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The Spoon

Daily news and analysis about the food tech revolution

Tender Greens

Chick-fil-A Goes Cashless in Some States, Raises Questions About the Model

Chick-fil-A restaurants in Florida, Indiana, Georgia, Virginia, and Maryland have pivoted to a cashless business model, according to Restaurant Dive. The switch is an effort to stop the spread of coronavirus as Chick-fil-A continues to operate takeout, delivery, and drive-thru and dining rooms remain shuttered.

The move also reignites the debate around cashless business models. On the one hand, an all-digital payment model makes for more precise accounting and safer places to work (you can’t rob a handheld scanner like you can a til.) The other side of the argument is that cashless models discriminate against the millions of underbanked and unbanked individuals who may not have a checking account and need to use cash for their transactions. Some places have outright banned the model, among them NYC, Philadelphia, and the entire state of New Jersey.

That was pre-pandemic, though. In recent weeks, other restaurants besides Chick-fil-A have also moved to cashless models in response to COVID-19, including the Castellucci Hospitality Group, which operates several restaurants in the Atlanta, GA area, and the Tender Greens chain.

Prior to the pandemic, the argument over cashless business seemed fairly cut and dry: the benefits of the model (speed, convenience) didn’t outweigh the downsides (classism).

But no one needs a crystal ball to understand that this global health crisis we’re in will permanently change many of our shopping and eating habits away from the house. Even when restaurant dining rooms open again, it’s likely that tables will be spaced much farther apart, cleaning and sanitizing standards will be twice as rigorous (and they were already pretty rigorous), and large restaurant chains will implement other ways of convincing customers they can order safely. Contactless delivery is already here to stay. It’s not difficult to imagine cashless payments will also stick around in some states — though perhaps not without great debate.

Of course, swiping a debit card or paying with a mobile phone won’t ensure a completely germ-free experience, which is why we may see a lot more chains pushing harder for customers to use their mobile apps. On Chick-fil-A’s website, for example, customers are “encouraged to utilize mobile ordering and mobile payment through the Chick-fil-A app.” We may also see brands start to funnel more money into more robust mobile platforms that reward customers for ordering and paying through the app, much like Starbucks does.

None of that solves the fundamental problem with cashless payments, and not even a global pandemic will magically make it possible for millions of people to get bank accounts. Even so, the current situation we’re in may shift the weight of this particular debate in the coming months, for better and for worse. 

Delivery Is Making These Restaurants Literally Redesign the Way They Do Business

As the country’s appetite for food delivery grows and the market inches towards a projected $15.9 billion by 2020, restaurants are under pressure to adapt.

More and more, that means altering the physical restaurant space so it can better accommodate this influx of new orders. Extra meals require extra bodies to cook and package the food, after all, not to mention extra space for third-party devices, and somewhere to put completed orders waiting to be picked up by a delivery driver.

It’s wishful thinking to believe that a food delivery industry standard will emerge, since every business has its own unique space — and therefore, its own unique needs. Instead, restaurants are trying out different approaches; some on a large scale, some on a smaller one. A handful of promising ones have emerged when it comes to creatively solving the space issue.

For those with room to expand, creating a separate entrance and/or delivery area is one option.

Cheddar’s Scratch Kitchen just opened a location in Ft. Worth, TX that includes “Cheddar’s first dedicated carry-out area.” It’s close to the kitchen but separate from the main dining room and has its own entrance with direct access to the parking lot. For a Grubhub or UberEats driver, this is a potentially huge timesaver, as picking up an order no longer involves weaving through crowds around the bar and flagging down an employee’s attention.

Velvet Taco conceptualized a separate entrance for to-go orders long before the delivery boom went off. The Dallas, TX-based chain offers its famed “backdoor chicken” order, where customers stroll up to the back door, hand over $20, and get a bag of goodies in return, rotisserie chicken and tortillas included. Adjusting for more delivery orders was just a matter of routing them along the same path. Third-party services (Velvet Taco works with several of the usual suspects) collect orders at the back door of the chain’s Austin, TX location. Meanwhile, a brand-new Dallas, TX location also includes a pickup window that can be accessed via a dedicated parking lot.

If a second door isn’t an option, there are still plenty of ways to work with space inside the restaurant’s four walls.

Culiver City, CA-based Tender Greens divides its customers into two lines: one for walk-ins, one for delivery and order-ahead takeout. That logic applies to the kitchen as well, where cooks are split into two separate lines so those prepping in-house orders aren’t bogged down by the number of tickets for delivery. At the chain’s El Segundo, CA location, even the furniture pulls double duty: a bartop functions by day as a counter for preparing to-go orders, then becomes communal seating for sit-down customers. Ditto for Tender Greens’ flagship NYC location at Union Square, which features 14-foot shelves, separate from the dining room, where third-party delivery services can grab their designated orders and go (a nearby area provides the same convenience for customers picking up food).

Some restaurants are scrapping dining room altogether. Enter the ghost kitchen, the cloud kitchen, or whatever you want to call it. These establishments operate with delivery-only models, where there’s no front of house and cooks serve up orders solely for delivery drivers to pick up.

The Green Summit Group gets a lot of press in this space for its commissary kitchens in NYC and Chicago, which work exclusively with Grubhub. These guys basically run multiple “restaurants” whose operations are housed in the same kitchen and whose food is cooked by the same chefs.

There’s an economical attraction to ghost kitchens, of course. Those using ghost kitchens don’t have to worry about buying equipment, hiring a new staff for every new location, or even providing simple things like cutlery and tablecloths. Businesses who can’t, or don’t want to, deal with these elements or lock themselves into a 10-year lease and buy their own equipment can also look to folks like Kitchen United, who operates a shared kitchen space available for hourly or monthly rent which can house up to 15 restaurant operations. “When a restaurant operator comes to a KU kitchen, they get a virtual restaurant solution,” Kitchen United CEO, Jim Collins told Chris Albrecht a few months ago.

So is the dining room dying? Absolutely not. Dining out as an experience will be with us until customers run out of money or the Food Network runs out of celebrity chefs to create. Anyway, delivery wasn’t designed to replace the Michelin star, or (probably) even the Olive Garden; it’s just an easier, faster way to get a basic dinner without having to go to much trouble. Restaurants are starting to realize its importance and adjust their spaces accordingly.