SOCIAL MOBILE: SUPPORTING THE FOOD-ON-DEMAND AND DELIVERY INDUSTRY

WITH INNOVATIVE, RELIABLE TECHNOLOGY

Though food pick-up and delivery has traditionally been an ancillary feature of the food service industry,
the COVID-19 pandemic, and the resulting country-wide social distancing guidelines, combined to force a
Darwinian evolution on that business model, and how quickly restaurants were able to pivot was a
decisive factor in their survival. Thankfully, the culture of “food on demand” had already become globally
entrenched in most modern societies, meaning restrictions on in-person dining did not sound a death
knell for restaurants everywhere. With the success of the entire food delivery industry dependent on the
continued existence of the food service business, it was imperative that food delivery companies
facilitated a swift and efficient pivot from a traditional indoor dining model to one focused exclusively on
pick-up and delivery service. Thankfully, enterprise focused mobile technology was standing by to assist
with that pivot.
The food-on-demand business operates on a complicated model that needs more than just delivery
drivers to function. Unsurprisingly, digital technology has emerged as an integral part of this new day-to-
day restaurant business model. For example, each time a food delivery company onboards a new
restaurant, they provide that restaurant with a tablet that is used to transmit orders from the company’s
app to the selected restaurant kitchen for preparation and eventually fulfilled via delivery. To further
complicate things, a restaurant may choose to contract with multiple food delivery companies,
necessitating the deployment of multiple tablets in one location. This creates a heavy dependence on
readily available, reliable technology and without that existing infrastructure and communication
network, a restaurant can’t accept or fulfill orders, let alone with speed, accuracy, and efficiency.
Additionally, the back-of-the-house kitchen and the restaurant it supports have rightfully earned a
reputation as one of the most demanding work-places, both in terms of the requirements of the staff and
the sheer intensity of the physical environment. In the kitchen, the ovens, stoves, dishwashers, and cadre
of other equipment firing constantly on all cylinders quickly makes for a crowded, hot, busy, and loud
workspace. The biggest challenge facing most restaurants in terms of receiving and executing orders
presents itself in the shortcomings of the most commonly used technology to support this process: an off-
the-shelf device paired with a standard kitchen ticket printer via a Bluetooth connection. Unfortunately,
off-the shelf consumer devices are not designed to withstand the intense heat and moisture of a kitchen;
the unreliable nature of devices that aren’t designed for enterprise means orders are missed, late, or
wrong and business ultimately gets lost.
Thankfully, Social Mobile was able to offer restaurants and food delivery companies solutions on both
fronts, by bringing to market two exciting new devices as part of its Rhino brand portfolio: (1) the T8, an
8” enterprise grade tablet, and (2) the M10p an enterprise tablet directly integrated with Seiko’s state-of-
the-art flagship printer.
The T8 was built tough to withstand high traffic areas and intense environments, like a hot and crowded
kitchen. The device is GMS Certified, and meets Google's extensive Android Enterprise requirements, such
as Android Zero Touch. The T8 also offers the availability of a global SKU, and comes with LTE bands built-
in to support world-wide operations. The device is T-Mobile certified (and available through the T-Mobile
sell-with program), with a baseline PTCRB that allows for certification on most telecom carriers. And
because of Social Mobile’s vertical supply chain integration, the T8 can be private labeled in all respects,
from the physical device itself to the packaging and collateral. In sum, the T8 is perfect for any organization
looking to quickly deploy a low cost and high-quality solution.
“When approached by food-on-demand companies looking for a readily available device that met their
requirements for budget and reliability, we were able to provide a clear solution in our Rhino T8, and offer
additional benefits including extended hardware availability, 3 years of software support and, naturally,
full Android Enterprise support,” said Jason Bayton, Chief Product Officer of Social Mobile.
When creating the device, Social Mobile drew a gentle balance between optimum performance and
intuitive form factor for maximum adoption. The components inside the device were carefully selected
by Social Mobile and partners to ensure the device has a much longer lifecycle than the typical off-the-
shelf consumer device—the increased longevity, couple with the Android zero touch and other
customizations, guarantees that organizations can vastly decrease their total cost of ownership and
deployment costs. This also meant that manufacturing had to be scalable to facilitate mass deployment
as needed. Social Mobile and MediaTek, a company that has a proven track record of enabling millions of
consumer and enterprise devices, have a long-standing partnership. Working together, MediaTek’s team
of dedicated experts helped Social Mobile bring the vision of the T8 project to life, helping the T8 achieve
both PTCRB and T-Mobile certification.
When designing the M10p, a first-of-its-kind device, Social Mobile worked with the largest food delivery
companies in the world to ensure the M10P tackled the issues facing restaurants and the rapidly growing
food delivery industry. The device’s design also includes two front-facing stereo speakers which are loud
enough to ensure that the kitchen staff can hear the notifications of an incoming order despite the
surrounding noise. And, the LED strip included on the device also helps offer an additional means to
ensure employees receive the critical updates about incoming orders. Plus, Social Mobile’s M10p can also
seamlessly power a register till, EFTPOS, or barcode scanner, making the device readily usable as an all-
in-one POS.
“Social Mobile quickly recognized that the absence of the proper technology to support the needs of the
rapidly growing food delivery industry was a major challenge facing restaurants and delivery services alike.
As such, we built the M10p specifically to offer an affordable, reliable solution to these challenges,” said
Robert Morcos, CEO at Social Mobile.
To that point, Social Mobile’s M10p has helped food delivery companies and restaurants have a reliable
tool to facilitate uninterrupted connectivity between tablet devices and kitchen printers. By integrating
the thermal printer directly into the tablet and powering it with MediaTek’s SoC incorporating an LTE
modem, the interruption of connectivity between the kitchen ticket printer and the tablets responsible
for receiving and tracking orders, is eliminated.
But what’s the biggest challenge facing restaurants or food related businesses whose operations
necessitate a large mobile device fleet? Managing that fleet! To keep operations running smoothly, a
system must be in place to ensure that new devices are deployed as needed, broken devices are repaired
and replaced quickly, and operational devices and their daily users are supported by both a knowledgeable
team and a reliable enterprise mobility management (EMM) software. Realizing the importance of these
services to a successful business and understanding the efficiency of a one-stop-shop, Social Mobile now
offers the full suite of managed services. Providing everything our enterprise mobility clients need under
one roof means that the restaurant industry can easily integrate the technology needed in today’s world
while allowing it to remain focused on its core business. Clients that have utilized our Mobility as a Service
solution have seen massive efficiency gains and increases in their bottom line, and by enabling synergies
that were previously impossible, we are helping our clients achieve their goals in record time, even
allowing one client to roll into multiple new markets in different countries in less than 30 days!
Please stop by our booth to learn more about the way our ready-to-deploy devices support the growing
needs of the food on-demand and delivery industry, and how our Mobility as a Service solution can
support your devices as well. Additional information about the T8 and the M10P, and our other hallmark
devices, are also available here:
https://socialmobile.com/
https://socialmobile.com/solutions/