Many restaurants are now integrating technology into their design prototypes, reflecting the change in consumer preferences towards digital ordering and off-premises consumption. As a result, major restaurant chains across the nation have unveiled plans for new restaurant prototypes in 2022 that reflect this change in consumer behavior.
QSR and fast-casual brands, including Chipotle, Burger King, and Shake Shack are reimagining their restaurant experience with many similar redesign trends emerging. Most notably, restaurant brands are implementing self-ordering technology such as kiosks, online ordering, vamping-up drive-thrus, shrinking dining rooms, and adding specific pickup areas for digital orders in-store and from the parking lot.
“What restaurants went through during the pandemic is similar to what retail experienced when Amazon came to mass prevalence ten to twelve years ago,” said Andy Schillig, National Director of Business Development at Studio D & Visual Graphic Systems. “The customer now fully dictates how their journey and interaction with your brand happens. They want to order, experience and receive their food where they want, when they want and how they want.
To compound customer needs, and restaurants needing to execute on more order and delivery mechanisms than they ever have in the past, current labor shortages make these adaptations all the more challenging.
“In the past, restaurants have been notorious laggards when it comes to implementing technology,” said Bhavin Asher, founder and CTO of GRUBBRR, a self-ordering technologies company offering solutions such as the Samsung kiosk powered by GRUBBRR. “Now, given the labor shortage and change in consumer preferences, it is clear restaurants will need to embrace technology in a major way if they want to compete moving forward, and this is reflected in emerging restaurant designs.”
Burger King:
Burger King unveiled its first rebrand in over 20 years, including more tech-forward store redesigns. The design focused on easy-to-read signage, new branding and updated menu boards for the increasingly digital age. The newest Burger King designs have robust drive-thrus, food lockers, takeout windows and self-ordering kiosks.
What makes the new Burger King prototype unique is the reimagined exterior and parking lot. In this new model, customers order through the app, drive into a designated parking spot, and have the food delivered to their car. In line with industry trends, the new Burger King restaurants will also be smaller, with one prototype having no in-house dining option and the other only a small dining room and kitchen.
Shake Shack:
Like many chains, Shake Shack’s Q4 earnings success demonstrated an opening of the digital funnel. Shake Shack’s willingness to abandon their traditional business model and embrace technology, including multi-channel delivery, enhanced digital pre-ordering, and expanding fulfillment capabilities, enabled digital sales to grow at a rapid rate.
Shake Shack’s latest innovation, “Shack Track,” is a tech-forward restaurant which centers on pick-up shelves, windows, and curbside. “The need to enhance and alter the physical restaurant to meet the needs of digital is so important to Shake Shack that today, nearly all new restaurants we open have some aspect of Shack Track,” said CFO Katie Fogertey.
For Shake Shack, the results of embracing technology are astounding. In one example, Shake Shack units with self-ordering kiosks saw 75% of sales come through that channel as well as digital. “We have had to be and will continue to be strategic with our investments, but most importantly, we will continue to invest in digital initiatives to help welcome more guests into our omnichannel,” Fogertey said.
Chipotle:
According to the 2021 Q4 earnings report, the results for the full year 2021 show that digital sales grew 24.7% to $3.4 billion and represented 45.6% of total sales. In other words, about half of all orders at Chipotle were from order ahead digital transactions, and as such the brand has focused its efforts on growing this segment of the business.
Chipotle’s newest location in upstate New York epitomizes this digital-first experience, as customers must order ahead through the Chipotle app or other third-party services and cannot dine in-house. Gone are the days of waiting in the traditional Chipotle assembly line. Instead, customers simply grab their orders off a shelf, resulting in less face-to-face contact between customers and employees.
The smaller restaurant floor-plan not only accommodates the decreased demand for in-house dining but is also cost-effective for urban areas where real estate is pricier. Moving forward, a spokesperson for Chipotle told CNN Business that it plans to open more of these in areas where it has a “higher volume of sales through digital business.” A smaller restaurant size also means a smaller footprint, which is profitable for restaurants’ bottom line.
According to Asher, “the pandemic made it clear that the restaurants with automation are most poised to stay open because they meet consumers where they’re at– where they want to order– be it online, kiosk, or in-store.” It is clear that technology will transform the fast-casual dining room in 2022 and beyond to cater to new diner expectations for convenient, contactless experiences.
“It's not a question of 'should we embrace automation and technology' anymore, it's just a given,” said Schillig. “Those that do, and constantly iterate how tech makes operations and customer journeys more efficient, will not only shape the future of restaurant design, but also the future of omni-channel dining experiences.”
“Technology, and specifically self-automated technology that meets the customers at the point of sale, has been a major boon for many restaurants since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic,” said Asher. “Now, we see the positive effects of technology reflected in new restaurant prototype designs, with many incorporating kiosks, online ordering, and tableside. That is why GRUBBRR partners with tech-forward companies like VGS and Samsung to help restaurants to create a customer experience design of the future.”
Many of the nation’s most loved brands, including Chipotle, Burger King, and Shake Shack are reimagining their restaurants to incorporate self-ordering technology such as kiosks and online ordering, vamp-up drive-thrus, shrink or eliminate dining rooms, and add specific pickup areas for digital orders both in-store and from the parking lot.
To learn more about GRUBBRR’s self-ordering technology, visit www.grubbrr.com/samsung and schedule a demo today.
This post is sponsored by Grubbrr