And of the 200 or so stores it expects to bring to market across all of 2021, roughly 70 percent will feature the window. Forty-five of those included a Chipotlane. “When I think about that-that really amazes me,” Zalotrawala says.Ĭhipotle opened 56 locations in Q2. In summer 2021, though, the brand debuted its 250th. At that point, Chipotle focused on picking proven, established markets to give them a go and see how results compared. The best evidence for the Chipotlane’s aptitude is a simple counting game. “Any time you can enhance the guest experience by expanding access and minimizing friction simultaneously, it is usually well received.” “To keep it real, I thought guests would love it,” Khan says. There wasn’t much mystery over whether or not people would accept Chipotlanes, however. “Alternately, for our restaurant team members, we needed to understand the impact to the current digital make-line flow and iron out the standard operating procedures,” he says. Khan says Chipotle is the first restaurant brand to unveil a digital order drive-thru pickup lane-a club that’s crowding by the day, from Noodles & Company to larger brands, such as McDonald’s, which are plotting lanes just for digital orders to run alongside traditional ones.īeing first, though, meant Chipotle needed clear restaurant signage and messaging for consumers, Khan says. If there’s an opportunity to take a chance and test something new that will be beneficial for both guests and the brand, then we’re going to try it.” “It would slow throughput, negatively impact operating margins, and be a terrible guest experience. “Could you imagine a guest at a speaker box building their entrees by calling out multiple ingredients off a menuboard?” says Haris Khan, senior director of restaurant excellence at Chipotle. READ MORE: The fastest drive-thru in America? The most accurate? All that and more in QSR magazine’s 2021 Drive-Thru Study ![]() And it avoided past concerns that kept Chipotle from ever seriously considering the channel, fast casual perception or not. Restricting Chipotlanes to digital orders stripped friction out of the process. It’s a digital order drive-thru pickup lane where guests who pay in advance arrive and get their food from a quick handoff. “We thought, wait a minute, why would we ever look for a full drive-thru experience?” Zalotrawala says. But Niccol’s 12-second observation flashed the light bulb. Tabassum Zalotrawala, Chipotle’s chief development officer, says the pilot was viewed as a precursor to what might become a full-on drive-thru. The brand began testing the earlier generation of these in late 2018. He claimed it was taking Chipotle “all of 12 seconds” to get food to customers through its “Chipotlanes.” In November 2019, Niccol addressed CNBC’s Evolve Summit in Los Angeles. Yet the digital customer and Chipotle’s evolution have given rise to something that’s hardly an outlier. The fact digital mixed 48.5 percent of total sales in Q2 for Chipotle is, naturally, a stat that won’t fully stick as restrictions loosen. There are myriad factors at work, notwithstanding COVID-19 and its consumer push into off-premises channels. When Chipotle collected $262 million in digital sales in Q2 2019, it marked a 99 percent year-over-year rise and was more than it produced in all of 2016. Presently? Digital represented a $916 million business for Chipotle in the second quarter of 2021. The other was a data point Niccol referenced often in 2018: Chipotle’s customers reported less than 50 percent awareness on its digital platforms. Some of that traced back to image, and Chipotle’s slide into an “invisible” brand, as Niccol put it-a restaurant that reacted to culture instead of one that led it. ![]() From digital make-lines to pickup shelves to delivery, loyalty, quesadillas, TikTok, esports, and more, Niccol targeted the one area he believed the brand was losing ground quickest: accessibility. However, former Taco Bell leader Brian Niccol’s arrival as CEO in the winter of 2018 turned the first blank page in Chipotle’s modern playbook. Put simply, the notion of Chipotle opening a drive-thru was unlikely on its best day. While the category pioneer spawned a fast-casual movement that would fill with copycats in the coming years, Chipotle’s ethos, sourcing, and operational style proved equal parts innovative and stubborn. Pickup windows were seen as the hallmark of quick service’s biggest players-not its upstarts forging a fresh path.Īnd nobody drew the line in the asphalt sharper than Chipotle. ![]() It wasn’t that long ago fast casual and drive-thru were the industry’s oil and water.
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