FSR March 2023

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O U T S I D E I N S I G H T S

Delivery, and the Battle for Control

The dysfunction of third-party delivery implies a large risk for most restaurant brands. We simply can’t control off-premises problems once the food leaves our restaurant’s four walls. For those restaurants focused on qual ity, hospitality, and experience, the delivery ecosystem that has developed to date fails to ensure the very things our restaurant brands are built on. We developed software six years ago for Clustertruck, my vision for a verti cally integrated virtual restaurant and ghost kitchen, which has allowed us to take control of our off-premises deliv ery business. THE DELIVERY DILEMMA Delivery has never truly worked. It’s too expensive. It takes too long. The quality and accuracy aren’t great. And restaurants are struggling to make money with it. Yet, customers want it. Restaurants are in the customer-ser vice business, and it’s our job to figure out how to meet our guests’ demands. Trying to solve the problems in delivery with a fifteenth piece of soft ware, new shelving, and teammember training does not resolve the root cause of the challenge. The root cause? There are too many factors over which restau rants lack control for the operations of the delivery process to succeed. This The consumer need is not going away, so there must be a better solution. BY CHRIS BAGGOTT QSR FSR

CAN OPERATORS REGAIN AN UPPER HAND WITH DELIVERY?

complex system adds time to the deliv ery process, and time is the enemy of food quality. The biggest operational issue with delivery and pick-up has to do with timing. Restaurant operations fail to sync with delivery driver schedules, or vice versa, because they are two sep

arate entities. Restaurant orders are started in the back of the house before there is even a driver secured, which leaves a customer’s food order waiting for anywhere from 5 minutes to a half hour before getting picked up by the driver. In that time, the food sits. Who knows when the delivery driver will

CLUSTERTRUCK (2)

INDUSTRY-WIDE ISSUE 113

MARCH 2023