Bar Louie

Roberta Frierson

With fifteen years as a Senior Technology Executive, Roberta Frierson has been dedicated to leading strategy, innovation, and operations to maximize the value that technology adds to organizations. As the Senior Vice President of Technology for Bar Louie, she is leading a comprehensive evolution in technology strategy, infrastructure, and systems for a restaurant chain with over 70 corporate and franchise locations across the United States. With a goal of leveraging technology in enhancing the Bar Louie experience and generate positive impacts at all levels, Roberta is responsible in managing the boardroom, to headquarters, the field, and to the moment a guest sits at a table in a Bar Louie location. She also collaborates with executive stakeholders, Board of Directors, external partners, and internal teams to understand the nuance of their day-to-day operations and their long-view objectives to create and launch technology platforms and solutions that enable their success.

What are the major challenges and trends existing in the Restaurant POS space and how is it impacting?

The recent trend that the Restaurants industry is experiencing is how it has adopted the easiest way to automate and digitize all the restaurant operations by merely implementing a POS at restaurants and with the advent of cloud technology, the humble POS system evolved to become a complete restaurant management system. The advantage of the POS system is that it reduces manual labor and simplifies operations. Add to this integration with the various third-party applications such as Online Ordering, E-wallets, Table Reservations, Loyalty Programs, etc., and the restaurant POS machine becomes an end-to-end solution for restaurant management. Additionally, with this evolution, orders from all the delivery platforms will be pushed directly into the POS which will eliminates the need to manually add the orders received from the various online ordering channels. Along with the orders, come the customer details that can be directly added to restaurants’ CRM database. This has immensely enhanced the customer experience.

“With the advent of innovative technology, the humble POS system evolved to become a complete restaurant management system. The advantage of the POS system is that it reduces manual labor and simplifies restaurant operations”

The only challenge is cutting down the labor and the amount of the people needed to run a full bar. With the advent of such innovative technologies, there would be cut down in restaurant staffing that is required to run a restaurant because the upcoming technologies has streamlined the overall restaurant management process.

With all these potential transformations and disruptions, how do you envision the future of the space?

We can imagine POS technology evolving into a device that consumers carry with them. Regardless of the device, POS technology will continue to evolve, become faster, and improve the customer experience. They will continue to improve operational benefits, make restaurant management easier, and make monetization easier. Of course, they'll improve the restaurant experience, whether it's by streamlining the ordering process to the point where there's a tablet at every table or by implementing a kiosk model in which you walk in, order, and pay, and everything is brought out for you. While technology advances, I don't believe the experience of being served will ever completely disappear.

Would you like to share a piece of advice with the other leaders or fellow peers working in the space?

My only advice would be stay engaged with your peers in order to stay up-to date about the recent technological trends existing in the marketplace. Keeping the door open for insights and opinions from your peers would help in knowing about the transformations and understanding where the space is leading toward to stay ahead of the competition.