Article
Best practices for integrating carryout
By envisioning the carryout business as a component of an emerging, integrated digital ecosystem, restaurant decision makers can allocate resources in a way that optimizes labor and successfully meets customer needs.
November 6, 2019 by Elliot Maras — Editor, Kiosk Marketplace & Vending Times
Adapting to the growth in carryout orders can be intimidating. It's not like restaurants don't have other challenges to think about in today's demand-driven foodservice marketplace.
At the same time, the carry-out market is digitally focused, similar to other front-and-center influences nowadays, such as order delivery. By envisioning the carryout business as a component of an emerging, integrated digital ecosystem, decision makers can allocate resources in a way that optimizes labor and successfully meets customer needs.
A panel, "Using digital to increase carry-out profits," at the recent Fast Casual Executive Summit in Austin offered several examples of how forward thinking restaurant decision makers are achieving digital integration on multiple fronts and providing customers more ordering options.
Moderator Cheryl Kemp, senior partnerships manager at Ritual, which provides a mobile app for food order pickup, said at the outset that carryout is now the fastest growing part of the restaurant business.
A new customer base
For many restaurants, the pickup audience represents a new customer base that can be converted to regular in-store customers.
"We're using our digital channels to drive people in," said Deena McKinley, chief marketing officer at Papa Gino's Pizzeria and D'Angelo Grilled Sandwiches in New England. Fortunately, digital tools such as Ritual exist to assist in this effort. McKinley's company also uses Mobivity, a customer personalization platform, to text special offers to online customers that can be picked up in-store.
"For their acquisition offer they (the customers) actually have to come in and pick that offer up," McKinley said. The company then follows up with weekly offers.
Stacey Kane, the head of marketing at Leon Restaurants, a U.K. chain expanding in the U.S., described Ritual as an omnichannel tool that allows guests to get a friend to join and eat for a dollar. "That expands our trade area to areas where we probably will have restaurants within the next 12 months," Kane said.
Increasing community visibility
Digital tools can support marketing in still other ways.
Papa Gino's Pizzeria and D'Angelo Grilled Sandwiches has found digital platforms assist in participating in community events at which they invite people to join the rewards program and win something, said McKinley.
"By acquiring this massive reach through these highly visible platforms, we're able to drive people into our database and tell them how we want them to come in and interact with our brand," she said.
The company also works with fire stations to educate guests about fire safety as they eat pizza. "We've also engaged the different fire stations to compete (with each other) to drive people into our text program," she said. McKinley called this is an example of using a grass roots program to drive a digital one.
In Washington, D.C., Leon Restaurants partners with a children's charity called Martha's Table, which offers an association with the U.S. market the brand is expanding in, Kane said. At the last grand opening, about 2,000 people signed up for the brand's loyalty program and raised $2,500 in four hours.
The human touch
It is important to maintain a human touch in pickup and carry-out orders, said David Menis, vice president of creative marketing at Chopt Creative Salad Co., who agreed third party companies bring in new customers. His company deploys labor to the pickup shelf to help the customers use the shelf. The company also monitors the growth of the pickup to determine when to deploy more labor to the pickup shelf.
"It just has the potential to alleviate pain points," he said.
The frequency of pickup and delivery orders is such that it justifies the extra focus, McKinley agreed, noting that loyalty customers come twice as much and text customers three times as much as other customers.
McKinley said it's important to know if the convenience experience continues beyond the digital order in the restaurant.
Data management
Third party partners have also been helpful in organizing data, the panelists agreed.
"How do I get it, how do I organize it, and how do I use it in a way that's meaningful to drive my business?" McKinley asked. The company wants to know, for instance, which customers in a certain market wanted to eat meatballs.
To organize data in a way that will maximize its use, Menis suggested writing down the questions you are hoping to answer.
Here again is an area where digital tools can be invaluable.
"We see the world from a slightly different lense," Kemp said, speaking from the technology provider's perspective. "We're seeing the way a customer behaves across multiple restaurants. We're able to tell you things such as share of the neighborhood or who you might be sharing customers with."
The restaurant has to consider not only how the third party meets the consumer, but how it fits into the company's data architecture, Menis said. He said his company evaluates every prospective third party partner from a consumer perspective, an operations perspective and a financial perspective.
Key metrics
Such tools can also provide insight about the profitability of incremental sales, which the panelists agreed is important. "Am I driving incremental occasions and not just cannibalized occasions?" McKinley asked, noting that the goal is to drive visits that would not have otherwise occurred.
Kane said in the U.K. a discount is offered on orders after a certain time of day. "What is the ‘tipping point' to get somebody in the door and make them loyal?" she asked.
Menis said his company has found restaurant openings are good occasions to promote loyalty programs. They also have digital only specials. Having a top selling item available digital only for a week helped drive digital sign ups, he said.
A key metric for promotions is repeat business, Menis said.
Physical adjustments
Physical adjustments are also needed to accommodate carry-out business. Making the pickup experience enjoyable requires installing shelving in established restaurants, Menis said.
McKinley said some restaurants are using QR enabled warming "lockers" for pizza pickups so customers don't have to wait in line for orders to enhance the convenience of the carry out experience from digital to in-store, and it is something her company is exploring.
Understanding the customer
The carry-out business has also helped some restaurants understand their customers better.
Chopt Creative Salad Co., which has 60 units on the East Coast, was surprised to learn that pickup was just as popular at stores in busy, urban environments as in suburban ones with ample parking, said Menis.
"The thing that's been most surprising to us is we've seen the (pickup) growth across all of our restaurants," Menis said. He said pickup gives the customer a great sense of control. "They have an opportunity to make sure the order was actually correct at that time," he said.
Interdepartmental cooperation needed
The panelists agreed that integrating carryout requires more cooperation between marketing and operations.
"The decision on one front is affecting the other," Menis said. "The power of collaboration is more and more important these days. You're trying to solve the overarching customer journey as opposed to just figuring out what is a promotion."
"You have to make sure that your operational setup is able to accommodate," Kane said.
Marketers are often so anxious to introduce new tools that achieving buy in from operations becomes secondary, Kane said.
"Getting that (operations) buy in is so, so important," she said.
When Papa Gino's Pizzeria introduces gamification in the near future as a way to encourage upselling, McKinley envisions a unified effort.
"Everybody (in the company) gets excited and engaged and we all work together," she said. "It all comes down to improving the guest experience."
About Elliot Maras
Elliot Maras is the editor of Kiosk Marketplace and Vending Times. He brings three decades covering unattended retail and commercial foodservice.
Related Media
Subscribe
Get the latest news and resources from QSR Web.
