Forget the next shiny thing. With so many tech tools available today, the driving force for operators is cultivating the customer journey.
That was the theme of the lively C-Suite in the Hot Seat session at the FSTEC conference in Orlando on Monday. Operators from six restaurant companies shared their quick-hit experiences with bringing new technologies to play in their brands with moderators Joe Guszkowski, senior editor of Restaurant Business, and Joanna Fantozzi, senior editor of Nation’s Restaurant News.
Problem solving is, of course, a factor in selecting any new technology. But the operators described the importance of focusing on how that technology might impact the guest experience.
At Panera Bread, for example, Meenakshi Nagarajan, the chain’s senior vice president and chief digital officer, said the bakery café chain maps out the different customer journeys through each channel, from ordering in units, to ordering through delivery or on the app for rapid pickup.
The brand is tapping AI—whether absolute, predictive or agentic—for different use cases, she said.
“We start thinking about it from the start of the journey to fulfillment in the back,” she said.
The decision is not whether or not to use AI, but how AI could be used to, say, write better emails when engaging with guests, for example, or to choose the right images for promotions.
Tim Newton, chief technology officer for Long John Silver’s, is bringing in technology like kiosks, for example, to bring the 50-year-old brand to a new generation. But that has not been without pushback from older guests who still want to interact with humans at the register.
As the kiosks were being installed, guests were almost confrontational in opposition, Newton said. And staff members were worried about losing their jobs.
But the technology has freed up staff members to devote more attention to third-party delivery, a growing channel, and other guest-facing tasks.
“Full transparency, it’s a slow adoption,” he said. “But we’re optimistic that if we can bring friction down in the ordering experience, make people more aware of menu, they’re going to engage with us better that way.”
Long John Silver’s is also thinking about possibly bringing AI ordering into the drive thru, but it’s critical that they find a vendor offering the most realistic interactive experience.
“We have a much older demographic and they tend not to want to engage with a robotic voice,” he said.
Jamie Denney, the new chief operations officer for Blaze Pizza, said she also uses the guest experience as her north star.
Technology is evaluated with a simple three-pronged question: Is this what the guest wants, when they want it and how they want it?
There is no one-size-fits-all technology solution today, she said. Guests want brands to meet them where they are, and, for Blaze, that means some guests will want to interact with team members as they walk the line, and some digital guests will want to skip the line.
Blaze is looking at technology to improve speed, like a next-generation conveyor oven, and a new kitchen display system, she said, as well as holding pizzas at the right temperature to maintain quality.
The brand is also planning to open an innovation lab in Atlanta, where Blaze is based, that will allow the franchisor to test different types of technology, like using QR codes or kiosks. Again, it’s about letting guests choose their own adventure.
The chain is also investing in a new position on the team who will be at the front to help guide customers to the experience they want and navigate the technology.
Bob Andersen, president of The Great Greek Mediterranean Grill, said quite a few guests order in restaurants but the chain is seeing triple-digit growth on online platforms and a “very solid” delivery business—though he admits that he was once a delivery denier.
Growing those channels has allowed them to collect data.
An evolving quest is “how do we take data and make it actionable for us, make it useful for the brand,” he said. The chain is working with some tech partners to help analyze and aggregate that data.
Andersen said the chains diving deeper into “how do we create more value for the customer, but also how do we create more value out of that customer for our operators as a limited-service brand.”
Roland Gonzalez, CEO of Church’s Chicken said his 73-year-old brand with more than 1,500 units recently took a relatively simple step of using drive-thru timers. That has led to a one-minute improvement in speed of service, year over year.
“And getting those ducks in a row has really allowed us to unlock and build on the rest of the tech stack,” he said.
Church’s is one of few brands with positive traffic and sales over the past two years, he said. Gonzalez attributed that in part to the loyalty program launched over the past year, which now has 1.5 million members. That’s in part because the program offers are very lucrative.
“Free chicken will guide [guests] through the door, and, just for signing up, you get two pieces of chicken or three tenders, you can choose,” he said.
About half of guests pay with cash, so the loyalty program is not just through the app, and guests can earn points using cash.
Chris Padilla, the vice president of product & brand IT for Dine Brands Global, said the parent of Applebee’s, IHOP and Fuzzy’s Tacos has been using AI to drive more personalized upselling as guests are checking out. They might be asked if they want to add an appetizer or dessert, but it’s more personalized to their tastes.
Both Applebee’s and IHOP have recently undergone a digital transformation, he said. The AI recommendation engine improved engagement and ultimately resulted in higher check sizes.
Padilla said AI as a whole is here to stay. But for restaurants, it’s about finding the best use case. Dine Brands last year created an AI Innovation Foundry to build the technology in house, taking ideas from franchisees, team members or support staff.
The Foundry is designed to do things first at a small scale, building it out in house, and then find ways to offer it to customers.
“We’re a service industry, by and large,” he said. “We’re about human interaction first.”
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