Restaurant And Hospitality News – October 31, 2016
By Christine Kern, contributing writer
In news this week, Buffalo Wild Wings turns to take-out services to help boost sagging sales; restaurants can take some simple steps to help bolster security; and the Four Seasons opens its innovative R&D Studio to help create the perfect guest experience.
Buffalo Wild Wings Bets On Take-Out To Boost Sales
As its same-store sales fell 1.8 percent at company locations and 1.6 percent at franchised locations for the third straight quarter, Buffalo Wild Wings is turning its attention to take-out service as a way to boost revenue, according to The Nation’s Restaurant News. Take-out comprised 16 percent of the chain’s sales during Q3 2016, and the company is hoping that customers will embrace the new services. “We’re focused on staffing the take-out area with our best team members and improving operational execution,” said Buffalo Wild Wings CEO Sally Smith. The chain also will bolster its online ordering platform and mobile app.
While same-store sales did improve each moth during the third quarter, the company also anticipates lower sales in Q4 due to Hurricane Matthew. Take-out seems to be the answer to the chain’s struggles, helping to provide a longer-term boost without taking away from dine-in business. COO James Schmidt said, “I don’t think it’s a matter of choosing between an in-restaurant visit and a take-out visit. Our view of take-out is that the consumer is looking for a take-out experience, and so our approach is to embrace take-out. We think there’s a great opportunity in take-out.”
Buffalo Wild Wings is also piloting a delivery service, currently offering it at 90 company-owned locations via third-party vendors. “While we’re only three weeks into the pilot, we’re already seeing great top-line momentum in delivery,” Smith asserted. “I think it eventually it could be applicable to the entire store base.”
Bolstering Restaurant Security
The Nation’s Restaurant News provided seven key tips for strengthening your restaurant’s physical security in a recent article. While restaurants must keep up appearances and can’t let security features mar the customer’s impression of their environment, there are some seamless measures that they can take to help keep everyone safer. The tips include: applying transparent window film to reinforce glass to make it shatter-and scratch-resistant; using cameras properly to document what happens in and around the restaurant to understand threats and identify theft and other problems; investing in monitored alarms to ensure that someone will always be available to respond to your alarms; implementing key control to compartmentalize access, making it easier to protect assets and provide boundaries for internal security; installing high-security locks to help circumvent criminals who might try to break in; sufficient training of employees against burglary, theft and loss; protecting your safes, and investing in a safe that will preempt thieves who will try to break into or steal them.
Four Seasons Opens Innovative R&D Studio
Attention to detail and achieving the best possible guest experience is a hallmark of the Four Seasons, and this dedication is the inspiration behind the new Four Seasons Research and Discovery Studio (R&D Studio) designed for experimentation and play. It was unveiled recently at the company’s global headquarters in Toronto, according to ehotelier.com. This new creative, collaborative workspace provides a testing ground where ideas can be explored in greater context. The Studio explores everything from lighting specs to bathroom amenities, table settings, and even staff wardrobes as part of the perfect guest experience. It allows employees from across the organization to collaborate, experiment, inspire, and create.
Dana Kalczak, Vice President, Design, Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, explains, "The R&D Studio is a critical tool for us because it allows us to make detailed decisions in a holistic environment. When we bring everything together in this space, we better understand how the different elements energize and inform one another."
Kalczak continued, "We use the R&D Studio to explore rooms that can serve multiple purposes – rooms that give our guests greater freedom and control to use the space as they choose. A guest room used to have fixed features – you sleep here, you pour coffee there, you work in one corner and relax in the other. But mobile devices have changed this dynamic. You no longer need to sit at a rectangular wooden desk to 'work' – you can just as easily email and take calls from a sofa or from the bed."