Facial recognition in restaurants

Biometrics is very fashionable today and also in the hospitality industry

In the book Angels and Demons, there is a very grim scene in which the hero finds a murder victim who is missing an eye. It soon becomes clear that the eye has been stolen, so it can be used to access a laboratory using a retinal scanner.

When you read this in 2009, biometric security seemed like it belonged to the world of data centers, banks, or fiction.

La biometrics it is present in many of the services we use daily, in your bank account using fingerprint recognition, for example. But how far would you be willing to go to speed up the process of getting coffee or lunch or dinner?

Or if it will start to spread. Would you consent to the restaurant recognizing you by your face or fingerprints, so that you wouldn’t have to count cash, find a credit card, or scan the phone to pay at the restaurant’s point of sale?

Let’s see how restaurants are using facial recognition technology.

1. Detect drunkards and know the order

Don’t you hate going to the bar, and seeing a crowd of people and not knowing the order, or when it is your turn, or absolutely nothing? Well you can finish with that.

New facial recognition technology introduced by Datasparq tells a bartender who’s next in line.

He also plans to use people’s faces to assess how drunk they are in the future; but also fight to eliminate waiters who discriminate against people on the basis of race or gender.

For now, it is only in one London bar that uses it, so please continue with whatever technique has been tried and tested so that the drinks arrive before others.

2. Automatic orders

Chains such as KFC, McDonald’s and others like it have implemented two innovative technologies in some of their stores: self-order kiosks, which we have already told you about, but they have added facial recognition.

Thus, the client will only have to place your face on the kiosk and the system will offer you the immediate previous menu that you have consumed or create a personalized recommendation according to your consumption history.

Orders with facial recognition take as little as 10 seconds.

3. Study of emotions and demography

KFC has selected one of its Chinese restaurants to present the Kiosk technology implementation. Customers’ faces are scanned in an effort to identify personal characteristics that may influence food choices, such as age, gender, and current mood.

Yes, the customer executes their order quickly (10 seconds), but in return, you get valuable information: how many men and women, age, race, type of clothing, mood when placing their order, payment method, etc.

Everything, of course, with the privacy limits that the laws in Spain and Europe allow, obviously.

4. Loyalty program

We end with this: loyalty programs. They are a classic of restaurants, and have helped a lot to retain customers in restaurants of all types and sizes around the world.

Forget about points, coupons and contests on social networks, with facial recognition you can tell your customers, directly, what and how they have obtained certain benefits, directly in their order, without asking them anything.

Imagine arriving at the kiosk, and that it makes the same request that you have made the last five visits, but with 50% already applied, and you just have to accept. What a treat!