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Fatburger

April 26, 2020

‘Make Technology Your Friend’ and Other Advice on Reopening a Restaurant

One of the big discussion topics this week at The Spoon has been around the reopening of restaurant dining rooms. When will it happen? How will it happen? Will anyone even want to go out to eat?

Answers will be ongoing and, like everything else in the last six weeks, will probably change regularly. And here’s one more to add to the mix: What do restaurants need to do to prepare for as smooth a reopening as they can possibly accomplish?

I’ll answer that with a line from The National Restaurant Association’s newly released “Reopening Guidance” report: “Make technology your friend.”

Fear not. This isn’t the part where I tell you to hedge all your bets on a piece of software (or hardware) and pile on a bunch of extra solutions your already trimmed-down staff will have to learn. Instead, consider which tools will help your business communicate as directly and efficiently as possible with guests about what to expect at a reopening.

As The Association says:

“Contactless payment systems, automated ordering systems, mobile ordering apps, website updates and simple texts can help you to communicate and conduct business with reduced need for close contact. As you begin to reopen, keep communicating with customers (your hours, menu items, reservations, etc.), and help promote your social distancing and safety efforts.”

Some of these will be easier to implement than others. I was just talking to a family member of mine who is as we speak trying to set up contactless payments for her hospitality company, and she is definitely losing sleep over it. In a separate conversation, someone on the task force in charge of Georgia’s restaurant reopenings admitted that contactless payments will be one of the more difficult things to put in place for restaurants. 

But this task force person also said restaurants should be “embracing technology wherever [they] can.” Looking again at The Association’s guidelines, there are simpler tech tools restaurants can use to communicate reopen dates and any accompanying changes. Consider email updates or social media posts to tell folks about adjusted hours, new policies (e.g., “make a reservation”), and safety protocols. Use the humble text message to notify guests when their table is ready. And talk to your existing restaurant tech providers, like your POS vendor, to see if they can help you set up some of the more complicated tools like contactless payments and mobile ordering.

At the end of the day, tech should be the means to the end, not the end itself. Bear that in mind as you explore ways to integrate it into your reopen strategy, whenever that happens to be.

Maybe We Should All Look to Fat Brands to Figure Out a Ghost Kitchen Strategy

Ghost kitchens are not top of the priority list for restaurants right now, but as demand for off-premises orders goes up, they will be. As we’ve discussed before, restaurants need a certain (and rather high) level of demand to justify using a full-on ghost kitchen facility. Otherwise the economics don’t make sense.

That said, a good ghost kitchen strategy can actually start right in your own kitchen before growing into the kind that needs a dedicated facility to function.

Look at Fat Brands. This week, the company, which owns Fatburger, Hurricane Grill & Wings, Elevation Burger, and other chains, announced its first-ever ghost kitchen facility in Chicago. The location, done in partnership with Epic Kitchens, will be for delivery-only orders, and will house a number of virtual restaurants.

Fat Brands was doing ghost kitchens before they inked a deal with Epic, though. Last year, the company started using Fat Burger locations to double as mini-ghost kitchens for the company’s sister brands. Customers on one side of the country could suddenly order from the menu of Fat Brand restaurants historically only available on the other side. Doing so let the company test the waters, so to speak, with virtual restaurants and ghost kitchens before signing a more official deal with a dedicated space.

Starting small and in the confines of your own restaurants’ kitchens is definitely a lower-risk way of trying out a ghost kitchen. Restaurants can test and learn about some of the operational differences between off-premises and in-dining-room models, and they’re not locked into a long-term contract if the plan proves unfruitful. Speaking of which, in-house ghost kitchens are also a way to gauge just how much off-premises demand you really have from your customers and project whether that will grow enough to warrant a bigger operation, as Fat Brands has done.

The pandemic’s effect on the restaurant industry will almost certainly ensure demand for off-premises orders keeps rising, even after dining rooms reopen. Even as you’re trying to keep the lights on, consider whether you’re on the path towards using a ghost kitchen, and if taking the first small steps in your own kitchen makes sense as a starting point.

More Notable Restaurant News

Low-tech drive-thru innovation: Today, Taco Bell’s Southern California HQ is doubling as a giant drive-thru for large trucks carrying essential items across the supply chain. The chain is giving away free meals to truckers, firefighters, emergency medical technicians, and others driving vehicles that wouldn’t fit through a normal drive-thru lane.

QSR, meet the sewing machine: Employees of quick-service chain Raising Cane are now sewing masks to donate to hospitals while dining rooms remain closed. While the chain’s drive-thrus remain open, at sit-down locations, it is paying its staff to learn how to sew these masks instead of just furloughing people. Raising Cane donated 600 masks after the first week of production and said it expects to crank out even more “as Crewmembers get more proficient.”  

Big chains aren’t necessarily reopening. States like Georgia and South Carolina are set to reopen their economies next week, but not everyone is on board. Among restaurant brands, TGI Fridays and Starbucks are not necessarily ready to fling back their doors immediately. Instead, their reopening plans will factor in not just state/local laws but also infection rates and their own market analysis. So while all this talk of reopening is exciting, it realistically will be a long while yet before many food businesses turn the lights back on in the dining room. 

September 25, 2019

The Food Tech Show: Is The Smart Kitchen Dumb? Discuss.

The Spoon gang got together this week to discuss some of the stories we’re reading and writing about.

In this episode of The Food Tech Show, Chris, Jenn and myself talk about:

  • Fatburger’s ghost kitchen initiative
  • Why sports stadiums are becoming food tech showcases
  • Joe Ray’s piece in Wired about how smart kitchen are dumb
  • Today’s press conference at Amazon about all-things Alexa

That it. As always, take a listen to this episode on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also download it directly to your device or just click play below.

http://media.adknit.com/a/1/33/smart-kitchen-show/qrdnj8.3-2.mp3

 

September 24, 2019

Fatburger Is Turning Los Angeles Stores Into Ghost Kitchens for Its Sister Brand

Southern California QSR chain Fatburger is turning 15 of its Los Angeles locations into ghost kitchens for Hurricane Grill & Wings, one of its sister brands, according to a post this week from Nation’s Restaurant News. Both chains are owned by Los Angeles-based restaurant company FAT Brands.

Hurricane Grill & Wings has restaurant locations across Florida as well as in New York, New Jersey, and a handful of other states. A store for Chula Vista, CA is in the works, but at present, the chain has no locations in operation in the state of California. However, thanks to Fatburger’s newly launched ghost kitchens, customers in Los Angeles will be able to access the Hurricane menu when ordering for delivery.

The limited version of Hurricane’s menu will feature the chain’s wings as well as a few other items like onion rings, fries, and soft drinks. The menu will only be available for delivery customers who order via the usual suspects of third-party delivery: Grubhub, Uber Eats, Postmates, and DoorDash.

To be clear: The virtual Hurricane restaurants aren’t displacing those Fatburger locations. Rather, Fatburger’s kitchens will do double duty, with cooks trained to make food from both menus.

Like any other ghost kitchen, Hurricane’s will be a completely unseen operation. There’s no dining room involved — customers who eat in at Fatburger locations doubling as ghost kitchens will not be able to order off the Hurricane menu, which, as mentioned above, will be available solely through third-party delivery channels.

For a restaurant company trying to grow multiple brands at once, a move like FAT Brands’ is a smart play towards enticing new customers who might be fans of one restaurant chain but wouldn’t otherwise be exposed to another. Turning existing real estate into a ghost kitchen for another brand is a way to expose customers to more of those choices without incurring the high costs and thin margins of a full restaurant location that includes a dining room.

And in a restaurant business where delivery is becoming increasingly mandatory, enticing customers to try a new brand through delivery also potentially increases a business’s off-premise sales — something that would not only make investors happy during earnings calls, but could also give a brand more power negotiating commission fees with third-party delivery services.

According to NRN, FAT Brands wants to expand ghost kitchens for the Hurricane chain to 12 more Fatburger locations in the fourth quarter, and eventually apply the concept across its entire brand portfolio.

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