March/April (Revised)

TECHNOLOGY
AHEAD OF SCHE
TECHNOLOGY HAS ALLOWED RESTAURANTS TO CREATE A NEW REALITY
BY BRITTAIN BROWN
Brittain Brown is president of
Givex. Since joining Givex in
2003, he’s held various managerial
roles in the national accounts and
Operations divisions and has been
responsible for some of the company’s
largest client successes. As president,
Brown has driven Givex’s international
expansion efforts and
overseen the successful acquisition
of new additions to the Givex
family of companies.
The pandemic served
a harsh blow to the
restaurant industry,
forcing countless establishments
to permanently
shut down, leaving many
Canadians out of work
and, ultimately, cutting
people off from the local
watering holes that, for
many, served as critical community hubs.
The realization that the only way out of this
is through it, had restaurant owners across
the country quickly finding ways to adapt
to the new normal, implementing technology
to enhance safety for staff and guests and
pivoting their services and operations to
meet evolving customer demands. After a
year of innovative technology adoption and
re-imagining the restaurant experience, the
profound resilience of this tenacious industry
has catapulted restaurants far into the future,
accelerating the modernization of operations
and launching them into a new reality.
OUT WITH THE OLD, IN WITH
THE NEW NORMAL
COVID-19 came in like a wrecking ball, devastating
restaurants across the country and leaving
the survivors grappling with how to. While
many fast-food restaurants were able to maintain
drive-thru operations and some restaurants
were able to switch to a take-out model, dining
establishments that relied primarily on dine-in
service lacked the technology and infrastructure
to keep running — a reality that forced immediate
and sweeping closures. Since the beginning
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52 FOODSERVICE AND HOSPITALITY MARCH/APRIL 2021 FOODSERVICEANDHOSPITALITY.COM