National Restaurant Association of America

03/05/2021 | News release | Distributed by Public on 03/05/2021 15:12

Taking advantage of tech in the move to off-premises

Embracing innovation and evolving your business to accommodate customers is key to success. This has never been more applicable or urgent than during the pandemic, according to restaurant operators participating in the National Restaurant Association's half-day Information Technology Virtual Event in February.

Hosted by the Association's Information Technology Expert Exchange, the event focused on advancements for restaurants during the most challenging times they ever faced. Rob Grimes, founder and CEO of the International Food and Beverage Technology Association, moderated the event, which touched on everything from mobile apps to online ordering to off-premises food delivery and contactless payment options.

In the session on pivoting to all off-premises service, execs from four restaurant companies talked about the tech changes they made and said they plan to keep many of the changes-even when the pandemic is in the rearview-because they've proved so good for business.

READ THEIR VIEWPOINTS

Alex Eagle
Freebirds World Burrito
President & CEO
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Alex Eagle | President & CEO

'We believe off-premises is the future of our industry. We embraced it before the pandemic, and will continue to embrace it going forward. We're lucky our e-commerce site was already optimized to incorporate delivery transactions, so we were ready.

A new key driver for us is curbside pickup. That was something we added quickly to our e-commerce site, and it remains a significant percentage of our sales today.

We were also pretty fortunate regarding our interactions with third-party delivery companies. We were already ready for those integrations and were able to add partners to capture more sales.

I wished we'd rolled out an easy reordering function on our e-commerce site earlier, to drive frequency. We finally did it in December, and it really made it easier for our guests to check out. We also included [purchase options for] chips, dips and beverages.

I really love how our guests evolved when using our e-commerce site. We now have much more powerful business intelligence and consumer data because people started filling in phone numbers and email addresses with their orders, instead of just going through the physical line and leaving with their orders.

This information is going to be a game-changer when it comes to knowing our guests, marketing to segments of guests and being more targeted and effective in our communications. For example, when we do our brisket LTO, we probably won't want to promote it to someone who only orders vegetarian items, but we do want to make sure they know we use Beyond Meat on special menu items.

There have been some stressful days in the past year, but it's really been positive for me. This is an exciting time for our industry to head more aggressively into off-premises.'

Bob Surbeck
Cheesecake Factory
VP of Restaurant Systems
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Bob Surbeck | VP of Restaurant Systems

'Like most organizations, I think we're trying to figure out what's going to stick and what's not. We'd already been doing online ordering and had established a partnership with DoorDash before COVID-19. Contactless ordering/payment methods weren't new to us but shifting the majority of our sales to these modes was challenging.

When you couple those kinds of orders with a reduced staff, it presents some headaches. The goal is to give customers a great experience, whether they come into the restaurants to pick up their food or a DoorDash driver delivers it to them. We want the experience to be as close to what they'd have inside our restaurants. That's what we've focused on even though we know we don't have a ton of control once the bag leaves the restaurant.

Most folks know Cheesecake Factory is brand-sensitive. We do what we do and have been successful doing it for quite a while now. We didn't reduce or re-engineer our menu, didn't go from 250 menu items to 100. We stayed steadfast in making sure guests, who love our extensive menu, weren't affected by changes in that regard.

We were also sensitive about ensuring that staff and guests who came into the restaurant, into our dining rooms, were safe. We made sure social distancing was achievable, and upgraded our table management system to allow for use of iPads and remote greetings. That upgrade wasn't originally on our list, but we got it approved, implemented, and completed at all Cheesecake Factories within six weeks.

One thing we'd like to continue is our alcohol-to-go service. We've been selling alcohol through our online ordering platform, something we didn't do before the pandemic. Because current liquor license restrictions have relaxed a bit during the outbreak, we've been able to sell beverages to carryout customers. I'm very interested to see how this is going to play out. It could benefit us greatly if it continues.'

Kathleen Chugh
Nando's Peri-Peri North America
CIO
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Kathleen Chugh | CIO

'When the pandemic happened, we shifted from 80/20 to 20/80 dine-in. What helped was integrating delivery into our point-of-sale system. We'd just started a pilot with Uber in the U.S. and had been running it for a couple months when the pandemic started. Our deployment plan was for late spring, but we accelerated and rolled it out.

We'd also already planned for curbside service later in the year in 2020 but pushed that up, as well.

We looked at how to optimize all the platforms we use to sell our menu items. Because of COVID-19, we explored adding a boxed lunch item, versus the typical in-the-pan option. We used data and the PMIX [product mix report] to help optimize what was selling and switched some of the order and sequencing around. Our goal was to make it easier for our guests to get more of the items that were trending.

There definitely was a shift in what guests were ordering, versus before the pandemic. They started using us more for dinner than they had in the past. We've spent a lot of time on menu optimization, to help enhance sales.'

Vince Van Brunt
CentraArchy Restaurant Group
CEO
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Vince Van Brunt | CEO

'We were forced to be nimble, and we empowered our operators to be entrepreneurs. We didn't want to overburden them with too many changes because the environment was already crazy.

We recognized that even though we were introducing new things, the guest experience, hospitality, and our ability to execute, would dictate the future.

Being in the high-end restaurant space, I look at carryout as a challenge. From the second the order leaves the line to the moment it gets packaged we've got to ensure the seamless transition from car to table.

We worked to envision ourselves eating the dish as we expedited it out of that window. We've taken a bit of a different approach in ensuring that each box item is presented as well as it would be in our dining rooms. That has been quite a transition for us.

For our off-premises partners, we looked at a couple of vendors. Both had online ordering platforms, and we became early adopters. What we didn't want to do was burden our operators with a lot of new technology. We've been through the process with Uber, Grubhub, and seven different iPad screens. We wanted to keep it simple. That's why we sought out companies already working with them.

We also took a hard look at catering. We've moved on from it, knowing that takeout is now taking up so much of our time and capacity. The voodoo economics of catering are hard-trying to determine whether it's a real profit center. It was more of a drag on our finances than we thought, so we decided to pass on it for a while.

Change is good. I think our group has a tendency to fight change, but we're much more open-minded these days. Whether it's because of technology, the food, or new styles of service, our teams are willing to try everything, and that's the best thing that's ever happened to us. It didn't feel good in the moment, it didn't feel good going through it, but it's given us an opportunity to address some low-hanging fruit.'