The Main Course

The pandemic accelerated many aspects of the restaurant industry, including the ways in which consumers interact with QSR’s. Bringing in the Global Head of Technology for Xenial, host Barbara Castiglia spoke with Chris Siefken about the changing nature of QSR’s and the technology that is here to address them.

Restaurant technology is, and always has been, about figuring out what restaurants and guests want. The software technology company Xenial, which was taken from the Ancient Greek word for hospitality, has taken that challenge head on.

“So, we offer a large number of products, they generally represent something like 16 categories, the primary space we’re probably most well-known for…is in the point of sales space. We provide point of sales systems to the vast majority of our customers,” explained Siefken. Xenial’s top-notch technology comprises a significant market share of the top 25 brands, including Restaurant Brand International, Taco Bell, and Jack-in-the-Box. Their services include digital menu solutions, kitchen solutions, kitchen automation, drive-thru technology, automation, and kiosks.

Siefken credited their success to long-standing relationships with restaurants. Denny’s has been a customer for 30+ years and is now on their third iteration of technology improvements. Long-term relationships allow Xenial to build trust and rapor with their clients. Siefken noted that while, “not every customer has every product,” Xenial is able to demonstrate success by trying to, “provide not products so much as solutions.”

As such, Xenial is advancing the QSR market in their current pilot program. Siefken said, “We are working on some fairly sophisticated drive-thru automation workflows.” These improvements include improved computer vision, which aims to improve customer experience by adding insightful data for both restaurant and customer. With this new system, “We know how long the line is beyond the menu board,” said Siefken.