Delivering the Digital Restaurant: Your Roadmap to the Future of Food

by Carl Orsbourn, Meredith Sandland

Overview

The omnichannel disruption that upended retail has finally come to the restaurant industry. Restaurateurs must shift how they think, behave, and invest to survive and thrive. Today’s consumers are well-conditioned in their expectations: they want the same tech-savvy, on-demand, and frictionless interactions with restaurants that they get in every other vertical.

If you think your 1,000-unit restaurant chain is too big to fail, remember that 1,000-unit Sears closed nearly all of its stores after it filed for bankruptcy in February 2019.

If you think your local family independent restaurant is too beloved to fail, remember the Amazon effect changed the face of main street and traditional retailing.

Delivering the Digital Restaurant explores the massive disruption facing American restaurants through first-hand accounts of food industry veterans and start-up entrepreneurs innovating the future of food. Combining sociological observations, rich industry data, and insider knowledge, Delivering paints a picture of how food is evolving and how you as a leader, owner, or operator can successfully innovate and meet the new consumer demands to capitalize on the opportunities ahead.

Those who understand this digital disruption will be better positioned to embrace the innovation that consumers are demanding. Those who resist will surely be left behind.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781645439486
Publisher:	Mascot Books
Publication date:	10/12/2021
Pages:	264
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x (d)

About the Author

Meredith Sandland spent two decades in consulting, corporate strategy, and restaurant development. After building 1,000+ restaurants as the Chief Development Officer at Yum! Brands’ Taco Bell, Meredith observed that the on-demand economy was starting to affect restaurants. Meredith joined ghost kitchen start-up Kitchen United as employee #4 to create their business model, raise initial capital, and serve as the public face of the GV (Google Ventures)-backed disruptor. Meredith lives in Orange County, California, with her three favorite guys: husband, Scott; son, Lincoln; and dog, Kobe.

Carl Orsbourn led BP-owned ampm and its billion-dollar grab-and-go food and beverage offering across the brand’s 1,000+ convenience retail locations. At BP, Carl obsessed over consumer convenience and transformed ampm’s fresh food offerings to deliver record growth. In 2018, Carl joined Kitchen United to lead Operations, working with restaurant brands to reinvent an operating system that capitalized on the rapidly changing face of food delivery. Carl, his wife Elicia, and their two cats, Positano and Ravello, live in Orange County, California.

Carl & Meredith created this book’s online companion, LEARN.DELIVERY, to help restaurants succeed in the digital economy. Learn.Delivery provides access to tools designed by leading experts that enable restaurants to chart their own path to digital maturity.

Table of Contents

Foreword x

Introduction 1

Chapter 1 We Eat as a Nuclear Family No More 5

Chapter 2 Our Tastes are Changing 15

Chapter 3 Delivery is the New Drive-Thru 27

Chapter 4 The Digital Disruptors 41

Chapter 5 Why Pizza Works 55

Chapter 6 The Maturity of Markets 67

Chapter 7 Going Digital on Your Own Profitable Terms 83

Chapter 8 Growing Beyond Dine-In 103

Chapter 9 Ghost Kitchens [Aren't That Scary] 117

Chapter 10 Gig Workers are the New Servers 133

Chapter 11 Operating in a Virtual World 149

Chapter 12 Attracting Customers Who "Get" You 165

Chapter 13 Engaging and Delighting Your Customers 177

Chapter 14 Virtual Restaurants 191

Chapter 15 Menus Become Obsolete 207

Acknowledgments 225

Endnotes 229

Editorial Reviews

2021-10-20
A data-driven look at the steps restaurants must take to thrive in the digital age.

Debut authors Sandland and Orsbourn draw upon their extensive backgrounds in restaurant development and operations to craft a manual that aims to allow restaurants to meet their customers “where they are: online.” The authors begin their analysis with a demographic and sociological explanation for why their work is necessary. As Americans have shifted away from traditional family structures, for example, they’ve relied more heavily on restaurants for both sustenance and pleasure. Millennials and members of Generation Z, the authors say, spend significant amounts of their monthly income on restaurant meals, and they want to eat what they want, whenever they want it, so they order online; for these digital natives, “delivery is the new drive thru. And the rest of the population is not far behind.” The authors effectively explain the core competencies of digital platforms and analyze compelling examples of successful food delivery systems from around the world. They highlight marketing and customization opportunities for such systems without ignoring their challenges, such as the fact that off-premise consumers typically don’t order beverages and desserts. The authors also discuss the potential inherent in “ghost kitchens”—kitchens shared by multiple restaurants that focus on delivery only—and constantly stress the role that the Covid-19 pandemic is playing in the evolution of the food-service industry. Perhaps most notably for independent restaurant owners, Sandland and Orsbourn clearly lay out how marketing opportunities expand when a consumer uses a restaurant’s own online system rather than a third-party platform, such as DoorDash. The book also features insights drawn from more than 100 interviews with industry insiders and data from a variety of sources in multiple charts and graphs. Overall, Sandland and Orsbourn have created an essential road map for operating restaurants successfully in the modern age.

Serious restaurateurs will appreciate this comprehensive guide to delivery success.

Kirkus Reviews