Dish Up Highlights: Simplifying and Optimizing Operations

On June 15th, we hosted our inaugural Dish Up by Deliverect, our first virtual event. Leaders from across the restaurant business were invited to discuss the industry's most significant issues.

In this session, Pret a Manger’s Ecommerce Manager, Morgan McIlvain, and Trevor Sainsbury, VP of Business Intelligence at Louis Bar & Grill, joined Deliverect’s General Manager for North America, Noah Hayes, for a discussion about operational efficiency and optimization. 

The panel covered the following: 

• The growth in digital off-premises ordering since the pandemic

• Tips for maintaining quality and consistency when scaling chains from 10-50 locations to 100 or more 

• Restaurant technologies helping hospitality brands automate processes and make their operations run more efficiently with less stress.

Let’s take a look at the biggest takeaways from the discussion.

Dish Up operational efficiency panel: key takeaways

Off-premises dining continues to grow

Noah kicked off by quoting Deliverect research which found that people are ordering more food on their phones, with 42% of US consumers surveyed saying they ordered food to their homes up to three times a week.

Morgan reveals that Pret’s off-premises sales are up, with year-to-date sales already 30% higher than the whole of last year.

Trevor estimates that the pandemic expedited the off-premises trend, which was already growing, by five years. And says the off-premises sales mix for St Louis is now at 20-25%, which he doesn’t foresee going down.

“That’s where the guests want to be,” he says, “They still want to visit the restaurant, but at the end of the day, convenience is what leads a lot of people’s lives, and it’s still driving the business.”

How to use the off-premises trend to grow restaurant revenue

Morgan says the way to make the most of the rise in off-premises dining is to nail operations in-store. She suggests that if you get the execution right, you can ensure both in-store and online customers get the experience they expect from your brand.

She explains how Pret shifted the mindset of employees to think about the experience of online customers and those right in front of them in-store.

“We have our best-in-class in-store experience, but now we need to be best in class with our digital world as well,” she says.

Trevor reveals that the way St Louis deals with the rise of off-premises dining is to treat the channels separately. He suggests thinking about staffing and scheduling distinctly because there are different needs and different peak times.

“If you try and have your on-premise people executing off-premise, it gets messy. Separating those two and keeping them focused on delivering the best experience on both worlds is what we need to do.”

—Trevor Sainsbury | VP Business Intelligence, St. Louis Bar and Grill

Top tips for scaling operations

Pret has 500 locations globally and rapidly expands in the US and Canada. Morgan explains that having best-in-class practices and processes is the key to maintaining quality while growing and bringing on new franchisees.

She says that writing down what has worked so well for the brand into concrete procedures makes bringing on new partners seamless. And adding digital solutions to operations helps maintain visibility across hundreds of locations.

“It’s very important for us to know what’s going on within all of our locations,” she says, “And technology has really aided us with that.”

Morgan highlights how switching health and safety reporting from a manual pen-and-paper system to a digital system helped the brand maintain consistent standards globally.

“Now we’re able to see exactly what our stores are doing and we’re able to have that direct contact with them,” she says.

“We wanna make sure that regardless of how they're ordering and interacting with Pret, that they're gonna get the best and most consistent experience possible.”

—Morgan McIlvain  | E-Commerce Manager, Pret A Manger

St Louis has expanded to more than 80 locations, and Trevor emphasizes the importance of keeping things simple and repeatable when growing to drive consistency: 

“Keep it simple in terms of operations, how things are prepped, how things are cooked, how things are delivered. The challenge with scale is consistency. The larger the scale, the harder it is to keep things consistent, and that’s ultimately the root of everything.”

—Trevor Sainsbury | VP Business Intelligence, St. Louis Bar and Grill

How do you measure your success?

Trevor reveals that authenticity is the ‘North Star’ that guides St Louis. His team uses data points from online reviews, third-party delivery partners, Google data, and internal sales data to gauge success.

“We monitor and cross reference everything,” he says, “Can you measure and put your thumb on what authenticity is? No, but you can read the signs and see what it looks like when everything is done right.”

He says that when sales are growing, reviews are headed in the right direction, and you have repeat business; it’s clear that you’re headed in the right direction.

“It’s hard to describe with all the metrics and data points,” he admits, “But you can see it happening.”

Use restaurant technologies to improve your operations

The panel agreed that technology is most useful when it allows staff to focus on the customer experience by automating processing and improving the efficiency of operations.

Trevor says he is always looking for kitchen equipment that can make things easier for the restaurant teams. And he highlights Deliverect’s POS and third-party delivery integration as a game-changer for operations.

“Using Deliverect to integrate your tablets from multiple third-party delivery services,” he adds, “Now your servers or your bartenders are not punching orders in manually and creating errors. They can focus on the guest.”

“We used to have three or four tablets dinging off. What we love about Deliverect is now we have that one source of truth. All of our channels and all of our menus feed off this one tablet.”

—Morgan McIlvain | E-Commerce Manager, Pret A Manger

Deliverect’s POS and third-party delivery integrations help consolidate all your orders into one system to simplify your in-store operations. Get Deliverect for your restaurant today.