September is a time for returning. This is the month when people go back to school, to routine, or to their alma mater.
So if you’re a veteran tech founder, perhaps it makes sense to choose this month to announce that you’re returning with a new venture.
We’ve got not one but two of those in this month’s edition of Tech Tracker. Plus, new products from Crunchtime and PAR and a key partnership for Presto.
Here we go!
Kayak founders launch an AI travel agent
Steve Hafner and Paul English are the brains behind Lola, an AI assistant that aims to not only help users decide where to go, stay and eat, but also book everything for them.
Consumers can talk to Lola like a chatbot to help plan and book trips, including dining. It remembers users’ preferences and can provide personalized recommendations. Lola is free, but customers can upgrade to paid tiers to get better hotel rates, dining access, and other perks.
Hafner and English founded the travel booking site Kayak in 2004. Their new venture is owned by Booking Holdings, which also owns Kayak, OpenTable, and other booking sites.
xtraCHEF founders return with AI restaurant agents
Andrew Schwartz and Bhavik Patel sold xtraCHEF, a back-office automation system, to Toast in 2021, and spent a few years working for the company before moving on to other things.
Now they’re back with a new restaurant tech company, Tandem, which will offer AI agents designed to help operators run their business. In a press release, the company said its agents could be assigned to a wide range of tasks, including finance, labor, purchasing, inventory, and marketing.
Tandem has closed a seed financing round and is working with operators across 100 locations in a pilot program. It also brought in celebrity chef Michael Schulson as a founding partner to lend an operator’s perspective to the company.
Crunchtime comes to the KDS
Crunchtime is bringing its restaurant operations software to the kitchen display screen.
The new system will integrate Crunchtime Kitchen, Crunchtime Ops Execution, and Crunchtime Inventory tools into the kitchen staff’s usual workflow, turning display screens into “a unified operational command center.”
In addition to showing active orders, screens will be able to prompt employees when to prep something, for instance. Workers will also be able to log waste on the KDS, which will automatically update Crunchtime inventory.
The new system marks a major step in the integration between Crunchtime and QSR Automations, the KDS supplier. The two companies announced a merger last year.
PAR looks to ID more customers
The POS provider launched Guest360, a new product designed to help restaurants identify customers that are not part of a loyalty program.
Most restaurant transactions come from non-loyalty members at the counter, drive-thru, or kiosk. Guest360 allows restaurants to create profiles for those anonymous customers using a technology it calls Profile Stitching. Restaurants can then market to these customers through an integration between Guest360 and Punchh, PAR’s loyalty system.
The new product builds on PAR’s acquisition this year of Bridg, which uses credit card info and other data to create a profile of otherwise anonymous customers.
Guest360 is now live with some Punchh customers and will expand to the rest of the Punchh customer base this year.
Presto integrates with Toast
The AI voice supplier for drive-thrus is joining forces with the POS supplier, which recently launched a drive-thru system.
Restaurants that use both Toast Drive-Thru can and Presto will be able to connect the two systems, so that orders handled by Presto will flow seamlessly into the POS.
While Presto has primarily focused on large chains like Taco John’s and Dairy Queen, partnering with Toast could bring it to smaller brands.
Toast launched the drive-thru product in April and integrates with several voice AI providers.
