Why restaurant tech needs to solve the “Last-Mile” problem, not just digitise the back office

By Shivprakash S. Mogali, Founder & CEO of Digitory

I have been in busy restaurants on weekend nights where, on paper, everything was digital. Orders were going into the POS, tickets were showing up on the kitchen screen and billing was automatic. Still, some tables had been waiting far too long for their food.

When you look into it later, usually nobody has done anything badly wrong. The order was entered correctly. The ticket reached the kitchen. The trouble starts after that. The kitchen has a long queue and no easy way to see which orders are already running late. Servers keep going in to ask about their tables. The manager is checking two or three screens to work out what is stuck. Everyone is busy, but nobody can see the whole picture.

Situations like this taught me that putting each task on a system is not the same as running the whole operation on one.

Restaurants in India have spent a lot on technology over the past five years. Most mid-size and large brands now have a POS, some kind of inventory tool and a link to their accounts. That has helped.

But guests don’t see any of that. A guest cares about simple things. Did the food come on time, was it the right dish, was the bill correct, and did the staff seem to know what was going on. This is the last mile of a restaurant, and it is where a lot of technology still falls short.

In most cases the issue isn’t a missing feature. It is the gap between systems. The order system and the kitchen don’t share the same information. The kitchen has no idea which ingredients are running low. The recipes in the software don’t match how the chefs actually cook. Each tool does its own job, and the staff fill the gaps with phone calls, WhatsApp groups and memory.

Part of this comes from how restaurants buy software. The discussion usually starts with a list. Does it have a POS, inventory, loyalty, QR ordering, AI? After that, it is mostly about price.

I think owners should start with different questions. Will my inventory match my sales? Do my recipes show what the kitchen is really using? Will I find out about a problem while service is still on, or only at the end of the month? If I open ten outlets, will I still have the same control I have over one?

Many restaurants end up with a different vendor for every function. Each vendor may do exactly what it promised. But someone still has to make all these tools work together, and that someone is usually the restaurant manager. Over time, the effort of managing those gaps can cost more than the software. What owners should really pay for is a result in their operations, like accurate stock or faster service, not a long list of features.

There is a lot of excitement about AI in our industry right now, and I share some of it. But I also worry that we will make the same mistake again, just on a bigger scale. If the systems underneath are not connected, putting AI on top only gives you smarter-looking reports about the same old problems.

Most owners I meet already have more reports than they can read. What they lack is better execution on the floor and in the kitchen.

AI can’t fix wrong inventory data, badly set up recipes, or processes that staff can’t follow when the restaurant is full. It can only work with the data it gets. Where I think it will really help is when it moves from showing reports to helping people act. For example, flagging at 8 pm that one dish is being over-portioned at a particular outlet, showing roughly what that is costing, and telling the manager what to check. Today, most owners find out about that kind of thing at month-end, when it is too late to do much.

So what does fixing the last mile actually mean? For me, it means looking at the restaurant as one chain, from taking the order to cooking it, using up the stock and closing the bill. It means the manager at a chain’s fortieth outlet can see as much as the founder sitting at head office. And it means fewer follow-up calls, clearer responsibility and fewer surprises when the month’s numbers come in.

Good restaurant technology should mostly stay in the background. Owners shouldn’t be spending their day managing software or chasing reports. They should be with their guests, their team and their food.

The restaurants that do well in the next few years won’t be the ones with the most technology. They will be the ones that use it to run a better operation every day.