Tag: mobile app

The company has also hired their first chief information officer, which was recently announced.

With the goal of enhancing the smartphone based presence, the Chipotle’s Mexican Grill fast-casual chain has announced that it is placing a focus on mobile ordering and payments and that it has hired its first chief information officer.

Curt Garner, formerly the CIO of Starbucks, is now the first person to take this position at Chipotle’s.

This decision to hire a CIO has come at the same time that the company intends to broaden its mobile ordering and payment offerings, two features that are becoming quite commonplace throughout the fast casual and fast food sectors. In this, Chipotle’s is far from alone, as Starbucks, Panera, Domino’s and Taco Bell – among many others – have already been major players in this space. In fact, until now, those companies have been notably more aggressive in their m-commerce efforts than Chipotle’s.

The company believes that strategic expansion of mobile ordering and payments will change the way people interact with fast food.

According to the founder, co-CEO, and chairperson of Chipotle’s, Steve Ells, “We are changing the way people think about and eat fast food.” He added that a central component of the vision of the company is their effort to offer customers the best possible restaurant experience. “As we look for ways to create efficiencies in our restaurants and improve the customer experience through the strategic use of technology, Curt’s experience and expertise make him an ideal and welcome addition to our management team.”

Before moving to Chipotle’s, Garner had held several different technology positions at Starbucks, spanning almost twenty years. That company has been crowned as the current ruler of the mobile payments segment and it has recently expanded its mobile app based ordering, as well, making it possible for customers to skip the line and simply pick up their orders.

This makes Garner a very strategic addition to Chipotle’s, which first announced that it would be rolling out mobile ordering on its Apple Watch app back in April. Not long afterward, officials from the company said they would be focusing on updating their mobile app for better efficiency.

A recent report has revealed that the tech just isn’t meeting the needs of this important demographic.

According to a report by the Institution of Engineering and Technology (IET), called “Meeting the Needs of Older and Disabled Travellers,” over 80 percent of people who are over the age of 60 are not using websites, apps, or other online informational services through mobile technology that would assist them in getting from point A to point B.

It is the IET’s hope that the trend will be able to change and that and that these resources will be widely used.

The IET is now encouraging mobile app developers and providers to encourage disabled and older consumers to use mobile technology. The report underscored the fact that there was nearly no awareness among older people when it came to what smartphones and tablets could offer them in terms of travel resources such as for journey planning and booking. Some didn’t know that these options existed, at all. This left them without the knowledge of the types of benefits that they could receive by having travel information delivered to their mobile devices.

The IET has called for a brand new approach to marketing these services over mobile technology to these demographics.

The report also pointed out that the quality of the travel services and resources available over mobile devices has undergone some tremendous improvements over the last few years. With 4G networks becoming much more commonplace, it has become quite fast and easy for device users to be able to obtain responsive transportation information, as well as to obtain connecting data from different types of public transportation nodes so that people can receive a much more complete plan for their journey, no matter how far they might be traveling.

As a result of the ongoing uncertainty that has occurred when it comes to possible problems that are associated with using public transportation – for example, changes in service or timetable – older people and disabled individuals are greatly missing out when they don’t use their mobile technology devices to keep themselves abreast of these alterations. The experience of public transportation can be considerably enhanced when the right information is quickly and readily available.