As restaurants’ labor challenges lead to longer wait times at the drive-thru, and as driver shortages put pressure on the delivery channel, many brands are doing everything in their power to incentivize pickup ordering.
Yum Brands, parent company of KFC, Pizza Hut, Taco Bell and The Habit Burger Grill, is leveraging its “Quick Pick-Up” option, whereby consumers can collect their order from a designated pickup shelf, eliminating the step of waiting at the counter, to make the channel more appealing.
On a call with analysts Wednesday (May 4) discussing the company’s first-quarter 2022 earnings, Yum Brands Chief Financial Officer Chris Turner discussed the progress of this initiative.
“Quick Pick-Up is fully deployed across the KFC U.S. system, and roughly a third of the Habit stores currently have dedicated pickup shelves with plans to expand more broadly in the coming months,” he said. “In addition, Taco Bell U.S. recently launched a similar program in their equity stores and will continue to deploy it across their systems more broadly in the coming quarters.”
He noted that, for Taco Bell, this initiative has benefits across ordering channels in that it also “helps free up drive-thru capacity,” reducing drive-thru customers’ irritation with service issues and long wait times. Indeed, when the Quick Pick-Up initiative was originally announced by KFC in late 2021, it was positioned as a solution to consumers’ drive-thru frustrations.
Pickup features are the No. 1 technology for encouraging consumers to make more restaurant purchases, according to data from PYMNTS’ April study “The Digital Divide: The Key Factors That Drive Restaurant Choice,” created in collaboration with Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) customer experience management (CXM) solutions provider Paytronix.
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Specifically, the study, which drew from a survey of more than 2,600 U.S. adults, found that nearly one in four consumers cite pickup features as the most important in encouraging them to order from a specific restaurant, a greater share than said the same of any other type of digital feature.
Additionally, research from the February edition of the Digital Divide report, “Digital Divide: Technology as a Catalyst For Restaurant Purchases,” which drew from a survey more than 2,400 U.S. adults, found that 39% of consumers believe fast lane in-store pickup could incentivize them to make more purchases from a restaurant.
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Yum Brands’ digital initiatives appear to be working, given that the company continues to grow its digital mix even as consumer mobility has returned.
“Our digital channels continue to accelerate, with digital sales of approximately $6 billion, the new first-quarter record, reflecting an increase of 15% year over year,” Yum Brands CEO David Gibbs said on the call. “Importantly, we set a new digital mix record now exceeding 40%.”
Additionally, the company is applying digital technologies to its back-of-house operations to help mitigate the impact of today’s labor challenges. Turner noted that the company’s “mobile manager” back-of-house for a range of processes has helped make these processes more efficient, reducing labor needs and improving operations.
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