Adam Terranova, senior director of development for WOWorks, Jeremy Theisen, chief development and improvement officer at Craveworthy Manufacturers and Annie Tselikis, director for advertising and franchise gross sales for Cousins Major Lobster, focus on menu optimization to hurry up service.
From left, Adam Terranova with WOWorks, Jeremy Theisen with Craveworthy Manufacturers, Annie Tselikis with Cousins Major Lobster and Tanvir Bhangoo with Toast focus on optimizing the menu to hurry up service. Picture: Networld Media Group
We will all identify a number of massive chains with big menus that promote every thing from hen tenders to shellfish and fillets. But when freshness and high quality are what eating places search, can these eating places genuinely be serving top-notch meals?
Throughout a breakout session titled “Optimizing Your Menu to Velocity Up Service” on the Quick Informal Govt Summit in Louisville, Kentucky, held Oct. 8-10, a panel mentioned how menu planning and strategizing — with a lift from know-how — assist streamline the ordering course of and drive ROI for manufacturers. The summit was sponsored by platinum sponsors Botrista, SUPERORDER, Evocalize, Upside, Lunchbox and Workstream.
The panel session, sponsored by Toast, featured audio system Adam Terranova, senior director of development for WOWorks, Jeremy Theisen, chief development and improvement officer at Craveworthy Manufacturers and Annie Tselikis, director for advertising and franchise gross sales for Cousins Major Lobster. Tanvir Bhangoo, VP, enterprise options for Toast, served as moderator for the occasion.
How menu optimization impacts manufacturers
Bahngoo requested the panel to debate what menu optimization is and the way it impacts the panelists’ manufacturers.
Terranova stated “as a lot as you wish to, you’ll be able to’t at all times optimize the in-store expertise in a digital format.” He added menus should be optimized for velocity of service each for the visitor and for the worker who’s accountable for making the order.
Terranova stated his firm owns six manufacturers and orderes 9 completely different lettuce varieties at one time. Going by way of and decreasing the variety of SKUs a model has is one strategy to optimize the menu.
Thiesen stated his tasks embody every thing from new franchise improvement to tech and advertising. “We run our personal digital manufacturers out of our personal eating places,” he stated, so having a POS system that permits the model to construct its menu digitally is vital. “The immeasurable is the worker satisfaction if you get the tech proper within the restaurant,” he added.
For Tselikis, who’s firm owns Cousins Maine Lobster, which primarily operates out of meals vans, the idea drives the menu “as a result of we’re delivering actually high-quality seafood at an reasonably priced value level in an accessible nature,” she stated. The model is primarily a heat-and-serve idea targeted on high quality meals. The brick-and-mortar shops serve extra objects, resembling fried clams, than are discovered on the meals vans as a result of it is too labor intensive and easily takes up an excessive amount of house.
However lobster rolls are straightforward to arrange and serve on a meals truck and supplies a superb worth for the visitor, she stated.
From the shopper perspective
Bhangoo requested the panelists how they’re catering to prospects on the lookout for comfort whereas on the identical time offering a top quality expertise and driving ROI.
Theisen stated it begins with manufacturers’ know-how companions. “Your POS is your basis, and if you aren’t getting that proper, nothing else issues,” he cautioned, including Craveworthy Manufacturers has constructed good relationships with its digital order and loyalty companions, and the corporate continues to be studying in regards to the kiosks in a few of its eating places.
“It comes again to not solely the patron however your workers,” he stated. “Within the shops the place you see the brand new applied sciences we’re rolling out, it is night time and day for the staff.” The eating places give attention to recent meals, and decreasing cook dinner occasions comes right down to how briskly these orders print out behind the eating places. Simply enhancing the order of the modifiers for the manufacturers’ construct strains make a distinction.
When it comes to the way in which Cousins Maine Lobster reaches its prospects, because the eating places are on wheels, they will go the place the shoppers are, Tselikis stated.
“We’re about to go to the shopper and ship what they’re on the lookout for, and a few of these occasions — if we’re at a extremely high-volume occasion — the road may find yourself being an hour lengthy or extra for the truck,” she added. “So with the app, what we’re actually providing our shoppers is comfort.”
With solely three or 4 workers in a truck, effectivity and optimization are paramount.
Terranova stated it boils right down to the distinction between personalization and customization. In-store, its buyer expertise. For example, you begin with a bowl at many manufacturers, then put in a base and a protein. “That is personalised,” he stated. “That is one thing made only for you.”
With digital ordering and digital optimization, it is about velocity and comfort. Individuals who order on-line or by way of apps do not take the time to personalize their orders, however do take the time to customise them. “On a line in a fast-casual atmosphere, it is simple to make that customized salad since you’re seeing every thing. You are it,” Terranova stated, “and making your personal selections in actual time. Digital codecs are just a little extra (about) velocity and comfort.”
Optimizing workers
Bhangoo requested what the panelists’ manufacturers do this helps workers and helps drive the efficiencies as a part of menu optimization.
Tselikis stated her firm focuses closely on coaching, together with coaching franchisees as they’re coming into the system, together with a robust onboarding program and a 12- to 13-day coaching at one of many model’s company areas for the franchise proprietor and/or the overall supervisor. Company officers additionally go to the cities the place new eating places are opening to coach the staff on the retailer stage.
“We focus at first on coaching after which sustaining that relationship,” Tselikis stated, “and persevering with to replace them if we’re introducing new merchandise, ensuring that they really feel assured of their operations as a result of we … perceive and acknowledge that if they don’t seem to be profitable our entire system just isn’t profitable.”
Theisen stated his groups are continuously within the eating places. “Between our regionals (managers), our GMs, our coaching groups — they’re at all times within the eating places. We do not have workplace workers,” he stated.
Craveworthy Manufacturers can be rolling out a company coaching program that launches at first of subsequent yr. Whereas coaching is vital to the model so, too, is having a pacesetter that’s operator targeted. “The expectation is ‘you are within the retailer,'” Theisen stated. “There is no higher place to be taught than within the retailer.”
Terranova stated workers are on the coronary heart of WOWorks, however the definition of coaching differs by model.
“Is coaching studying? Is it memorization, or simply following a course of?” he requested. “I believe there’s be just a little however extra of a shift now in coaching the place it was once plenty of memorization … Now, within the day and age we reside in the place there’s personalization and customization, everyone needs one thing ‘for me.’ It is extra about following the method.”
The Quick Informal Govt Summit is run by Networld Media Group, publishers of Fastcasual.com, QSRweb and Pizza Market. The corporate’s subsequent occasion is the Self-Service Innovation Summit being held Dec. 4-6 in Miami, Florida.
Mandy Wolf Detwiler is the managing editor at Networld Media Group and the positioning editor for PizzaMarketplace.com and QSRweb.com. She has greater than 20 years’ expertise overlaying meals, individuals and locations.
An award-winning print journalist, Mandy brings greater than 20 years’ expertise to Networld Media Group. She has spent almost 20 years overlaying the pizza trade, from impartial pizzerias to multi-unit chains and each dimension enterprise in between. Mandy has been featured on the Meals Community and has gained quite a few awards for her protection of the restaurant trade. She has an insatiable urge for food for studying, and might let you know the place to seek out one of the best slices within the nation after spending 15 years touring and consuming pizza for a dwelling.
