Name: How to Reopen: Digital ordering likely to remain popular when dine-in options return
Uploaded: 2020-05-26
Duration: 4 min 48 s
Description: CEO Brian Niccol talks about the future of fast-casual dining.

How to Reopen: Digital ordering likely to remain popular when dine-in options return

Retail

The future of fast-casual dining

CEO Brian Niccol talks about the future of fast-casual dining.

middle of February. You know, it started to become more real. That okay, this covid 19 crisis is definitely coming to the United States. And really, where we spend a lot of our time initially was understanding the food safety practices and the wellness practices that we already had in place. How much of that are the would apply to handling the covid issues we felt felt like they were in pretty good shape. And as these new requirements come along, it really became more of an exercise and supply chain of Can we get mass? Can we get more hand sanitizer? Because these things are going to be needed and used at a higher rate than in the past. Mm, Mhm. I mean, we used to be able to get shoulder to shoulder so that we could just move a lot of people through really fast. We're not going to be shoulder to shoulder. So instead of having seven or eight people on the line will probably have four, so the trade off will be in the restaurant. We can't go as fast luckily for us, So we've got the second access point. Our digital kitchen, which can really compensate for the fact that we can't go as fast in the dining room. Mhm. Mhm. Yeah. I definitely think you know the app slash Web experience is going to be, you know, arguably as effective as the storefront. You know, I I think it's gotten to be 70% of our business today. What we saw, we saw a lot of people that were, you know, call it in store customers didn't use our digital experience and vice versa. Uh, and now, for the first time, we're seeing a lot of those customers that used to be in store exclusive being digital customers, and they're signing up for the rewards program. And I think we're going to find what we're starting to see is the digital occasion serves a unique occasion. The in store occasion serves a unique occasion, but I think as we reopen our dining rooms and people start to come back in for the in store experience, you know, I think it'll still hover around that 40% strange, you know, and depending where you are in the country might be 30 or 50 but it's going to be, you know, a multibillion dollar business for us, and it's going to represent almost half of the business catering from a standpoint of catering for the 20 to 30 people that has gone away. Um, what it has kind of increased for Chipotle, anyway, is called the group occasion of 4 to 6 people. Whether that's, you know, a traditional family or if it's just friends that are, you know, living together, whatever it may be, we've definitely seen in our dinner business an increase of one dinner business and then number of entrees on per per order. And really, what we're seeing is it's more around servicing this 4 to 6 group occasion, and it's more censored on dinner. So I think I don't want to call that catering, but it's definitely a group occasion, at least for Chipotle that we didn't have in our business before. You know, we used to be much more an individual occasion, more lunch, and now we still have the individual occasion. We still have lunch, but our dinner business is definitely getting bigger, and it's getting bigger driven by this group occasion, and the same thing is even happening at lunch, too. I should say, you know, it's a lot of the delivery orders or off premise orders are for groups, but it does look like it's in that 4 to 6 range. Mhm we've started piloting, I guess, is the best way to describe it. Reopening some of our dining rooms and what we have seen is there are there is demand for people wanting to come into Chipotle to go down the line, get that customized experience. But what we're seeing is the bulk of those people, though. Even though we've got seats available now to sit in the dining room, they're still just walking out and taking it to eat somewhere else. So I think it will come back. It'll be a slow filled and I definitely think, as we gain more understanding of the disease and then we obviously have more confidence in treatment. I think people will continue to get more and more comfortable with re engaging in the dining room, but I think it's gonna be a slow build back. Yeah,