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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

mobile apps

Landed Raises $1.4M, Launches App to Make Hiring Simpler for Restaurant Managers

San Francisco, California-based restaurant tech company Landed announced the official launch of its mobile app that connects hourly restaurant and retail workers with potential employers. The company has also raised a $1.4 million seed round led by Javelin Venture Partners, Y Combinator, Palm Drive Capital, with angel investors also participating in the round.

Landed says it uses a combination video interviews and an “intelligent matching algorithm” to match restaurant job candidates with the most relevant employers. Job seekers download the app, and fill out a profile, including a short video recording, which essentially acts as a digital resume. Candidates are evaluated by Landed’s system based on over 50 data points, among them communication skills, body language, and work longevity. Depending on what an employer wants, Landed can prioritize certain data points over others.

On the hiring side, restaurant managers download the Landed app and input their hiring goals like head count, pay rate, and location(s). Much of the hiring process is then automated: the app can automatically schedule interviews, follow up with candidates, and organize potential employees.

Founder Vivian Wang got the inspiration for Landed after years of working in the retail industry, where turnover rates are typically over 100 percent. Restaurant jobs are similar. Restaurants are also under pressure to make their operations as efficient as possible now that the COVID-19 pandemic has decimated the traditional model. Managers of multi-unit chains, in particular, could benefit from a more streamlined hiring process. The tech-driven model Landed offers restaurants is similar to that of ShiftPixy, which also works with large, multi-unit chains.

Landed’s current customer base includes franchisees of Wendy’s, Chick-fil-A, and discount supermarket Grocery Outlet. The app is currently available in seven metro areas: Atlanta, Reno, Dallas-Ft Worth, Scottsdale/Phoenix, Virginia Beach, and Northern and Southern California.

El Pollo Loco Revamps Digital Rewards, Launches GPS-Enables Curbside Pickup

Hopping onboard two major trends in the increasingly digital restaurant biz, chicken chain El Pollo Loco this week announced it is finally launching curbside pickup and a nationwide rewards program via its mobile app. A press release sent to The Spoon notes that the loyalty program officially launched Thursday and the curbside pickup will be available from September 28.

The rewards program revamp, which offers members one point for every $1 spent, comes at a time when restaurants are encouraged to build out their digital properties as off-premises orders continue to be the main lifeline for business. Mobile apps are also a way for chains to keep more of the delivery process, including customer data, under their own roof instead of handing it over to third-party delivery. El Pollo Loco has partnerships with Postmates, DoorDash, and other major third-party delivery services. But it can also, in certain markets, accept and process orders via its own app and website. A stronger loyalty program would potentially drive more customer traffic directly to the chain’s own digital storefront.

Baked into that digital storefront is El Pollo Loco’s new curbside pickup feature, which is GPS enabled. Using the app, customers can order ahead. When they arrive at the restaurant, they get an automatic a notification to check in via the app. A staff member then brings out the order.

Curbside pickup is common nowadays thanks to more off-premises orders and the expectation for restaurants to go as “contactless” as possible. Few, however, offer a tech-enabled approach that truly speeds up the process. For most, customer must still call a phone number to let the restaurant know they’ve arrived. El Pollo Loco’s GPS-equipped system sits somewhere in between said phone call and the more sophisticated approach of Panera, which uses geofencing technology to automatically check a customer in when they arrive.

Both the revamped rewards program and curbside pickup are clearly a play by El Pollo Loco to increase digital sales in the future. Anymore for restaurants, high digital sales are becoming as much of a mandate as social distancing measures, so this is just the start of what we’ll see from El Pollo Loco as it revamps its restaurant experience.

Survey: Drive-Thru Orders and Mobile App Usage at Restaurants Are Up

Consumers are using a mobile app more often than just a few months ago to order restaurant food, according to new survey data from Bluedot and research firm SeeLevel HX.

The survey, based on responses from 1,501 U.S. adults between June 23 and July 2, 2020, found that 50 percent of consumers are using restaurant mobile apps “more often or much more often” than they were before the pandemic, up from 42 percent in April. Meanwhile, 64 percent of respondents said they have downloaded at least one or more new apps to purchase restaurant food, up from 51 percent in April.

The spike makes sense, given the rise in off-premises restaurant formats, the push for so-called “contactless” ordering and payments platforms, and widespread consumer concerns around safety and social distancing. 

The report also examines the popularity of off-premises formats among consumers. The drive-thru is far and away the most popular. Seventy-four percent of respondents said they have visited the drive-thru “the same amount or more often than usual” compared to 43 percent in April. Respondents also named drive-thru the “safest” of the to-go formats, which also include curbside pickup and in-store pickup. 

Responses around both mobile app usage and drive-thru visits are in line with developments by restaurants over the last few months. Chains like Chipotle and Shake Shack are reformatting many of their stores to include drive-thru lanes. In many cases, those lanes are dedicated to customers ordering via the restaurants’ mobile apps. 

In many cases, these drive-thrus are one of the main reasons QSRs have fared much better in terms of sales so far during the pandemic.

All that said, the Bluedot and SeeLevel HX report also suggests that drive-thru lines are still frustratingly slow. Of the consumers surveyed, 81 percent said waiting more than 10 minutes in the drive-thru is too long. If you’ve been to a drive-thru recently, you don’t need data to tell you wait times are stretching far beyond that number oftentimes. 

Cutting down wait time in the drive-thru is an old story that pre-dates the pandemic. Making that particular restaurant format more efficient will continue to be a priority for QSRs going forward. 

Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf Is the Latest Chain to Embrace Direct Delivery

The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf announced today via press release the launch of its newly redesigned mobile app. Among updates to the UX and improvements to the chain’s digital rewards program, the standout feature of the redesign is direct delivery.

As a quick refresher, direct delivery is when a chain can process orders made for delivery directly through its own digital properties (i.e., app and/or website), rather than having to go through a third-party service like DoorDash or Uber Eats. The big upside here is that restaurants pay a lower commission fee to third-party services because DoorDash Et al. are only handling the actual delivery of the food, not the order processing and technical logistics. The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf currently delivers through Postmates to California and Arizona. 

The new app can process delivery orders directly. Other features, according to today’s press release, include an order-ahead menu for pickup orders at physical stores, the ability to scan, earn, and redeem points from the app’s home screen, and more customization capabilities for food and beverage items.

Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf’s app revamp comes at a time when digital properties are the main channel through which most restaurants are connecting with customers. A rise in COVID cases coupled with extremely uncertain economics has forced restaurants to rethink their approach to the digital realm. Keeping a customer (and their data) entrenched firmly in a chain’s own ecosystem is becoming increasingly important, and is one of the drivers behind this adoption of direct delivery. Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf is the latest brand to adopt this strategy, but plenty others already offer a similar approach to delivery. Panda Express recently announced the launch of its own delivery service. Outback Steakhouse and Wendy’s offered direct delivery long before the pandemic.

The move towards direct delivery doesn’t just mean potentially better margins for restaurants. It’s also fueling the growth of a specific area of restaurant tech, namely delivery integrators that sell out-of-the-box tech solutions to help restaurants bring some functions around delivery back in house.

Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf did not say in the press release if it has redesigned its app completely in-house or if it used technology from a third party like ShiftPixy. But it’s entrance into the direct delivery space is a sign that we’ll see similar moves from other regional chains in the near future as the dining room reopening remain in a constant state of flux.

Chipotle Forges New Ways to Reach Digital Customers With Its Concierge Bot

The pandemic hasn’t done much to slow Chipotle’s digital business, which just had its best quarter ever in terms of sales. In the wake of that, the chain has steadily continued releasing new features to its app and this week brought a few more, including the launch of the Chipotle app in Canada and yet-more features for all users of the chain’s mobile app.

The standout of those new features is Pepper, a so-called Concierge Bot, which customers can use via Facebook Messenger to order food. Once a user selects the “message us” button on Chipotle’s Facebook page and gives Pepper their location, the bot will pick the nearest available Chipotle store and walk the customer through the order process. According to a press release sent to The Spoon, that process is supposed to mirror Chipotle’s in-restaurant make line, where guests move down the assembly line specifying which ingredients they want and how much of each to include. Alternatively, customers can use a natural language option and simply describe what they want to Pepper. Guests can pay directly through Pepper.

This new channel for customers to order, pay, and receive their meals introduces Chipotle’s mobile order ecosystem to yet-another potential digital audience. And while Facebook is a third-party platform, orders placed via Pepper get funneled through Chipotle’s own Page, allowing the restaurant to directly interact with those customers. Chipotle said in its release today that this new feature is meant to make “online ordering easier and more convenient for fans.” But I’ll wager it’s as much about taking back control of customer relationships (and data) as it is about giving Facebook diehards an easy way to order burritos.

The addition of Pepper also makes Chipotle the latest big-name restaurant chain to start reeling certain parts of delivery and digital ordering back under its own roof. For the last few years, managing the order-pay-dropoff process for off-premises orders has largely been the territory of third-party services like DoorDash and Uber Eats. But in the last few months, that’s started to change. Several chains, including Panera and Bloomin’ Brands restaurants, use hybrid delivery strategies, where third parties only handle a piece of the delivery operation. In some cases that’s the technical infrastructure; in others, it’s supplying drivers for the last mile. Others, notably Panda Express this week, have launched their own in-house delivery stack that manages the entire process, from ordering to dropping off.

For a deep-pocketed brand like Chipotle, this business of slowly shifting off-premises in-house is probably most about getting back control of customer relationships. The pandemic has forced restaurants to rely a whole lot more on their digital properties. Through those properties, brands must be able to offer contactless ordering and payment functionalities, and they must be able to clearly communicate with customers about those features. That’s a little tough to do if your entire customer base resides on a third-party platform like DoorDash that’s merely telling you to make the food. As one industry executive noted when we spoke a couple months back, restaurants ” need to rethink how they’re connecting digitally with their customers.”

Other announcements from Chipotle this week also emphasized Chipotle’s digital strategy and how it wants to connect with its customers in a post-pandemic restaurant industry. As well as Pepper, Chipotle also released a new group-ordering feature where multiple people can hop on the same order and everyone has the ability to track their food. 

For all digital orders placed via the Chipotle app, guests will be able to round up their order total to the next highest dollar amount and donate the extra to “organizations advocating against issues like systematic racism and inequality,” according to the press release. Chipotle will kick this program off with donations to the National Urban League.

And, as mentioned above, Canadian Chipotle fans can now use the Chipotle app or order food via Chipotle.ca, Uber Eats, and DoorDash.

Chipotle’s business didn’t suffer terribly during shelter-in-place orders, largely because so much of the chain’s work over the last two years has been around developing an insanely ambitious digital strategy. This week’s news suggests the company isn’t planning to rest on its laurels anytime soon.

Swipe Right for Double Guac, Chipotle Just Created a Virtual Assembly Line (Other Restaurants Should Too)

As restaurants slowly reopen with reduced capacity and more emphasis on takeout orders, one thing we will see more of is restaurant chains using tech to better customize meals purchased through mobile apps. So it should come as little surprise that Chipotle, a company known for its digital-forward business model, just released a bunch of new customization features to its app that effectively recreate the assembly line experience customers get in brick-and-mortar locations. The company announced today its Complete Customization Chipotle app, which lets customers get pretty granular about ingredient preferences and portions in their meals.

To be clear, Chipotle hasn’t released a brand-new app; all updates are to its existing one, and nothing’s changed about the way customers sign in and access menus, loyalty points, etc. Changes are more about the way customers select and customize their meals in the digital format, which Chipotle seems to hope will mirror the real world experience as much as possible.

Chipotle’s in-store format has always involved customers moving down an assembly line-style setup, dictating to staff what they want in their burritos and/or bowls, how much they want of each ingredient, and any other special instructions. The setup has always made it super-easy to customize a meal — at least, so long as you ordered that meal in the store. Up to now, the Chipotle app has been somewhat limited in terms of customization.

The features released today change that. Customers can now swipe left and right in the app to designate how much of each ingredient they want with their meal. For example, meat portions can be single or double and ingredients like salsa and sour cream can be “normal,” “light,” or “heavy.” In general, the app is now just easier to use.

While on the surface these might appear to be small changes, they actually suggest how certain restaurant types could survive in a post-pandemic restaurant industry. Per state reopening guidelines, person-to-person contact should be minimal as possible, and long lines of people waiting for their turn at the assembly station will be frowned upon if not outright banned. Offering the digital equivalent will let customers order exactly what they’re used to getting from the chain while still satisfying the requirements for social distancing.

Digitizing the assembly line is also a way for Chipotle to drive more orders to its app, which is important for a company with a future tightly tied to its digital business. That digital business surpassed $1 billion in sales in 2019, and Chipotle has also recently introduced new store formats (walk-up locations, drive-thru lanes) that lend themselves to digital and off-premises ordering. The pandemic hasn’t slowed that growth. Chipotle reported its highest quarterly level ever for digital sales on its Q1 2020 investor call in April. “As people started to implement social distancing, we moved swiftly by driving further investments toward digital and delivery designed to reduce friction, while increasing convenient access,” Chipotle CEO Brian Niccol said on the call. 

Advanced customization tools at QSRs and fast-casual restaurants have been a priority for some time now, with some chains — McDonald’s, Starbucks — implementing AI tools to improve personalization. But using customization to recreate in-store experiences that might otherwise go the wayside could be where customization proves itself most valuable. It’s easy to imagine chains like Subway or Blaze Pizza increasing the customization capabilities of their apps to recreate their own assembly line experiences. It might even breathe a little life back into the buffet, which is dying a painful death at the moment, by making the self-service aspect of that format virtual.

All those things cost money, which restaurants don’t have a lot of right now. Any mobile restaurant app is expensive to build in house; including sophisticated customization tools would be prohibitive for most businesses, which creates an opportunity for restaurant tech companies looking to prove their own worth in these uncertain times.