Wendy's franchisee Thomas 5 Ltd., which is owned by members of the Dave Thomas family, has deployed a WAND Digital Restaurant in several of its restaurant locations in Ohio. Thomas Five Ltd. is a Wendy's franchise owned by the five children of Thomas, the late Wendy's founder, including his daughter Wendy Thomas, the brand's namesake. Headquartered in Dublin, Ohio, the franchise operates 33 Wendy's restaurants.
Included in the comprehensive deployment is WAND Digital Menu and Point Of Purchase Boards featuring LG Electronic screens, as well as WAND Point Of Sale (POS) hardware and software. The Wendy's franchise looks to captivate customers with the sophistication and attractive design of these significant upgrades. Anticipating a positive response from customers, the WAND solution is expected to increase restaurant profits and improve satisfaction.
"WAND has continually provided us with exceptional solutions that are tailored to our brand and help improve our customer's restaurant experience," said Wendy Thomas, partner of Thomas 5 Ltd., in a news release.
Inside a Wendy's Digital Restaurant the Digital Menu Boards (DMB) engage customers with high-definition video and images, providing easy access to featured menu items. During the order taking process customers can order casually without interruption by use of conversational ordering, thus enhancing the customer's overall satisfaction. Conversational ordering allows the order to be changed at any point in the transaction increasing speed of service and order accuracy.
"We experienced our best hour ever after upgrading to WAND POS, and now with WAND Digital Menu Boards we've pushed our margins up 7.5 percent, which is estimated to be worth over $50,000 a year," Thomas said. "With these funds we will be able to keep investing in the latest technology for all our restaurants to keep our customers coming back for more."
The Wendy's Digital Restaurant locations feature a fresh, new style, including the Ohio State University (OSU) Hospital store. The OSU Wendy's location is equipped with 10 47-inch LG LCD Digital Menus. The restaurant has a unique design with two ordering lines and two separate menus coming from either end of the restaurant to meet in the middle at the counter. Five digital menu boards are mounted on each side of the counter, drawing in customer attention from all angles.
The Thomas 5 Ltd. franchise has been involved in extensive testing of WAND Digital Menu Boards for the Wendy's brand and has been an innovative franchise throughout its 10-year partnership with WAND. Digital Restaurant leads to record-breaking sales
Fellow Wendy's franchisee JMJ-WOLV reports its restaurant at McCarran Airport in Las Vegas surpassed $3 million in sales on April 16, just short of its one-year anniversary, thanks to the WAND Digital Restaurant.
The McCarran restaurant opened on April 27, 2009 and is owned by JMJ-WOLV, a partnership between JMJ-LLC (owned by Robert and Alice Lopez) and Cedar Enterprises Inc (owned by the Karam family).
The Wendy's restaurant credits the use of WAND Digital Menu Boards, Digital POP Boards and POS register Order Confirmation Screens for helping it achieve a record week over $72,000 and nearly $1 million in breakfast sales for the year with a high weekly breakfast sales record of $30,000.
The franchisees also credits the creative approach to new hire training in which the training team simulated orders from the JFK airport Wendy's for more than a week at the site, and the crew and management processed the orders for breakfast and lunch. Director of Operations for JMJ-LLC, Alan Gardner, said this type of training promoted great teamwork between the employees and the management team and is a process being duplicated at subsequent store openings.
