practice, we find little difference as most POS systems are increasingly wireless and you can save a bundle on Cat5 runs.
Networked Point-of-Sale (POS)
Networked POS is probably the biggest thing that people under-think. The value of having a consistent POS that the customer learns how to interact with can’t be more important. By the same token, the most valuable aspect of a POS for vendors is ease of use. Vendors want a POS that requires little training. Square has been the runaway leader in the food hall segment due to pricing, native “location” support, free online ordering, delivery integration, and inexpensive hardware. Finally, your operations team will have a consistent set of POS quirks to support instead of a never-ending whack-a-mole of POS quirks. Is it perfect? Not even close. But at half the startup price of the competition, along with the fact that everyone “already knows how to use it,” it’s tough to beat. Last year Square added Square Register, which avoids the iPad—a major win for operations. We were forever freed from Apple Device Management and Jampf. The whole company cheered on our all hands call about that welcomed breakup.
There is far more to discuss on this subject, but that would require an essay and, believe it or not, we’re trying to keep this blog short. So, in short: yes to networked, simple POS. Do other POS companies offer this? Absolutely. Is there a perfect solution? no. What about Toast, Lavu, Clover, what-ever-other-offering? Probably. Will I be “the IT guy” if I pick an obscure solution? Yes. Can’t I just let the vendors fool with that? You could, but you’ll create 5-10 more difficult problems in doing so. Some examples: hardware variations won’t fit, different connectivity protocols, different needs for authentication, no online ordering for customers, no collections support for ownership, no sales insights, the list is too long to type...
A call system for food pickup
A call system for food pickup is another process customers want. However, it doesn’t have to be high-tech. We know of a few food hall operators who spent $50k+ to get their POS to custom program this feature. In a year, we think all POS systems will have this feature natively, but for now, you can use many off-the-shelf apps. We often provide a basic buzzer system at opening that is standardized and find this works well with very little training. Everyone understands the buzzer process, so it’s easy to get right. Entry level systems start at $100 on Amazon. Later, we let the vendors customize this to their liking, once the customers are happy with the presentation.
Online Ordering
An online ordering process is a must in the pandemic age. We don’t want to open a can of worms on this one, so we will be brief. There is a TON of competition in the space. You could probably use most of them. Most will promise they can integrate to your POS system. During COVID this industry advanced by leaps and bounds. While your POS operator won’t provide the “best” solution, they will provide a seamlessly integrated (and free) one, which we find to be the best bet. Third-party integrations are often one “API update” from calamity. They often won’t support the full feature set of the POS and then you’ll end up explaining to the customer why they can’t use a certain feature. Literally, no one has time for that. Specifically, in food halls, many people want multi-vendor ordering (on the same check). There are many operators that promise a version of this, but few that actually deliver the desired result. We do recommend a few, but they are very new, so we can’t write anything definitive. Reach out for a human referral.
Automated Rent Collection
An automated rental collections system is a must have. Repeat: must have. Automated collections is similarly required for ghost-kitchening, co-working, or airbnbing. Any shared space business needs to collect electronically, automatically, and as a part of the retail transaction. Any other process will create a waterfall of additional problems to solve. Fortunately, this can be fairly low tech. The best way is to act as the intermediary for the retail transactions, meaning that the payments go into a clearing account and the vendor receives their cut net of fees, sales taxes, rents, and cams. This can be inexpensively automated with our Daily Trendline management system (that’s a sales plug). It also allows for a multitude of variable percentage-based rents. The alternative is to have a unit bookkeeper and to maintain an ACH debiting process on a routine. This is far less good for a number of reasons, but workable. If you want to discuss more, please reach out.
Email Marketing (Guest)
Overtime, we’ve found email marketing to be the highest ROI form of marketing promotions. This can usually be integrated with your wi-fi intercept platform, so that your list builds automatically. Don’t sleep on it. Food Halls are content heavy, so you want to be capturing the free content and disseminating it regularly.
Email List-serve (Vendors)
An email list-serve for vendor owners/managers is a must have to disseminate quick, efficient updates to the community. This can be done fairly low-tech through a free google group. Overtime, this has been the best regular communication tool we’ve had.
Repair Ticketing System
A repair tracking system is important and can be as low-tech as a spreadsheet. Daily Trendline integrates this (another shameless plug!). The important thing here is to get things fixed as that’s a crucial part of the customer promise. Also, you’ll need the ability to put some data behind it. For example, our 2022 goal is an average resolution of under 21 days on any and all physical plant items. Being able to demonstrate that numerically is helpful with vendor-partners. Things break constantly.
Website Management Platform
Website management used to be something that you called a specialist for, but these days, we recommend using Weebly, Squarespace, or any one of the many website builders. Most have all the features you could possibly want. They don’t require you to host and do “updates” manually (like Wordpress). They have a multitude of themes and they are easy enough that your site level staff can make their own marketing updates. Latency WIN!
Shift-notes
A shift-note system is an old-school hospitality tool that we swear by. The thinking goes that there is always relevant information that occurs on each service shift. If you let that relevant information go uncommunicated because your shift-leaders are ships passing in the night, then you will have routine customer failures and service outages. Also, by the time the unresolved problem gets to you, the frustration level is at apex. A shift note system can be as low tech as a nightly email that discusses the following: customer failures, HR issues, vendor issues, maintenance needs, guest experience wins, routine cleaning completions, and usually some routine transaction information. This allows the entire team to scan before the next shift, so they aren’t caught unawares, and consistency can be maintained. Whenever we meet unhappy food hall management teams, the biggest issue is communication. Start with the shift notes. Many developers may say, “that’s a food purveyor issue.” But food halls minimally have a GM, cleaning staff, and maintenance. People will lose credit cards. People will get inebriated. There is always relevant information that doesn’t need to wait on “a meeting.” It also allows your staff to solve problems for each other, which builds team rapport.
Background Music
Unified background music is a must have. We’ve been to some old school food halls where each vendor had a boom box (which is a hot mess). Music sets the vibe, so make sure to have a centralized system. And, of course, there are a multitude of music licensing companies all emailing you for licensing contracts. A simple hack is Soundtrack My Brand, which covers all licenses and allows you to build a simple playlist based on Spotify licenses. Pro-tip. You’re welcome!
Lighting
Lighting is wildly important. There is no shortcut here. Spend your money to create a vibe. Don’t value engineer the magic. We’re dining here.
Security Cameras
Security cameras are the most important aspect of operations. If you asked our teams, the security camera system is the piece of technology they feel like they use the most. Have a digital system that is cloud hosted and accessible from anywhere. Cisco Meraki is pretty amazing. Democratize access with your vendors. It helps them manage teams and also watch service.
That brings us to the rather short list of “nice-to-haves.” I’m sure we’ll tack more on here in the future, but for now it’s just a couple of things:
Reservations System
A reservations system is super helpful. We didn’t do this until recently, but it’s been quite helpful since we’ve added it. A lot of customers want to go to a food hall with their whole family because everyone can get what they want. It’s literally the main value proposition. BUT, if you can’t guarantee a seat for all 12 (and grandma has a walker), you’re going to lose those customers. Enter a reservations system. It’s only for large parties and only for a handful of tables, but people love the feature. There’s some good software options out there, but lots of hidden Easter eggs. We can’t fully recommend a single provider yet.
Slack
And, lastly, a chat platform. We love slack. It allows us to keep our workplace in the work place. Posting files, shift notes, tidbits, and things that could be in text, but are better kept in a work context. The majority of day-to-day work communication happens here, so it’s wildly important. We could live without it, but we’d have email weeds to mess with.
And, there you have it. The March 2022 tech stack. What would you add?
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Politan Group specializes in operating food halls, bars, and bars within food halls. We also provide remote accounting, HR, and administration for food halls. Finally, we sell software that organizes much of the routine processes. If you are thinking of building a food hall or need help with an aspect of a food hall you already own, reach out to us. Politan is the most-awarded food hall operator in the industry.