What Are the Benefits of Amalgamating Augmented Reality in the Food & Beverage Industry The Beer Café has partnered with Blippar; are more amalgamations waiting to happen?
By Rahul Singh.
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The human psyche is wired to think and work in a certain way. We have set perceptions about the world around us and the way it functions. Today, with the advent of technology, the way we see the world, the way we think and communicate has significantly changed. A decade ago, perhaps discounts and promotions were enough to attract new customers. But now restaurant goers want something more appealing in order to try out something new.
The emergence of AR
Every technological advancement brings in a wave of change in our experiences. Augmented Reality (AR) is one among the emerging technologies that has created opportunities to revamp the restaurants do business. In simple terms, Augmented Reality is the integration of digital information with the live video and user environment. By recognizing a visual picture, this technology blends new information and displays the virtual result in real time, thereby producing extra-ordinary experiences. Leveraging new technologies like AR not only creates an immersive experience for a consumer but it also helps restaurants to stand out from the crowd.
Beer Cafe partnering with AR pioneer Blippar
For instance, at the Beer Café, beer lovers are keen to know about the type of beer, place of origin, alcohol volume and the taste of the drink. There is a knowledge gap that needed to be filled. To address this, The Beer Café has partnered with Blippar, a mobile based visual browser & augmented reality platform that works on Image recognition technology. AR held a unique opportunity for us to fulfil queries on each pint's provenance and educate our customers through the Know Your Beer feature. There are close to 56 brands of beers that The Beer Café serves. The app recognizes pint labels and gives relevant information about the beer in question from origin, alcohol volume to even the tasting notes. The customer has to Blipp the beer label to discover a rich integration that brings forth all the details in an exciting manner.
In the future one could point the phone at any restaurant and without prompting, the device camera would recognize the most popular objects, incorporate user interests (through collected data) and layer on information about what users are looking at. For example, point your smartphone at any restaurant and reviews of its best butter chicken or burger would pop up on your smartphone screen. Or you could point it at the menu and explore ingredients that go into each dish. To make it more interactive restaurants can provide nutritional information or preparation methods (is it fried, grilled or sautéed?). It could even be used to run an interactive marketing contest.
The possibilities with AR are endless, there are so many ways a restaurant can use it to engage customers, add value and bring more revenue by transforming conventional menu. A well-implemented activity would perfectly complement traditional methods of operations and help create brand loyalty. In this highly competitive and evolving F&B industry, innovation is the key to breaking way from the clutter.
