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White Castle’s mobile and kiosk pilots are driving higher check averages
The average check at White Castle's all-kiosk restaurant is 20 percent higher than its traditional restaurants.
June 12, 2014
Don Long, White Castle’s senior director of Information Services and Technology, provided a glimpse into the brand’s kiosk and mobile initiatives during last month’s National Restaurant Association Show in Chicago. The brand’s digital initiatives include online ordering, mobile ordering and in-store kiosk ordering tests.
“Our concept called mobile kiosk, where you bring your kiosk with you, is centered on how we can communicate better with our customers. That’s one of the pluses with mobile ordering — we now have people show up in the drive-thru that ordered Crave Cases (30 Sliders). It didn’t help with speed of service when we didn’t have that,” Long said.
White Castle developed the app itself, with some coding help from its point-of-sale provider. Long said it was important that his team had the ability to interface information in its systems and "get it right."
“If you get a third party and something doesn’t match through your enterprise, you’ll have more maintenance trying to set everything up in multiple locations," he said.
White Castle has experienced success for its pilots thus far. During a recent Mother’s Day special, 75 percent of mobile orders that came through to restaurants were new mobile users. Long said that was “very surprising.” Notably, their average checks were exponentially higher.
“Our average check is $6. Our mobile average is $27,” he said.
White Castle is also experimenting with order kiosks and even has a restaurant that features all kiosks, with no menu boards.(See pictures here).
“The average check is 20 percent higher than our non-kiosk stores,” Long said. “People really order different things when they use kiosks.”
White Castle is also checking out mobile payments, but hasn't bought into any one mobile wallet yet because the technology "still has to evolve," where people can pay how they want to pay. Long cites Apple's incompatibility with NFC technology as an example of inconvenience. The brand is experimenting with a gift card type of payment.
“We are waiting for the right vendor to provide what’s needed so it’s seamless and customers can pay with credit if they want. With our gift card we have a lower rate, but we don’t believe that can do it all,” Long said. “We’re looking for vendors that will support different technologies.”
White Castle’s main priority is to “communicate better with its customers.”
“If they order in advance, we can keep track of where they are and they can tell us they’re running 10 minutes late. We’re looking at mobile payments, but also a total way to communicate with our customers and trying to make sure they can do everything with their phone,” Long said.
