Hungry diners are discovering that certain quick service and fast casual restaurants have something missing—tables to sit at while eating your meal. That’s because the growth in mobile ordering and delivery services are causing some restaurants to establish pick-up or delivery-only stores.
This is not widespread and found only in some high traffic locales like Manhattan. Count Starbucks, Chick-fil-A, and Chopt that have signed on to this concept. Restaurant operators find that fast, convenient mobile ordering, coupled with delivery services, allows them to run smaller footprint stores, which save significant costs in high-rent districts. Customers won’t miss standing in line either.
A Yahoo Finance article, excerpted below, discusses more on the topic:
Table for none. More restaurants are getting rid of dining rooms as customers increasingly order food through third-party delivery apps like Uber Eats, Grubhub and DoorDash so they can eat at home. Chopt, the fast-casual salad company known for luring in wrap-around lines at lunchtime, opened up a pick-up and delivery only location, a first for the restaurant, in New York City’s Lower Manhattan neighborhood.
This outpost aims to bring faster food to customers, who will have to order-ahead via Chopt’s website or app, for both pick-up and delivery which makes up nearly half of its business. The location won’t have lines, tables or cash registers. And customers will be able to grab their orders from shelves when they’re ready for pick up.
“We have seen a major need for speed and convenience and at Varick Street, there are no lines giving customers exactly what they want — the best service, faster and more efficiently than before,” Nick Marsh, CEO at Chopt, told FOX Business. “The new store model will be a significant part of our growth moving forward, and with Varick as our pilot location, we will see how it goes, learn and adjust as needed and take it from there.”
Chopt joins a number of restaurants entering into the pick-up and delivery only model this year. Chick-fil-A also has no dining room restaurants in Louisville and Nashville where customers order and prepay online, and it’s also piloting satellite kitchens for delivery-only orders in cities like Los Angeles, Chicago, and in the Bay Area through a partnership with DoorDash, while Wendy’s also aims to open a delivery-only kitchen, Reuters reported. And Starbucks opened its first pick-up only location for online orders this month in New York City’s Midtown neighborhood.
Overview by Raymond Pucci, Director, Merchant Advisory Service at Mercator Advisory Group
