The National Restaurant Association Show in Chicago

Evan Sohn | June 21, 2019

Just got back from the NRA (not that one) the National Restaurant Association show in Chicago. In between eating (and eating) the plant based food and some really awesome ice cream from my new friends at Swirl Freeze in Long Island, there was a flurry of technology designed specifically to service the restaurant and food industry.

This should not be a surprise as the Restaurant POS Market is expected to grow to $20+ Billion between 2019-2025. And so it goes; Toast adds another $250M to their already serious funding and then adds a series of value added partners. Shift4 introduces SkyTab a dedicated solution for Pay@Table (they had dozens of people walking around the convention demonstrating the solution. With all the excitement Warburg Pincus wants to get a seat @ the table (pun intended) with talks of acquiring NCR.
Never a dull moment in payments land.

Finally, based on what I saw at the show, we should all expect to be ordering from a self-serve kiosk at our favorite QSR within the next 12 months. Blaming the server for getting your order wrong will be replaced by “I didn’t mean to order the extra onion rings…my finger must have slipped”.

Have a great weekend…Evan