A panel of tech-savvy chain CEOs were asked at the start of the Restaurant Leadership Conference to depict what the business will be like circa 2025. But someone must have turned the dial on their time-travel machine in the wrong direction.
The trio portrayed a future that could have readily been date-stamped 2018. In their picture, ghost kitchens are once again oddities; to-go-only restaurants are a remarkable exception; technology is a no-go if it comes between employee and guest; self-ordering kiosks in particular are used only in exceptional situations; and the trend toward ever-smaller restaurants has been slowed, if not reversed.
And, cautioned moderator and Restaurant Business Senior Technology Editor Joe Guszkowski, don’t even think about flying cars.
The conference, which was presented by the parent of Restaurant Business, abounded in indications that the industry is reverting to its pre-pandemic ways. Menu innovation, for instance, is back “in a very large way,” Rich Shank, senior principal and VP of innovation for Technomic, noted from the stage.
Executives of four pizza chains agreed during their panel that the rush into delivery during the COVID crisis has given way to renewed emphasis on carryout.
But no presentation attested as readily as Guszkowski’s future-focused panel that the industry is back to what it knew as normal in 2019. The general session, entitled “What the Digital Restaurant Will Look Like in 2025!”, featured Damola Adamolekun of P.F. Chang’s, Lisa Ingram of White Castle and Brett Schulman of Cava.
Less restaurant shrinkage?
The group spent significant time discussing how the dimensions of a restaurant are trending. Guszkowski noted that the trend has clearly been to shrink the size of outlets so they can be developed in more sites, and cited White Castle as a prime example. But he noted that RB’s editorial team had visited the chain’s first Phoenix unit the night before, and “it was enormous.”
Ingram explained that marketing considerations had influenced the blueprint for that one, a double-drive-thru store with a merchandise section inside and a dining room that would rival the eating areas of most casual restaurants.
“Since this is our first foray into the city, we wanted to make a really big impression,” Ingram explained. She added that the slider chain had done the same thing when it entered the Orlando market.
Chang’s Adamolekun indicated that his charge has similarly embraced the unique benefits a full-sized restaurant can deliver.
Since becoming CEO and a co-owner, he has played a key role in developing takeout-and-delivery-only stores, called P.F. Chang’s To Go. While the company will continue to develop those scaled-down units, it has discovered that its much larger and more expensive full-sized P.F. Chang’s China Bistros provide a better return on invested capital. The size of those ornate restaurants has shrunk, but tthe design has been tweaked so that carryout and delivery functions can co-exist efficiently with on-premise business.
“You basically have two businesses under one roof,” Adamolekun said. “Our restaurants have become more profitable [so] our focus is on full-service restaurants.”
Schulman indicated that Cava continues to see an advantage in what the chain calls digital kitchens, or small-sized units that have multiple production lines but no seating. In addition to offering solely carryout and delivery, the digital kitchens are serving as commissaries for catering, Schulman said.
His fellow panelists also showed they’ve not become technology-averse. White Castle, for instance, continues to experiment with a drive-thru artificial intelligence bot named Julia. The big benefit, said Ingram, was lessening the stress that typically falls on a human working the drive-thru ordering station.
“We’ve been very happy with Julia,” she said.
Ingram also noted that White Castle is testing self-ordering kiosks at six locations.
Adamolekun declared that the only Chang’s branch where patrons might find an ordering kiosk is an in-airport restaurant.
“In our core restaurants, we’re not going to interrupt the relationship between our guests and our servers,” he commented.
Spooked by ghost kitchens
Ingram and Adamolekun showed they’re also far from gung-ho on ghost kitchens, or facilities that produce delivery and takeout meals for sale under a brand name that’s different from the identity of the host restaurant.
“We were in ghost kitchens, and we’re not in any right now,” said Ingram. “It’s not something that we’re looking at. We have not found much success in our venture into virtual kitchens.”
‘It’s complicated, more so than people might realize,” and that weighs against a companywide effort to simplify, said Adamolekun. “It’s not something that we’re looking at.”
Despite Chang’s reconsideration of smaller stores and ghost kitchens, the brand is far from anti-tech, he added.
“Every company is going to become a technology company in some capacity,” he said. “You have to embrace it, you have to learn it, you have to bring it into your company.
“If you don’t learn it, your competitors will.”