Fast Casual Executive Summit

Fast casual leaders: Off-premise dining more important than ever

Three restaurant executives discussed the rise of off-premise dining during the COVID-19 pandemic at the recent Fast Casual Executive Summit in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Photo by Networld Media Group

October 21, 2021 by Mandy Wolf Detwiler — Editor, Networld Media Group

The COVID-19 pandemic forced brands to weigh their off-premise operations heavier than ever before. More consumers used carryout and delivery, and that trend continues even as more customers return to dining rooms.

That was the takeaway from the "Enhancing Off-Premise Operations to Build Customer Trust" panel at the recent Fast Casual Executive Summit in Charlotte, North Carolina. The annual event was well attended, according to organizers. The summit is one of several foodservice and technology industry events run by Networld Media Group. A virtual event, #QSRNext, will take place Nov. 9.

The off-premise panel included Jim Bitticks, COO of Dave's Hot Chicken, Tom Ferguson Jr., CEO of Rise Southern Biscuits & Righteous Chicken and Tinku Saini, CEO and co-founder of Tarka Indian Kitchen. Tracey Fullington, national account manager at Essity North America, moderated the panel.

The move to off-premise

Online ordering and delivery has increased more than 300% since 2014, according to an Essity survey, and 75% of operators consider off-premise dining to be their best growth opportunity. At the same time, 60% of consumers have higher expectations of restaurant hygiene. Many restaurants have embraced off-premise operations as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

During the panel discussion, the leaders shared how their brands are advancing off-premise operations as well as the challenges coming into play.

Ferguson said Rise has always had limited seating and the company started using third-party delivery during the pandemic. When the pandemic happened, they turned to kiosks to limit human interaction in-store. Rise linked up with YourFare and Checkmate, both technology platforms designed to help expedite orders. The company saw an influx of tickets and without a cashier to help funnel the orders they had to come up with a better way to get the orders out from the kitchen to the customers or delivery drivers.

"We dove into the kitchen … and really flushed out this system," Ferguson said. "You have a few things you can throttle. From our online platform we can throttle how many orders per minute. Delivery you can just turn it on and off for us. And then we went from two kiosks to one kiosk because that's as many as we wanted to do."

Order-ready screens and food lockers helped expedite the orders. "We're 100% contactless on that part," Ferguson said.

While he worried about losing the personal service without a cashier he's also making sure that the technology Rise uses is efficient and effective. Employees all became back-of-the-house people, which allowed them to focus on their employee culture, he said.

"At Rise, we are honing into our people more than we ever have," Ferguson said. "I believe if we go too much into technology, we're forgetting about our people."

Saini said Tarka Indian Kitchen had take-out sales just over 50% at the start of the pandemic with delivery compromising 15% of that. Off-premise then went to 100% of sales and has settled at 75% of sales. The company implemented a geofenced curbside pick-up program.

"We saw that that was going to be a big need to keep as many people outside of the restaurants as possible and being able to do things in a contactless way," Saini said.

Dine-in customers now are no longer willing to wait 20 to 25 minutes for food given the rapid pace of pick up and delivery, so on-premise dining has changed as well. Tarka Indian Kitchen's sales are now up 20% over last year and 25% over 2019 partly because Indian food travels well, Saini said.

"The key there, and especially when labor is (as difficult) as it is, is how do you match your capacity to produce with the demand that you have which is just off the charts?" Saini asked. "We empower our store-level teams to throttle. The first thing we do is turn off third-party delivery. We want to prioritize guests who are ordering direct from us, whose data we have, who we can market to. That's extremely important to us to make sure that they are prioritized.

"Make sure that your systems work really well. Make it as convenient as possible. You're not going to be able to match someone just being able to order from their computer from their sofa and getting the food delivered to them, but if you have a curbside solution where they can still be in their pajamas and you're just bringing the food out to them, that's close. That might move the needle for a lot of those people."

Bitticks said Dave's Hot Chicken implemented OLO, an online ordering platform, in response to the pandemic that helps throttle ordering into one system.

"Using OLO, we're able to either throttle up or throttle down," he said. "If it's too busy, we turn it off. If it's kind of slow you can actually lower the minutes that it publishes out to guests and that actually helped us bring in more sales if you had a five-minute pick-up time as opposed to a 35-minute pick-up time."

The brand also gets feedback from Tattle, a customer experience management platform, and respond to everyone on Yelp, Google or Tattle whether it's a five-star or a one-star review.

"We try to recover any guest that's unhappy and we say thanks to any guests that give us good marks," he said.

About Mandy Wolf Detwiler

Mandy Wolf Detwiler is the managing editor at Networld Media Group and the site editor for PizzaMarketplace.com and QSRweb.com. She has more than 20 years’ experience covering food, people and places.

An award-winning print journalist, Mandy brings more than 20 years’ experience to Networld Media Group. She has spent nearly two decades covering the pizza industry, from independent pizzerias to multi-unit chains and every size business in between. Mandy has been featured on the Food Network and has won numerous awards for her coverage of the restaurant industry. She has an insatiable appetite for learning, and can tell you where to find the best slices in the country after spending 15 years traveling and eating pizza for a living.

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