NFT use cases for restaurants
NFT’s are a new space in the main but they are more closely associated with unique pieces of digital art and funny looking ape images. NFTs are a lot more than that however. NFTs have the potential to completely transform every industry. Their potential in the restaurant industry is even more exciting than most. The restaurant industry is very dynamic with lots of moving parts. It the exact opposite of fungible. This post is about NFT use cases for restaurants and their existing and potential application
Fungible – Replaceable by another identical item; mutually interchangeable
What is an NFT?
An NFT or non-fungible token is a unique and non-interchangeable unit of data stored on a digital ledger. NFTs can be used to represent easily-reproducible items such as videos, photos, audio, and other types of digital files as unique items, and use blockchain technology to establish a verified and public proof of ownership. They provide a way to make otherwise hard to define items, definable, and immutable.
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Use Cases
NFT’s are very new so there are not many uses case out there. There are a few NFT use cases for restaurants however, and we will discuss these as well as other potential use cases. Without doubt new cases for NFT’s will manifest in the hospitality industry as well as other industries. This technology will be adopted and and obvious use cases will be fulfilled. The real game changing applications are beyond our current levels of imagination. However, we will try to list some existing a potential use cases to help bring NFTs for restaurants to life.
Pre-Funding Restaurant Openings
This is potentially the highest value use case for NFT’s in restaurants. Finding the funding to open a restaurant is not easy. Traditional lending institutions like banks do not typically like providing loan finance to restaurants. The best example of this so far is the Gary Vaynerchuk backed restaurant Flyfish in New York. They have just raised $14m by selling membership NFT’s. Essentially these NFT’s, are membership tokens, that provide a guaranteed future level of access and priority access. This is a great example of an NFT use case for restaurants
Tokenised Membership
This is an extension of the pre-funding use case mentioned above. However there is much more to tokenised membership than pre-funding. As it is a tokenised digital asset it can be very easily traded. If you are a membership token holder of popular restaurant, you can lease, yes lease, your token to somebody else for periods of high demand. The restaurant, as the market maker, will make a commission on any lease, or sale transaction. Granted, this might only be applicable for highly popular restaurants, however this is a giant leap forward in the industry. It doesn’t have to be imagined because it is already happening.
Platform for Customer Engagement
Once a restaurant has a tokenised membership structure, it is an amazing platform for customer engagement. Members can be granted access to special events, like new menu tasting, virtual events, and more. As membership tokens are digital, they will integrate with almost every other social/web platform. As the token will be stored in the customers digital wallet, access will be seamless, instant, secure and ultimately determined to have valid access. As the velocity of trade in restaurants increase so will the opportunities to interact and ultimately transact with your customers. There will be many more customer touch points. This builds on our previous post on why it is important to own the restaurant customer relationship
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Recipes as NFT’s
What are recipes but a chef’s creative output. They can’t really be monetised beyond the kitchen of the creator. They are by definition non-fungible. Added to the fact that the source of most popular recipes are a mystery. It is hard for anyone to say that their recipe is original. Imagine a recipe is created, and an NFT is minted as a result. This would be proof of the recipe creation and could be published in the knowledge that the provenance of that recipe is secure. It could be more social, extending the reach of the creators brands. It could be licensed by others very easily. Beyond that, the recipe could be forked (to borrow a software term) and adjusted to that persons taste. It is possible to see how you could have an internet of recipes, where the most popular ones, as voted by the community get the highest profile. Its a bit out there, but possible and plausible…
Order Transactions as NFT’s
Each time a customer buys from a restaurant, they generate a transaction on the restaurants point of sale (POS) system. Currently this transaction will reside inside the POS of the restaurant. What if that was to become an NFT and published to the blockchain? Why would you do that you might ask. What if it was tied to a customers digital wallet? It would be amazing data to have on loyalty system. It would render the type of POS system in place irrelevant in terms of integrating with other software platforms. The data could be anonymous or attached to an identity. The anonymous data would be valuable in a marketplace.
NFT use cases for restaurants
These are just a few existing and potential use cases for NFT’s in restaurants. As Bill Gates once said,
We always overestimate the change that will occur in the next two years and underestimate the change that will occur in the next ten
Just because it seems a bit ridiculous now, does not mean it won’t be possible in 10 years time. NFT’s and blockchain are the next internet for the creator economy. Restauranteurs are creators, and they are well placed to benefit in the NFT revolution.
