When you think of Texas Roadhouse, technology is probably not one of the first 10 things that come to mind.
The country’s largest casual-dining chain has built its brand on exceptional food, attentive service and a rebellious attitude. It rarely changes its menu and does not advertise nationally. Employees are known to break into line dances mid-shift. Late founder and CEO Kent Taylor was often seen sporting a cowboy hat.
Oh yeah, and it famously does not offer delivery, making it one of the few chains in the industry to abstain from it. Taylor once encouraged Roadhouse’s competitors to do as much delivery as they can, “so they can deliver lukewarm food to their people.”
All of this has earned the 750-unit chain a reputation as being a bit of a maverick, content to break with conventional wisdom, including on technology.
But pull back the curtain at one of its restaurants, and you’ll find that Texas Roadhouse is a lot more high-tech than it might appear from the outside.
Technology talk was all over the chain’s earnings call last week, with CEO Jerry Morgan singing the praises of a slew of new tools, including a digital kitchen system that he credited for supporting the chain’s thriving takeout business. Roadhouse also has a new table management system that is helping operators during peak periods; it is testing handheld tablets for servers; and it has offered customers the option to pay their bill on a tabletop device for years.
It’s a lot of technology for the rustic Roadhouse, and yet the chain says it goes hand-in-hand with the good-old-fashioned food and service it’s known for.
Much of the tech remains behind the scenes, like the kitchen system, which is allowing cooks “to look at the screen and know exactly what they have to do,” Morgan said. This has created a calmer environment in the kitchen and is also helping to track cook times and other useful data.
The pieces that are customer-facing are intended to make the dining experience better. The handheld server tablets, for instance, are boosting accuracy and making things easier for waitstaff, Morgan said. They could help speed up table turns, too, but that would be more of a side benefit.
“It's actually just to be more efficient and more functional when it comes to the overall and complete experience of our guests,” he said.
Texas Roadhouse just turned in one of its best quarters in recent memory, with 7.1% same-store sales growth on 4.5% traffic growth. That was despite a stretch of bad weather in January, soaring gas prices, competition from other sit-down chains, like Chili’s, and an anxious consumer.
It can be hard to parse out just how much technology had to do with that performance. But it’s maybe no coincidence that the sales acceleration came shortly after Roadhouse finished rolling out its digital kitchen and table management systems chainwide last year.
“The results from our restaurants and the feedback from our managing partners tell us that our investments continue to positively impact operations,” Morgan told analysts in a prepared statement.
Also, part of the growth came from Roadhouse’s to-go business, which is growing faster than dine-in—another surprise, given the chain’s on-premise bonafides. To-go made up 14.6% of weekly sales in the period, or more than $25,000 per store, the highest mark since the COVID era.
Tech is definitely responsible for at least some of that. Morgan cited the ease of ordering on Texas Roadhouse’s app, and also said that the digital kitchen system is helping cooks keep up with the extra volume without slowing down the dining room.
This feels like a useful entry in the ongoing debate about how much tech is too much in the hospitality industry. There is much talk about the need to balance Technology with Experience. There are fewer examples of exactly how to do that. Texas Roadhouse may be one of them.
Invest in tech, Roadhouse tells us, but make experience the KPI. Efficiency, productivity, the top or bottom lines—all of that is great, but it shouldn’t come at the expense of how customers and employees feel.
"Technology is designed to help enhance the guest experience, and that's what we're seeing," Morgan said. He noted that it's helping the employee experience, too, "by doing some of the math."
"And so it's working."
There’s another lesson here too that might be harder to hear. If your restaurant is struggling, tech is probably not going to save it. (We are still waiting for loyalty programs and voice AI to come to the industry’s rescue.) But for restaurants that are rocking it, as Texas Roadhouse has been for years, technology can be rocket fuel.
Roadhouse, for instance, had a “tremendous” Valentine’s Day weekend. Morgan pointed to the new table management system as a catalyst. It helped customers get themselves on the waitlist and hosts get them seated in a timely manner, ultimately allowing the restaurants to serve more people.
“We believe that there's so many little things that all add up to additional success,” Morgan said. “It's about really being bigger, faster, and stronger, and getting more people sat accurately.”
A bigger, faster, stronger Texas Roadhouse should have the whole industry shaking in its boots.
(Can you imagine if they added delivery?)