Italian Restaurant Chain Taps Oracle to Navigate the New Dining

Panino Giusto has been a staple of the Italian restaurant scene since 1979 priding itself on having helped brought the panini to the world. It currently operates in five countries with a store on almost every major street in Milan and plans to significantly increase its business in the coming years. In January 2020 Panino Giusto became a Certified B® Corporation, the first in the Italian food service industry. While Italy was one of the hardest-hit regions during the current health crisis, restaurants are finally being permitted to slowly reopen among heavy restrictions. Panino Giusto is embracing technology, including Oracle MICROS Simphony Point-of-Sale to help pivot and deliver a safer, pleasurable experience to customers.

“Our mission has always been to bring everyone a slice of Italian life while respecting the individual and the environment. Now more than ever we want to protect our customers and staff,” said Antonio Civita, CEO of Panino Giusto. “Technology is helping us to reimagine our restaurants and our customers’ experience without losing any of the quality and warmth they have come to know and love.” 

With Simphony as its central information hub, Panino Giusto is introducing several new options and operating models to drive revenue, preserve margins and deliver a high-quality consumer experience. Oracle collaborated with Smart Technologies Limited, Get Your Bill and Tas Group, to help Panino reimagine every part of the business from delivery processes that intelligently use in-house staff or aggregators based on business objectives, to multiple options for contactless payment and pickup that minimize wait times.

Step one was extending Panino’s loyalty app, My Panino Giusto, so customers could order, pay and account for their loyalty points all in one place. While this project normally would have taken months, Oracle, Smart Technologies and the other partners had it completed in just weeks.

“Oracle moved quickly to mobilize a partner network that allowed us to navigate the crisis and prepare for the rebound,” added Civita. “Patrons will now be able to order and prepay for dine-in or take out, and payment will be tokenized so customers can be identified by their loyalty program membership to accumulate or redeem rewards with no additional effort. We could not have done this so fast without Oracle’s and our other partners amazing support and service.”

Orders from the app go directly into Simphony, helping ensure they are queued quickly and timed based on delivery or pick-up—even accounting for the distance from a Panino location the order will be delivered. The next phase in the evolution of their customer experience will be allowing customers to pre-book tables and orders to ensure easy, contactless service and social-distancing based on local guidelines. All of this helps Panino better manage inventory and kitchen costs by gaining deeper data insights into what customers are ordering and when.

“We have seen exceptional resilience from restaurateurs across the globe,” said Simon de Montfort Walker, Oracle Food and Beverage SVP and GM. “Panino Giusto was fast to recognize the need for a digital transformation mindset and tackled that head-on with thoughtful and inventive ideas. Oracle is inspired to be part of a collaborative team using technology to test new concepts, assess effectiveness and adjust accordingly.”