The team behind Dog Haus, a 50-unit gourmet hot dog concept, had been mulling spinning off some delivery-only concepts for about a year.
They’d planned to launch their delivery-only offshoot, Absolute Brands, in August. But those plans got sped up amid the coronavirus pandemic, with more consumers searching for delivery options.
“We’ve decided to put this inside our corporate stores and franchised locations,” Dog Haus co-founder Andre Verner said. “They can try to generate some extra revenue during these hard times.”
The Pasadena, Calif.-based concept is adding several new delivery-only concepts to about 20 of its restaurants. They are Bad Mutha Clucka, serving chicken sandwiches; Plant B, focusing on plant-based burgers and sausages; Bad-Ass Breakfast Burritos, serving morning and late-night wraps; and Freiburger, a better-burger concept.
“We studied the market on what people are searching for for delivery,” Verner said. “Chinese and pizza are not in our DNA.”
Adding the new concepts adds little to the back-of-house operations at Dog Haus. The only increases to the chain’s inventory for the new concepts have been a 14-inch tortilla and a bowl, he said. In the end, it’s really a way of maximizing the search terms of third-party delivery services.
“For delivery service, we could choose a few search terms,” he said. “They’re scrolling though and they may not see what we have … We pulled off our chicken category … Now, when they search chicken, we pop up with chicken. And when they search plant-based, we fall in line with that. It’s a way of maximizing our awareness with customers.”
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