Delivering the Digital Restaurant
Your Roadmap to the Future of Food
Delivering the Digital Restaurant is an accessible guidebook to adapting and thriving in response to digital disruptions to the food industry.
For Delivering the Digital Restaurant, Carl Orsbourn and Meredith Sandland collaborated to develop a road map for restaurants to adapt to a digital transition in the industry.
This book is written with the knowledge that the American restaurant industry is in the process of adjusting to major changes in customer behavior. Indeed, Sandland and Orsbourn note that one of the biggest factors in the digital revolution is the new customer attitude of “I Want What I Want When I Want It,” which carried over from retail interactions; they note that services like Amazon gave customers the feeling that they can order anything and have it arrive within days, if not hours. The “I Want What I Want When I Want It” mentality carries over into the book’s named four areas for making optimal improvements: dine-in popularity decline, personalization, sustainable supply chains, and augmented business models.
Each of the four areas is explained in thorough detail, both through historical trends and key examples of how successful businesses have already taken advantage of current and future opportunities.The book uses sociological observations, concise industry data, and first-hand knowledge to present a clear picture of the contemporary food industry and its evolution, showing how restaurateurs might make the appropriate changes to capitalize on the opportunities represented by these changes. Accessible charts and graphs are used to further explain concepts like profit and loss statements and growth tracking.
The book’s chapters build upon each other in a logical manner. Sandland and Orsbourn study restaurant customers in history, showing how other major changes also influenced the restaurant industry. A parallel study of how pizza restaurants moved from dine-in to delivery is used, showing how, as customers learned to rely on deliveries, many businesses struggled through the change, though places like Dominoes analyzed the situation and adapted to their customers’ changing needs.
With clarity, the book discusses the importance of understanding and adapting to such opportunities, rather than becoming obsolete. Its early chapters are engaging, with dramatized stories used to ground their concepts in discrete ways. Even when the content shifts to being strictly informational, the tone remains eager, and the work stays accessible, both for seasoned industry members and newcomers alike. Ample supplementary material is included, serving to guide audiences as they work to apply the book’s information. This includes a website portal for continuing education.
Delivering the Digital Restaurant is an accessible guidebook to adapting and thriving in response to digital disruptions to the food industry.
Reviewed by
John M. Murray
Disclosure: This article is not an endorsement, but a review. The publisher of this book provided free copies of the book and paid a small fee to have their book reviewed by a professional reviewer. Foreword Reviews and Clarion Reviews make no guarantee that the publisher will receive a positive review. Foreword Magazine, Inc. is disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255.
