TGI Fridays

TGI Fridays first opened in New York in 1965 and soon became famous for its upbeat atmosphere and charismatic bartenders, who made every night feel like Friday. 

As a brand that made its name helping its guests celebrate everything from birthdays to promotions to the end of the working week, the now global restaurant chain has built a reputation for its excellent guest service and experience.

“People come to us because they want to celebrate, and we’re really happy to celebrate with them.” — Jos Wolf, Business Improvement Director

TGI Fridays entered the UK in 1986 and has since become a household name. 

As it expanded its delivery operations post-pandemic, TGI Fridays was searching for a partner to streamline delivery operations to offer the same celebratory experience guests expect when they dine in. 

TGI Fridays turn to Deliverect as dine-out business booms

Jos explains that TGI Fridays has always been focused on dine-in experiences, and although they had offered a limited delivery service before 2020, the demand for delivery and dine-out orders exploded during the pandemic. 

The brand was faced with such an increase in delivery demand that it needed to find a solution to handle orders from multiple delivery platforms as well as online click-and-collect orders.

“We partnered with Deliverect because they were one of the market leaders in the business. Obviously, experts in delivery helping us integrate with our POS systems. It just was a natural progression for us in our journey to improve our dine-out experience, to make sure our ticket times improved, and to improve the guest experience with missing items.”

— Jos Wolf, Business Improvement Director.

The team was delighted with the impact Deliverect had immediately, which led to a host of improvements. Jos reveals the onboarding and roll-out of the system was smooth and free of problems.

“We found the whole process of onboarding with Deliverect really easy,” Jos says, “The team made it really smooth for us. The rollout happened on time and on budget, and actually, my team told me it was one of the smoothest and easiest rollouts they've ever had to do.”

Manual order entry occupied up to two staff members

Before using Deliverect, the only way to get orders from delivery platform tablets into the restaurant system was to re-punch every order by hand. 

“We had one or two people, literally just standing at the till inputting every order,” Jos reveals, “Which obviously took time, added delay, and sometimes this caused errors. So it was a real manual task for us as a business.”

Deliverect completely automated order entry directly into the POS system, leaving those staff members free to improve order accuracy and offer a better, more personalised guest experience.

“We've managed to redeploy that labour into something that's much more beneficial for our guests,” Jos says, adding, “That team member is now making sure that we're bagging up the orders correctly, that we're putting the surprise and delights into our bags, making sure we are quick for our delivery drivers, that the click and collect guests who come get looked after.” 

With Deliverect simplifying the process, Jos reveals that even as order volume has increased, missing items in delivery orders have reduced by at least 5%.

Easy, centralised delivery menu updates

Accepting orders through Deliveroo, Just Eats, and Uber Eats, as well as online click-and-collect orders, TGI Fridays now faced the challenge of managing multiple menus on different platforms. When changes had to be made, such as price updates, uploading new images, temporarily removing items or adding specials, they previously had to manually update each menu individually.

Jos reveals that some of this could be done by the in-house teams, but often, the menu changes had to be sent off to the delivery platforms, and the changes could take as long as two weeks to take effect. Then, the team would have to test the changes and go back to the platforms if there were errors. 

With Deliverect, all menu changes are made centrally and are automatically pushed out to the delivery platforms. This gives the team one consistent menu to work with and saves them from dealing with multiple delivery platforms to make changes.

“Since we've been on Deliverect, it has made the whole process a lot easier,” Jos explains,

“We just have to upload the menu once or more than once if we've got different price bands. But it's still all on one platform, and as soon as we publish it, it's published across all stores that we've chosen it to go to, and it's an instant update.”

Deliverect consolidates delivery data to inform strategy

With all delivery orders flowing through Deliverect, all the order data is in one system. This allows TGI Fridays to access insights across all delivery platforms and stores in one comprehensive dashboard 

Jos explains that this capability offers a new perspective on delivery numbers the brand never had access to previously. It allows them to make decisions based on data in real-time and quickly change course when needed to maximise operational efficiency.

“Prior to using Deliverect, we found it  hard to monitor what our stores were doing with their individual tablet devices to make sure that they were still online,” Jos says, “and see what stores were doing on devices.”

“We had to be reactionary rather than proactive in the past. Now we can view in real-time, and we can see what they're doing and when.”

— Jos Wolf, Business Improvement Director

Deliverect is indispensable to TGI Fridays’ delivery operations

Deliverect has streamlined delivery operations, reducing errors and making life easier for staff in each restaurant. The reaction was positive from the beginning and has only strengthened since then.

“When we first put Deliverect into our restaurants, we did it over a few at a time each day, and honestly, the response we got from our stores was amazing,” Jos reveals.

Now, Jos says that the teams can’t imagine working without the system in place, such is the impact it has had on the efficiency of delivery operations.

“We would absolutely recommend Deliverect as a partner for a restaurant brand. It has made things so much easier for us with our dine-out strategy. It's made life easier for our store teams. They've even forgotten what life was like previously. If we take it away from them, I think we'd have a riot on our hands.”

— Jos Wolf, Business Improvement Director.