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Franchisees Answer Pandemic Challenges With Innovation in Delivery and Takeout
There are two ways to take a sucker punch: You can stay down for the count, or you can pull yourself up and swing back.
Buffalo Wild Wings® franchisees took a tough blow from the coronavirus pandemic. Shuttered dining rooms meant switching all food sales to takeout and delivery. For quick-service restaurants, with established drive-thru lanes and staff well-trained on the procedures for serving guests that way, a closed dining room does not have the same impact as it does for a casual dining brand. For restaurants like BWW®, well, POW!
B-Dubs® franchisees are not waiting for the ref to count them out, however. Organizations like High 5 Hospitality, Potters Wings, Spark Restaurants and World Wide Wings are back on their feet and throwing counterpunches with innovations that not only answered the challenges their organizations faced in transitioning to takeout and delivery sales, but also have the potential to stick around when things eventually return to normal.
Early this summer, Potters Wings and franchisee Brian Jordan, with seven BWW locations in Alabama and Mississippi, made headlines by partnering with startup company Deuce Drone, based in Mobile, Alabama, to begin making food deliveries by drone.
“I believe it is the future of last-mile delivery, and it gives us the ability to be the last ones to handle the product before it gets to our guests,” Jordan said. “It is a contactless form of delivery, which COVID-19 has shown us the importance
Limited delivery of orders by drones from two BWW restaurants in Alabama is scheduled to begin in the fall.
by Sean Ireland
of. Food will get to guests quicker, hotter or colder – depending, it will be less expensive, and the cool factor is undeniable.”
When ready, the system will allow a BWW team member to package a completed order into a box that is then loaded into a port inside or outside the restaurant. The port system does the rest, with loading and takeoff occurring automatically. Drones are guided by a pad displaying a large QR code at the destination.
Testing was done in August, and plans are for the first deliveries to be made in the next few months from Potters Wings’ Foley and Mobile, Alabama, Buffalo Wild Wings locations. “We will then add to our other locations as the service becomes available in those markets,” Jordan said.
While perhaps not as high-flying as delivering food by air, other franchisees have been no less energetic about devising ways to improve their systems for safely providing food to customers outside of dining rooms.
“The biosecurity measures and the new threats to our customers’ and employees’ health have catalyzed innovation in our Buffalo Wild Wings units around Houston,” said Mick Rosckowff, chief operating officer of Spark Restaurants, which owns eight BWWs. “Our teams are thinking day and night of new ways to improve takeout, curbside, delivery and offer the best service while keeping our customers and our workers safe during these uncertain times.”
The group’s team at its sports bar in Sugarland, Texas, quickly developed a system to manage orders, ensure safety and solve other problems with customer pickup that developed when its business became exclusively takeout. Particularly after 6 p.m., the restaurant was swarmed with guests coming to pick up orders at the tent that it set up outside. Social distancing was difficult, and there were also safety concerns about large numbers of pedestrians mixing with cars entering and leaving the parking lot.
The team invented new job descriptions and organized itself so that all the new roles were filled. New positions included: Web Outside Names, Outside Names, Caller, Runner, Payment Runner, Inside Names, Phones/Tablets, Bagger and Side Bagger. The process starts on the sidewalk near the front of the building, which is roped to make two lines: one for web orders and one for call-ahead orders. The outside name employee gets the names and phone numbers of five guests at a time and gives them to the runner, who will deliver them to the inside name employee. Once the orders are ready, the runners call the guests to come back and pick up the orders.
“This way, guests can park anywhere they want, and our runners don’t have to walk around the whole parking lot to find them. It also limits how many people are in the tent at a time,” Rosckowff said.
Inside the kitchen, the baggers manage tickets. They give the heart of the house team the tickets 20 to 30 minutes before the order is due. If a customer arrives early, the bagger pushes the ticket so it can be made earlier.
To avoid infection risks during money handling, call-ahead and walk-in guests give payment to the outside name employee, who requests a payment runner. Guests are given a small card to show that they are making payment as they wait at the tent. Runners bring receipts back to the guests, who go back to their cars and are called when their orders are ready.
“The system is designed to make the customer experience the easiest, fastest and most comfortable possible while eliminating contagion risks in the process,” Rosckowff said. “Spark is proud to have employees like these, and we congratulate them for the great effort and such fantastic ideas. Our goal is to always be in front of trends in the industry, and these initiatives are the ones that allow us to stay one step ahead.”
BWW franchisee Potters Wings LLC and Alabama grocer Rouses Markets tested drone delivery of food in August.
Likewise, the eight restaurants of High 5 Hospitality, located in Delaware and Maryland, had to build out new systems to handle the sudden shift. “We utilized sections of our dining room for staging and social distancing. We got really good at takeout,” said franchisee Bobby Pancake. “We found ways to make our expo areas more efficient for to-go food and, of course, added additional staffing. As of mid-August, we are still trending north of 55% takeout.”
At World Wide Wings, with 67 locations in seven states across the country, the story is similar. “Our locations have set up streamlined pick-up operations, including separating parties by order type and encouraging the use of our mobile app for contactless payment and ordering options,” said Jimmy Calo, a district manager for the company in California. “These focuses have allowed our guests to complete orders and payments at a faster rate while bypassing any concerns they might have regarding social distancing and cash handling while ordering.”
The brand itself is also focusing on carryout operations. In May, Buffalo Wild Wings opened a new concept called Buffalo Wild Wings Go, a new scaleddown to-go format in 1,800 square feet in a location near its Atlanta headquarters. The outlet has a pared-down menu with wings, tenders, fries, tater tots, fried pickles, onion rings and cheese curds. It has heated lockers from which customers can pick up orders without interacting with an employee.
It does not offer beer or other alcoholic beverages. For some of the franchisee groups, however, alcohol sales have played an important part in their success with carryout and delivery. Many municipalities around the country relaxed restrictions for restaurants on off-premise sales, and World Wide Wings made an aggressive push to offer bottled and draft beer to go. “Our locations were able to quickly acquire the necessary permits to begin takeout alcohol sales within days of ending dine-in operations,” Calo said. “Our locations have seen to-go beer sales be wildly popular. Our franchise has promoted growler sales and six-pack beer sales for $9.99, making it an easy sale for our guests.”
High 5 Hospitality found that alcohol sales did not affect its restaurants as significantly, generating less than $1,000 per month in sales, according to Pancake, but it has experienced what he called “phenomenal” online ordering, with plenty of potential to grow in this area.
“Our brand has found huge success with the use of online and mobile app ordering and payments,” Calo agreed. “It has allowed our guests to order and pay while making social distancing a non-issue. The technology has also given our brand a venue to reach out to our guests with specials, announcements and promotions via push notifications in the mobile app.”
“As trends continue to be strong in delivery and takeout, we will continue to drive promotions and mobile specials to encourage our guests to order with us,” Calo said. “Free delivery agreements with third-party services and additional mobile paying options are all initiatives we continue to explore.” S
