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Dinner assembly companies offer essentially the same service: customers schedule a session online, picking meals from a monthly menu. The store, a large commercial-grade kitchen, organizes freshly chopped and prepared ingredients in practical stations. Customers move around the store, assembling a meal at each station by scooping ingredients into freezer bags or disposable baking pans. Meals are easily customized to accommodate personal tastes or diets – the customer just adds more or less fresh garlic or ginger, or substitutes pork for beef. Finally, the packaged meals are clearly labeled with cooking instructions.

The whole process takes about 2 hours, preparing 12 six-serving, or 24 three-serving meals at a cost of around USD 3 per serving. And no time spent shopping for food, planning meals, prepping beforehand and cleaning up afterwards.

Full article and more links at: Springwise

As competition for deposits intensifies, a number of banks are trying to capture customers’ attention by revamping their buildings to look more like coffeehouses and retail boutiques, and less like the stodgy brick-and-mortar operations of old. The new designs stress more open spaces and softer lines to create a less-formal environment, and more common areas and activities to encourage people to linger longer — and get them to shop for more banking products.

NC Financial Services Group Inc.’s PNC Bank is unveiling more than 40 newly designed branches this year that feature amenities such as Internet cafes and coffee bars.

Umpqua Bank customers often stop by the local branch to print out business documents using the bank’s computers or to have a cup of coffee.

Wall Street Journal

Casual dining restaurants and even fast-food joints are feverishly searching for ways to speed up service to increasingly time-crunched customers.

Indeed, more than 40 percent of sit-down restaurant operators polled by the National Restaurant Association said they expect takeout orders will make up a bigger part of their sales this year.

To speed up meal orders, restaurants are investing in new technologies that allow customers to place orders remotely via the Internet or through touch-screen kiosks at tables or next to cashiers.

For example, a display by Miami-based Boink Systems pointed to the future of the fast-food store. The company sells touch-screen ordering systems that fast-food restaurants can install in front of cashiers, in the store and in the drive-through.

Customers place orders by touching menu items on a screen. Some of Boink’s machines can also take credit cards and function as ATMs. The system frees up fast-food workers so they can make and sell a lot more orders, Chief Executive Officer William Toro said.

Toro said he expected the system, which is being tested in North Carolina, to make its debut in Central Florida this year at KFC and Taco Bell stores.

Another time-saving contraption garnering a lot of attention this week was an ice-cream-making machine that promises a couple of scoops of vanilla — or 11 other flavors — in about 45 seconds.

Customers can place an order on the machine’s touch screen and then marvel at the hard-packed fresh ice cream that comes out immediately. The MooBella company touts the device as a way that fast-food and casual restaurants can boost ice cream sales.

orlandosentinel.com.