Experiential tech restaurant group Inamo is looking to make its guest experience more interactive through developing object recognition ordering.
CEO Lee Skinner and marketing director Noel Hunwick discussed the group’s tech journey at MCA’s Hostech conference, following the recent installation of fully touch-sensitive tables at its Covent Garden restaurant. This has led to a £5 rise in average spend per head, with 20% year-on-year sales growth at the site.
The group has also seen sales growth of 88% growth vs 2019 numbers, according to Skinner.
Object recognition ordering would allow the company to provide immediate information about menu options, allowing guests to explore the menu from table. This is intended to both drive spend and make the experience more interactive.
“We wanted to create an experiential dining concept that’s fun as well as functional,” Hunwick said. “It was about removing difficult touchpoints from an operational and commercial perspective to give guests more control and maximise the effectiveness of table turn times.”
The Covent Garden site currently offers tabletops where customers can play 25 games and share screens as well as make orders that go straight to the kitchen, resulting in speed of service and an average table turn time of c90 minutes.
Touch-sensitive ordering systems as well as pre-pandemic tablet ordering allowed the business to better navigate Covid, because it had already “used tech in the business and understood it,” Skinner said.
It could also access data in terms of what customers were opting for and when.
The group has also launched a new kiosk format, Inamo Sukoshi, in partnership with Market Halls at Oxford Street and Canary Wharf.
