John Oliver’s recent segment on ‘Last Week Tonight’ sheds some light on the financial drain that third-party delivery apps can cause for restaurant businesses, siphoning profits and weakening customer relationships in the process. If you’re feeling the pinch from these third-party delivery apps, it might be time to rethink your strategy and look at…
Today’s Restaurant Industry Landscape After a difficult few years facing pandemic-related issues with restaurant labor costs, supply chains, inflation, and changing customer habits, many large restaurant chains, especially QSRs, have bounced back successfully. However, smaller independent restaurants in the full service sector are still facing a tough path forward. While the National Restaurant Association…
The Delivery Dilemma The rise of on-demand delivery apps like DoorDash and UberEats has undeniably transformed the restaurant landscape. Convenience at our fingertips, a few taps on a smartphone, and a meal arrives at our doorstep—sounds like the perfect setup. Unfortunately this setup usually isn’t as convenient for restaurant operators as it is for…
The modern 2-way speaker drive-thru operation is said to have been invented by In-N-Out Burger in the late 1940s, later refined and spread across the country in the 60s and 70s by fast food giants like McDonald’s, Wendy’s, and Jack In The Box. Thanks to technology and changing customer demands, drive-thrus have steadily become…
2023 was another year of growth at CardFree thanks to our amazing restaurant, hospitality, and retail partners along with our awesome team for making everything happen. As the world of restaurant tech continues to evolve, we’ve seen greater adoption of online ordering and payments from both operators and their customers, as you can see…
Introducing CardFree Loyalty 2.0 We built the initial CardFree Loyalty platform in 2013 with basic functionality, as our primary focus was creating the best Ordering and Payment platforms possible. A few years ago, we started hearing complaints from our restaurant partners about legacy loyalty platforms in regard to lack of support, high costs, poor UX, and…
At this point, if you run a multi-unit restaurant or hotel operation, providing your guests with an online ordering channel is table stakes. Your questions shouldn’t revolve around if your brand should implement omni-channel online ordering – instead, you should be asking which platform works best for your operation, how you can implement it efficiently,…
In the saturated restaurant market, it can be challenging to stand out from the crowd, differentiate your brand, and generate meaningful engagement from your customers. At the same time, however, there are more marketing tools and resources available than ever before, and with a bit of research and experimentation, you can use the latest digital…
When our team built the original Starbucks, Dunkin’, Taco Bell, and Sonic apps 10+ years ago, native mobile apps offered many technical advantages over mobile web. Apps were also still relatively novel, and consumers’ appetite for downloading apps seemed insatiable. Neither of those things is true anymore, yet many vendors are still pushing apps as…
It’s that time of year again – Summer is winding down and that autumn chill in the air is creeping in. Shorts and t-shirts are going back in the closet and out come the jeans and flannel. That’s right, we’re officially entering pumpkin spice szn. While it might seem like the pumpkin spice aesthetic…