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Technology can’t magically fix the labor gap, but it certainly helps — and it need not do so at the expense of customer service. The right tech—which puts logistics such as ordering and payment in the hands of guests via their smartphones—and allows fewer servers to cover more tables.

A tighter team fosters more engagement among individual staff members, while the ability to do more with less gives restaurants increased operational bandwidth. As a result, servers can shift some of their focus away from transactional interactions and toward higher qualitative guest experiences and engagements that leave a lasting impression.

The past couple of years have seen a significant uptick in the adoption of cutting-edge technology in the restaurant industry, and if the start of the year is any indication, the pace won’t be slowing down any time soon. We’ve already seen an announcement that a well-known hamburger chain will be rolling its fry-station robot out at 100 new locations, and another leading fast-food brand has filed trademark applications to run a “virtual restaurant” in the metaverse.

From a restaurant operator’s perspective, the QR code has the potential to become an engine for efficiency that, when well-oiled, can bring about generous returns. It deserves as much attention as keeping tables clean, or ensuring that payment terminals are functioning. Implementing a process to audit QR codes on tables daily—which is as simple as having staff members walk around and scan them—should become standard.

In spite of the challenges of the past two years, there is a future for the restaurant business. Automation has a big role to play, but that doesn’t mean good old-fashioned human hospitality is out of style, or ever will be. We need one just as much as we need the other.

Fortunately for restaurant operators, advancements in contactless technology and automation have eased some of the impact of this labour crisis. Over the course of the pandemic, 97 per cent of restaurant operators made some changes to their business to survive, with 37 per cent of those adding new tech.

A lot of that tech would appear to remove the need for full teams of human workers—and indeed, we’re seeing a lot of headlines about robotic kitchens and even fully automated restaurants. Does this mean that restaurants are planning to ditch people in favor of more machines? Hardly. According to the National Restaurant Association, 75 percent of operators say they plan to devote more resources to recruiting and retaining employees in 2022.

The COVID-19 pandemic brought QR codes to the forefront of the table experience. Adoption in the restaurant industry has been remarkably quick and widespread.

In 2022, the restaurant business finds itself at something of a crossroads—or, to put it in a more 21st-century way, the industry has reached a pivot point. Restaurants were already getting more high-tech before the COVID-19 pandemic hit, but once it did, adoption of solutions including contactless ordering and payment methods became a matter of survival, in more ways than one.

We can attribute much of the scannable qr code’s current ubiquity to the COVID-19 pandemic. In most Canadian provinces, such as British Columbia, Ontario and Newfoundland, QR code -based vaccine passports are a requirement, and many of us are starting to grow accustomed to flashing our qr code in order to get into restaurants and other places of business.