Consumers Don't Have Much of an Appetite for Restaurant Tech

Fewer consumers say that restaurant technology offerings like online ordering and digital menus influence where they're going to eat. 

At least according to a recent study from consulting firm AlixPartners, which surveyed 1,005 US internet users and asked them on a scale of 1 to 5—with 1 being non-influential and 5 being highly influential—which technologies influence their dining choices. 

For example, in Q1 2017, 40% of respondents said that online ordering was influential when deciding whether to dine in or order delivery. Fast forward to one year later, and that figure  slipped to 32%. 

This was a consistent trend among all the various technology mentioned. Compared with last year, fewer consumers said that tech like free Wi-Fi, mobile ordering or getting a text once a table was ready was a deciding factor in where they chose to eat. 

AlixPartners' findings are in line with a study the Food Marketing Institute (FMI) conducted last year when it examined how often US internet users look to technology like smartphones and tablets to inform their dinner decisions. 

For the most part, 40% of respondents said they use technology "sometimes," while fewer (19%) said they do so "frequently" and even less (4%) said they do so "nearly always." Breaking it down by age, however, younger users were more likely than their older cohorts to use technology to help them figure out where to eat.