New Report: How Fake Reviews Hurt Restaurants’ Mobile Ordering Volumes

The COVID-19 pandemic has throttled restaurants’ revenues as social distancing protocols, stay-at-home orders and dine-in bans have forced eateries to rely solely on pickup and delivery to stay in business. Many states have begun to relax their social distancing orders and allow restaurants to resume business in a limited fashion, but mobile ordering continues to play a critical role in their revenue streams.

Quick-service restaurants (QSRs) continue to face old threats during the outbreak, too, as social media fraud and fake reviews run largely unchecked. Scammers pose as restaurants on social media and attempt to defraud customers of their personal data, for example, and fake reviews drive customers away from restaurants’ mobile apps.

The June Mobile Order-Ahead Tracker® explores the latest digital ordering developments, including the new dine-in eating rules aimed at avoiding the spread of COVID-19, how restaurants are working to identify and remove fake reviews and how some eateries are disguising their true identities on mobile ordering apps to expand their customer bases.

Developments From The Mobile Order-Ahead World

Restaurants across the United States are reopening as dozens of states relax their social distancing guidelines and dine-in eating bans. Alaska and Georgia were the first to do so in May, although significant restrictions remain in states that are reopening. Restaurants are allowed to operate only at half capacity to encourage social distancing, and staff are required to wear gloves and face masks to limit the potential spread of infection.

Contactless curbside pickup has become popular amid the pandemic, with QSR employees depositing customers’ orders in their cars without any face-to-face interactions. The most recent QSR chain to embrace this option is Panera Bread, which now offers customers two options to pick up their orders. The first consists of a geofencing system that tracks customers’ smartphones and alerts Panera staff when they have arrived, while the second requires customers to enter their vehicle details so staff can identify them, and then texting when they have arrived to pick up their orders.

Other restaurants are just beginning to offer mobile ordering services. Family entertainment and pizza chain Chuck E. Cheese was recently added to Grubhub under the pseudonym “Pasqually’s Pizza & Wings,” for example. The move was only discovered by a Philadelphia customer noticing that the ghost restaurant shared an address with a local Chuck E. Cheese location. A Chuck E. Cheese spokesperson confirmed that the name is derived from Pasqually P. Pieplate, the name of the fictional animatronic chef that is part of Chuck E. Cheese’s band.

For more on these stories and other mobile order-ahead news items, download this month’s Tracker.

QSRs Protect Their Digital Reputations Against Fraudulent Reviews

Many QSRs have shifted their operations online due to social distancing orders, resulting in a lack of face-to-face interactions with customers. This, in turn, has led customers to rely more heavily on online reviews to gauge restaurants’ reputations, but as many as one-fifth of these reviews could be fake. In this month’s Feature Story, PYMNTS talked with Scott Lawton, co-founder of QSR chain bartaco, about how QSRs can counter fake reviews’ negative effects by maintaining direct lines of communication to customers via email and social media messages.

Deep Dive: How QSRs Can Fight Social Media Scams And Fake Reviews

Online reviews are a key driver of restaurant revenue, with one-third of customers saying that they avoid eateries with ratings of less than four stars. Social media is just as vital to driving business, with 72 percent of customers reporting that they have used Facebook to decide where to eat. Both of these channels are plagued with fraud, however, including fake reviews and phishing scams on social media. This month’s Deep Dive explores how restaurants can identify fake reviews and have them removed, and how they can educate their customers to spot impostors on social media.

About The Tracker

The monthly Mobile Order-Ahead Tracker®, a PYMNTS and Kount collaboration, offers coverage of the most recent news and trends and a provider directory highlighting key players across the mobile order-ahead ecosystem.

Flying Cars Can Wait: CES Shows Future Is Robots That Cool Your Soup, Pick Up Socks

AI Me gadget from CES 2025

What do the movies “Blade Runner,” “2001: A Space Odyssey,” “Back to the Future Part II” and Spike Jonze’s “Her” all have in common?

These science fiction movies, each depicting various versions of a future full of fantastic technologies, all take place in the year 2025 or earlier.

Though some of the high-tech gadgets and futuristic innovations seen in these films, such as hoverboards and flying cars, haven’t quite materialized in everyday life, they have sparked imagination and set the stage for the very real innovations. As the dozens of groundbreaking products and wacky gadgets that debuted at the 2025 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) this week reveal, the future is certainly now.

CES, after all, rarely disappoints when it comes to providing a first-look at some truly strange gadgets that might just represent the ultimate showcase of tomorrow’s technology.

From artificial intelligence (AI) being embedded into everything and smarter than ever home devices, to autonomous robotic companions and wearable tech that both bends and blends reality, many of the inventions that once seemed out of reach in Hollywood films are now being unveiled on the convention floor.

See also: The Five Not-So-Obvious Things That Will Change the Digital Economy in 2025

Could Smart Home Robots Revolutionize Daily Life?

It’s becoming clear that today’s technological advancements are increasingly bridging the gap between what was once imagined and what’s now becoming real.

For example, smart home robots are no longer a futuristic fantasy — they are being positioned as potentially indispensable components of modern households.

CES 2025 saw the debut of the Roborock Saros Z70, a robot vacuum with a telescopic, five-axis arm. Rosey the Robot from “The Jetsons” has nothing on this little gadget, which its maker describes as “a mechanical arm that sees and thinks,” and is able to pick up and put away items like socks, shoes, tissues and more.

For more serious household tasks, the SwitchBot Multitasking Household Robot K20+ Pro was also unveiled at CES 2025. “Whether it’s delivering objects, vacuuming, monitoring pets, purifying the air, providing home security, or even mobilizing smart tablets, the K20+ Pro juggles household management with ease … from delivering food and drinks to carrying small packages,” said a company release.

Read more: Training Robots Using Video Games Could Democratize Warehouse Automation

The K20+ Pro’s core is designed for customization and flexibility, serving as a modular foundation that allows users to create, adapt, and personalize the robot for a wide variety of innovative applications, and can connect with third-party smart devices like Alexa, Google Assistant and Siri, ensuring integration into any smart home ecosystem.

Elsewhere, TCL premiered its “AI Me” (Amy) concept companion robot, complete with animated eyes, autonomous movement and an AI-powered camera on its head; while Dreame showcased its X50 Ultra robot vacuum that has legs to avoid obstacles.

As smart home technology continues to evolve, the integration of robots designed to assist in daily activities could significantly alter how we interact with our homes, manage tasks and even shape the future of work.

TomBot, for example, debuted an emotional robotic lap dog, Jennie, an AI robot therapy dog designed to keep seniors company. On the more playful side of things, Tokyo robotics startup Yukai Engineering introduced the Nékojita FuFu, a portable cat-shaped robot that can blow air to cool hot food or drinks.

It wasn’t solely robotics for use at home being showcased at CES. John Deere used the Las Vegas event to reveal its own autonomous agricultural products. The fully autonomous machines were on display from Jan. 7 to 10, and were a bit bigger in size, if equivalently less cute, than the TomBot puppies.

Read more: Google Reportedly Bringing Gemini AI to TV Sets

The Future Is Calling and Consumers Can Answer Anywhere

Behind the strangely futuristic convenience of a robot picking up your laundry and taking out the trash while it vacuums and interfaces with the rest of your household appliances lies a much larger story: the rise of the smart economy.

As CES 2025 showed, augmented reality (AR) glasses are the eye candy of the smart economy. A host of futuristic specs were unveiled, capable of a range of tasks that turn the wearer into a high-tech superhero.

Halliday showcased “the world’s first proactive AI glasses with invisible display,” while freshly debuted Loomos.AI glasses offer a ChatGPT-4o integrated AI assistant.

But other appendages remain up for grabs, and innovative products from smart rings to apps like WowMouse, which allows smartwatch wearers to control devices using just their gestures and fingers, are vying for market share in ways that aim to make daily life more convenient, efficient and secure.