Food & Beverage
Friendly 'ghosts' breathe new life into Smokey Bones
Tripling the size of your brand's units in the course of a year -- and a pandemic-stricken year at that -- is no easy feat. But casual brand, Smokey Bones, has accomplished just that with the help of a few friendly "ghosts."
October 15, 2020 by S.A. Whitehead — Food Editor, Net World Media Group
The average rate of annual unit growth for a 100-unit restaurant chain is about 3.4 new stores, according to Restaurant Research LLC, but Florida-based Smokey Bones is anything but average. While the pandemic has crippled many casual dining brands, the 61-unit chain is thriving. Since its 2019 creation of two ghost kitchen brands — The Burger Experience and The Wing Experience brands — Smokey Bones has added 122 virtual "units."
Although the spinoffs don't have separate physical structures, they serve customers, who don't necessarily want to dine in anywhere but want the quality of a casual restaurant meal delivered to their doors.
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| Smokey Bones CEO James O'Reilly.(Photo: Smokey Bones) |
Recently, QSRweb met with Smokey Bones CEO James O'Reilly in another kind of "ghost" location, which we've all come to know, but perhaps not necessarily love — the Zoom room. That's where we got a closer look behind the curtain at how all three brands under parent entity, Barbeque Integrated Inc., are faring.
Q: Tell us the geographic reach for your current 61 Smokey Bones restaurant locations and how they have been affected by the pandemic?
A:We're in 16 states, all of which are now open … but when the pandemic hit and all the dining rooms closed, it was a very difficult time for the company We had to reduce our staffing levels in all of our restaurants, and, of course our sales volumes declined as well.
But we pivoted to a completely off-premise operation from a service standpoint and marketing standpoint and slowly recovered and now all of our dining rooms have reopened and we've been able to bring the majority of our people back in, while we're still operating under capacity restrictions.
Q: That was a pretty epic "pivot," but I'm told that it was enabled by a move the company took a few months before the pandemic really slammed into the states last March, correct?
A: Yes, we started our virtual (burger and wing concept) restaurants in 15 locations in November of last year. We have been bullish on the virtual brand concept from the beginning, and made it a part of our strategy to feature items in our (Smokey Bones) menu using virtual brands to profile them better.
When a customer is looking for burgers and wings on an app, they might be looking on their phones and Smokey Bones might not be the first brand they think about for burgers or wings, so creating the virtual brands and offering them as delivery-only concepts of our brick-and-mortar locations, allows us to to profile these excellent products to restaurant customers and to give them a better choice. And right now, we have 122 virtual restaurants operating, which is two virtual brands in each of our 61 restaurants.
"In the case of The Wing Experience, we created a peach-bourbon wing made with peach puree and bourbon barbecue sauce that our customers absolutely love."
-Smokey Bones CEO James O'Reilly
Q: Why did the company gravitate to virtual concepts focused on burgers and wings, as opposed to all the other center-of-the-plate possibilities?
A: Wings and burgers are two of the highest, most popular, most frequently ordered menu items for delivery, but that's on our third-party partners' platforms.
So in discussions with our third-party partners about the virtual restaurant opportunity, we agreed that these were the menu items that are popular with the customers of their platforms and also products that we're very proud of that Smoky Bones can execute extremely well with our restaurant teams. …
We created unique recipes for the virtual brands so that when guests are ordering from the Burger and Wing Experience virtual brands, they'll find products that they cannot find on the Smoky Bones menu. That again benefits both our third-party partners and the virtual brands.
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| Peach Bourbon wings.(Photo: Provided) |
Q: So it would seem one primary obstacle would revolve around awareness and buy-in for the newly launched brands. How are you handling that task?
A: Our third-party partners such, as Uber Eats, are the source of awareness-building for the virtual brands. …We work with Uber Eats to develop promotional ideas, such as discounts or free delivery that Uber Eats offers on its platform to promote the (virtual brands). But we also email out to customers to promote them, as well.
Q: Are you using your current kitchen staff or are you augmenting them in some manner, and have their been any notable growth pains in that area?
A: The growth pains that we've been experiencing at Smoky Bones have been very minimal because the product categories we have chosen to build our virtual restaurants with are product categories our restaurant teams are already very experienced and preparing. …
So for the Smokey Bones restaurant team, the only thing that remains to successfully implement the virtual brands is to provide dedicated packaging for them … and our restaurant teams can implement that very easily.
Q: Regarding your prep lines in the kitchen, how are you funneling orders through to expedite completion for the casual brand along with the two virtual concepts' orders?
A:These products are made very efficiently on our existing lines. The orders appear on the same order-screens in the kitchens and the restaurant teams can tell by the way the orders are presented on those screens whether they are for the Burger or Wing Experience or Smokey Bones. … so the impact on the operation is very minimal. And again, leveraging product categories that our teams have expertise with preparing already, is key to minimizing the impact and preparation.
Q: Are there any synergies the company is realizing between its virtual and brick-and-mortar brands?
A: Yes, there is. There is a symbiotic relationship … in the shared infrastructure between the brands … and ensuring that the overlap between what we're offering in the virtual brands and what we are already are excellent at implementing in Smoky Bones is the key to providing outstanding products and outstanding service to customers.
At the end of the day for a restaurant customer getting their food when they want it, how they want it, exactly as they ordered it, is ultimately the most important thing.
Q: Can you give us some examples of particular menu items that are really registering with customers for the virtual brands.
A: We created a few new unique recipes for each of the virtual brands and in the case of the Wing Experience, we created a peach-bourbon wing made with peach puree and bourbon barbecue sauce that our customers absolutely love. And in the case of the Burger Experience, we created the Big Kahuna burger, which has a slice of grilled pineapple on it that customers love as well.
Q: Finally, since you were previously CEO at the thoroughly quick-service brand, Long John Silvers, I wonder if that QSR leadership experience provided some good preparation for this casual dining brand's entrance into virtual kitchen spin-offs?
A:The QSR learnings that I can apply to the Wing and Burger Experience concepts are rooted in and around the customers for burgers in wings. In many cases, it's really more the QSR customer who is looking for a great burger or great wings.
So, my experience in QSR allows me to bring up all that promotional experience, product innovation experience and brand awareness-building experience into these product categories, which have a lot of QSR customers looking for them and that was very helpful.
About S.A. Whitehead
Pizza Marketplace and QSRweb editor Shelly Whitehead is a former newspaper and TV reporter with an affinity for telling stories about the people and innovative thinking behind great brands.
