The State of Digital in Fast Food and Fast Casual: Revisited (Again)

(upbeat music) - Hello and welcome to the latest episode of QSR Uncut. I'm your host, Danny Klein, the editorial director here at QSR. And so I think this is the third annual version of this podcast that we've done with Q and the State of Digital Report, Jen Kern. I think it's year three. I'm losing track of time in life, let alone these podcasts. So I appreciate you always coming on here. Okay, really quickly though, since even though you are a three time guest, I still will open up the floor. If you wanna just tell everyone really, really quickly about your role and about Q and maybe a little bit about the State of Digital Report and then we can dive into what the findings are. - Sure, well thanks for having me, Danny. I did see you wrote volume three on the counter invite. And I was like, is it really our third year doing this? I don't know either. - Six years. - It's not the second one here, 'cause there was definitely one before last year. - Yeah. - So we saw it. - And as you mentioned, I'm with Q, I'm the CMO, at Q. And I've been with Q six years and this is our sixth time doing our State of Digital. So we started it when I started with the company and it's a survey. We send a voluntary survey out to all fast casual and QSR brands that have over 20 locations. So you need to sort of qualify by being fast casual or QSR. I think that I know of, it's the only one in the space that is exclusive in terms of the report and the data to fast casual and QSR. It was an 18 question survey this year and we had 170 brands roughly representing 85,000 locations that participated. So it was our largest year. We get a lot of amazing data back. And we spend a lot of time sort of distilling it and pressure testing it with what we're hearing in the market. We hear from our advisory industry advisory board to come up with these the six big trends and insights. - Okay, so before we get into the data though, I do wanna ask you a really quick question on, I was asked this recently about, you mentioned in there, it's QSR and fast casual. So what is that definition mean to you anymore? Maybe this is a personal thought, not so much from the report, but I get asked this sometimes, and it's actually kinda interesting for us because the name of our publication is QSR. So we had to come up with a different term to call QSRs 'cause we view it as a quick service restaurant is a category of all counter service and then fast casual is, you know, kinda talk about that. But then to me, I just call what probably you call QSR fast food. So I either call you fast food or fast casual. It's really like, 'cause I don't know how to do it really and it makes sense in my brain, but it is becoming, in my opinion, a less of a distinction maybe than it used to be. I'm just curious what you think about that. - Yeah, definitely the lines are starting to blur. I would have said several years ago, QSR has drive through, right? Like you're saying, it's fast food, there is a drive through. That used to be, that used to work as a definition. And then fast casual is your walk the line, it's your bowl concepts, it's your Chipotle's and your covas and your sweet greens. The problem is those brands, a lot of the fast casual brands now are starting, not a lot, some of them are starting to do drive through. So it's just a difference between how the food is prepared. Like you're saying like a fast food service or sandwiches, burgers, that would be considered more of the QSR and then there's certain segments and then the fast casual is something that's more made to order. Absolutely, are you have all the coffee brands, right? The coffee, the smoothies. We have six different segments that we sort of rough out and look at. But I think the easiest thing is like, you know, the fast food and the drive through to differentiate from a walk the line made to order. Yeah, I think the way you put that is all very accurate. And one of the issues was just everyone started to call themselves fast casual. So it became materially complicated and confusing. But we can honestly talk about this for 40 minutes 'cause I have a lot of thoughts on it, but we will get into the report so we don't get two side tracked on the many rants I sometimes go on in life. So okay, so in the past we've kind of gone through some of the trends. We could do that, we could start. I wanna start with kind of the big one, at least at the beginning here on this shift from third to first party ordering. I was just at a conference held by a company in the technology side where this came up quite often because of a lot of different reasons. So give me your take, what did the data show us? What does it mean? Why is it important? What is happening? What is happening? Well, this was one of the big findings. Usually we start the report number one is like the growth in digital. We don't feel like that's news anymore. The digital growth is slowing. It's, there's still incremental increases where we're seeing brands moving up to larger person will share categories in terms of revenue that's coming from digital channels. But that's really not the story anymore. That was a story in COVID, that was a story post COVID. Now things are settling down and they have a more predictable ordering channel mix, if you will. They kinda know like we've got this percent coming on-prem. We've got this percent coming from our off-prime channels. And they're really, what this data was telling us in the very first finding is they're now starting to focus on profitability and owning the guest. So what we said was winning back the guest is job number one. They're doubling down their investments on first party ordering, first party digital ordering. So 40% of brands said that the first party digital ordering is gonna drive the highest revenue growth this year. And for QSR, it was, I think it was close to 55, 56% was higher for QSR's and flats casual. But still 40% all agree. Like that was a big number because the numbers that came behind were quite lower. Number two was catering at 24%. And then after that was on premise at 14%. So what that tells us is there's a focus on owning the guest, owning the guest data and driving their profitability, whether it's unit level economics for franchisees and helping them become more profitable. But getting that data back, being able to see the whole picture of the guest and then being able to do the things that, you know, a lot of your conferences and your topics are focused on whether it's innovation or AI or personalization, right? Being able to actually do those things is a lot easier if you actually can see the whole picture of the guest and the guest relationship. - Yeah, I was really happy to see this stat about digital sales leveling off. I believe I have it in front of me that it rose just 4% over the past three years. And I've been kind of saying this anecdotally for like two years now. So I'm happy I wasn't crazy. But what I think happened then, this speaks to a lot of what I saw in the report is that there was this just kind of like pressure valve that broke open and then everyone had to go get every solution on earth within six months. Otherwise you would have gone out of business, right? 'Cause you would have no way to actually reach anybody. Or at least that was the fear. We all know it kind of like changed all the time there for a while, but point being like, there was just all these different solutions and options and technologies and innovations that came just pouring into the picture. We were writing about them all the time. I you'd write about some of them thinking, like, does this make any sense? Is anyone gonna actually use this? Or how long is this is? Is this gonna last forever? And doing stories about like what kind of technology do people want when the dust settles and all that kind of stuff? And I don't see it now to your point. So I was happy to see that reflected because it does feel like what we're doing now is much more based than like trying to be less about new technology as constant innovation and more about being efficient in the solutions that we have. And I think that's maybe taking people to things like first party or to decisions about profitability and so on and so forth, which brings us to the next trend here on consolidating tech systems. So really good go to foods, a conversation I had pretty recently where you all came up on this subject, right? And a great example of like, hey, I have scale, I have a portfolio, but what I do not have right now are brands that individually can do all this technology without some sort of connectivity between all the systems. So consolidating tech systems, what are we talking about with that one? - What say you? Yeah. Well, in line with what you're talking about with sort of the frenzy that happened during COVID. Yeah, I think, you know, things really got haywire. People ran out and restaurants had to. They had to buy a lot of stuff, get a lot of stuff just to keep their business coming, just to keep orders coming in. And now we're seeing that there's like a retrofit that's happening now. And they're looking around and seeing, "I've got this jenga tower of technology." Sometimes I call it the leaning tower pizza, right? It's just all sort of, you know, cobbled together, and I don't mean to be like doing into service-dress or operators, but a lot of these systems don't necessarily speak to each other or share the data, right? So if you want to get to that first party experience and owning the guest, you've got to be able to share the data between your different ordering channels. Not to mention, like, back-of-house and, you know, labor systems and various ways that folks are coming into your system. So this tech consolidation is a trend that we've been tracking for several years through this report. And now we feel like it got to the point where it's a mandate. It's not just like, "Oh, it's nice to have." It came at 64 percent of people are looking to consolidate their tech stack, their systems, to drive- the question was around driving efficiency. What are you prioritizing to drive efficiency? And I think what they're realizing is we have this very hefty tech stack, which could mean a lot of tech debt, debt, and credit, but it's unwieldy. It's hard to manage at all. It's a momentum crusher, if you will, right? You're trying to just like get the food out the door and you have all these disintermediate points in the journey. So having that API-forward system that will connect, I mean, you asked about Q at the beginning of trying to say, "Where are Unified Commerce platforms? This is not meant to be a self-serving question." But what we do is help restaurants put together their best-in-class systems that will talk to each other, whether they can share that data and they can build a tech stack that they feel good about. And a lot of times you don't need 30 different systems, right? And there are ways to drive, let's say. No, I mean, I think the 64% of people or brands simplifying their tech stack figures actually pretty staggering because, you know, if I think you go back in time, it was mostly like, "Grow it, how do I grow my tech stack?" It was a question, or "How do I pick my tech stack?" Or whatever tech stack thing that people were saying that I didn't understand. But the fact that now everyone has a tech stack, I mean, for the most part, and they're trying to, you know, nearly 70% of people are looking to simplify their tech stack, I think is a huge shift from where we were a very, very short period ago and kind of going back to the, you know, go-to foods example is, you know, in unlocking the power of their portfolio, as they like to say, this 1+1=4 is, he always, it's a very CEO kind of comment, right? But what he basically is trying to say is that, you know, putting, they put one POS system across, right? And the things that that allowed them to do was going to make one change and be able to turn it on for everybody and then the kind of benefits that that has for, you know, same mose and McAllister's and so on and so forth was really powerful. Just kind of all that really meant in a vacuum, but not sure what I'm going to do in this kind of thing. No, it's a big efficiency story. I mean, we have the capabilities of doing multi-brand, which is why go-to foods is such a great customer for us and we were able to take, I forget how many POS systems they were on, but talk about inefficient, right? Like, and tech that. But to being able to go to one system on Q for all seven of your brands, you have one report versus seven reports, right? You have all your menus in one system. I mean, the efficiencies you could go on and on is just a trickle down effect. So that's a great example of consolidation. I was thrilled to see that article that you wrote with Jim Holton. It was really well done. And it's a little great. Yeah, well, you know, I'll take it. I appreciate it. Yeah, well, it's just great. Well, if you look, Danny, right behind the 64, there's a couple more, but 55% are prioritizing data orchestration analytics. So, can sell it. What does that even mean? That's one of those, I mean, you put a few words together that I mean. Yeah. Well, it's like your CDPs, your CRMs, or it's taking all the data out of all these systems you have, putting it in a tablo, a data lake, and doing your analysis over there. So you can get that view of the guest. So what's actually happening? So you have the data focus, but the consolidation focus, like you were saying a couple of years ago, wasn't possible. Technology seven proved technologies are much more advanced today and lightweight. I think a lot of people are building microservices. A lot of people are focused on having the, whether it's open APIs or API, you know, we say API first, API friendly systems that are able to talk to each other. It's such a disservice to restaurants to sell you a technology that's not going to talk to see your other technologies. Yeah, I mean, he was stun and not that I ever intend this to be a recap of my conversation with Jim, but he was talking about he had lunch with this fellow executive and they were telling him, you know, the secret to this whole thing is to have great food in his response. Although, I guess he didn't say it at the time was like, no, it's actually really at this point not because most people do or at least they have craveable food and it's that quality has all come up in the last few years. But what we're seeing in QSR now is this kind of personalization race because the customization part of the category. It's like everybody is customizable since you have a phone in your pocket and you could order ahead and you could change this or that or whatever you might be doing, you know, the assembly line style of ordering is not a novelty. There's so many chains that do that. But do you actually know who the people coming in are and at least kind of to his point, that's really where the, you see a lot of that so-called, you know, data lake being important of operators because they're trying to figure out what do I do with this? Right. It's like, yes, let me waste a collect it now. Whether like off premise or it's just at the POS, but how to figure out what it means and to become better forward, I would say that that to me feels like the biggest tech topic, but it has a lot of different webs to it. For sure. Yeah. At least kind of my opinion. But anyhow, okay, so I also really like this stat in here. This is going on to number three here. Loyalty spending dropped 8% year over year, but investments in guest data platforms increased by 11%. And so that's a very, very nuanced thing because I think if you kind of took a big umbrella look at the industry and things that you hear, you'd be like, loyalty is growing everywhere. It's so big. Everyone's got one now. But it's not really that simple, right? So what is this telling us here? Well, last year we talked about loyalty 3.0 being the future. And I talked to several loyalty providers about that and what does that mean? And having more lightweight systems, systems that you can do the guest personalization, just get creative on how you're doing loyalty. I think it was that gold scene from things. You said, you know, we really need a whole new definition of loyalty. The whole idea of like punch cards is just done. It's obviously that is from yesterday year. And what we saw really this year is that loyalty 3.0 still remains elusive. Like we're obviously not in that business. You know, again, we will work with the loyalty providers. But there is definitely space for reinvention around how you look at loyalty and it's got to begin with the data because loyalty traditionally is only capturing about 15% of your of your guests, right? Your most loyal guests and even those in the apps, unless you're to POTLA. I mean, there's a few outliers, right? They're not capturing the full guest pool. So your new guest acquisition and then your retention rate is severely limited if you're only investing and focusing on the people in your loyalty program. So what the data was telling us here and what we were advocating for is marrying the two together. Okay. You're consolidating your text act. You're focused on first party. This all kind of weaves a web here, right? Like it's a continuing thread. Now if you can marry your data together with what's going on in your loyalty program, you'll have so much more opportunity to go outside of just the 15%, 20% and capture a much wider perspective of share of stomach. That's what it's like to say. Yeah. And once in a while, I feel like there are these canary in the coal mine moments in our industry and one of them being in a couple of years ago when McDonald's told everybody that suddenly they didn't have any traffic from lower income consumers and it wasn't a problem at the time, but we all sat there thinking that's probably going to be a problem. And it's also going to be a problem for everybody because if McDonald's is struggling to gain this value customer, then obviously we're seeing a whole shift as an industry of what's happening from those price hikes. But anyway, so recently, I thought that Starbucks offered one of these two and they were talking about the fact that they wanted a market less to loyalty members or they wanted to go out there and have messaging that wasn't as much geared toward their rewards members as it had been in recent months and years. And it was like, well, like if they're saying this and they're kind of the loyalty reward program pillar or at least trailblazer, obviously they've had some some issues last couple of years, like what is that telling the rest of us if they're opening that funnel now? And it kind of goes to what you're saying, 'cause I do think the technology has allowed you to not put so many eggs in that basket. I mean, does that make some sense? (laughs) No, that was my take on it when I heard it. It's just like, it seems like a big deal. - I think that's what you're saying. And we're saying like, how can we go, your loyalty members are loyal. They're gonna come. I go to Starbucks once, twice, three times a week, right? I'm gonna go, whether they, I'm using that or not. So I think that's what you're saying. It's like, how can you, you know, pull on more data from different sources, look at a wider pool of people and grow your business? - Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I mean, there's kind of this point in here from Chris Overhead, please, about, you know, just talking about kind of like real-time data. And I hear about that a lot in the back of the house, as I'm sure you do. It's sort of like, you know, your Chipotle example. They're very big on offering that throughput information in real time, but the consumer side of that is interesting. So I mean, what are you seeing there? Because I don't know that that was even on the conversation table, I don't know, I don't know timelines, but we'll just say back in a day that I'm not sure people even really thought about how real-time data might help us in industry that's this frantic. - Yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot of options for today, or at least being able to like you said, active, well, you alluded to like the data, we talked about the data lakes. Okay, so you have your data sitting out there, but that doesn't do any good if you're not actioning on it, like activating on the data. So we like to call, like talk about data activation. And what are you doing in real time? So, and from a consumer standpoint, we know that we're not there yet, right? There's a lot of things restaurants are getting closer to being able to do that they're not able to do now. I mean, one of the things we've been testing with a couple of our customers is voice AI at the drive-through, where there's auto recognition type of things, and they remember, they can remember you by your car or your previous order, or having forbids, you put your phone number in, and it pulls up all your last orders, they can say like, oh, do you want the normal? If you're on a digital channel, that should be even easier, right? To see like previous orders, typical things you like and don't like being able to really customize based on what you think guests have ordered before and what they might want next time. So there's cross cell, there's up cell in there, and I think AI is only gonna make it a little bit easier to do these things. - Yeah, so here's a number out of your study. 34% of brands plan to invest in data platforms and strategies this year. So I guess that's just yes to what you're all saying. (laughs) What have you been saying? But I do think, and also to kind of build on that, CDP and data investments, up 11%, points that are, points that will pay loyalty investments, which as we mentioned, we're down 8%. And so that is to me very much a shift in thinking. And I guess this idea is you have it in here of going beyond regulars and the loyalty could be a loss leader if you're not combining it with some of the stuff that we're talking about to improve customer acquisition. But customer acquisition is a tough thing in this industry. It's because it's very expensive to lose loyal customers. And so I've liked over the years when I've seen, Chipotle is really good at focusing on the people who show up there. And that's generally how they've done a lot of their outreach. But yeah, they're a little bit not like everybody else, right? So kind of a different story. - Yeah. - Okay, so key asks, which, if I'm not mistaken, in my memory is not going on me. This was kind of the topic we focused on most last year. - Okay. - That it was maybe the big, big thing to come out of this. And this is one of my favorite topics in our industry because as a consumer, I really enjoy the technology and I like it, but I think there are a lot of examples of it being done really, really well and not so well. So what did you all find on this topic before we dive into it? - Before we dive into our opinions about QSRs, yeah. So QSRs are all in on QS80% of QSRs. They already have QS implemented. They're planning to implement them. They're piloting them 80% of QSRs in 2025. That's a really high number. Fast casual was down in the 50s, 50%, so lower on the fast casual side. And so it evened out at 62% of brands will be using QSRs. Sorry, 62% of brands will be using QS this year. And it's a pretty high number. Last year, we said the QS were surging. There were a lot more people were starting to implement them. You know, I have some watchouts with QSRs and some of it came up in the data. When we looked right below the surface of the original questions and we cross reference some of the data points, what came through really loud and clear is that QSR were added almost the same way like online ordering was added in the pandemic. It was a quick like, hey, this is gonna give us another channel, it's gonna relieve some operational pressures, people at the counter. It's gonna help with some labor challenges. So it 100% came across as an efficiency enabler, but not as a revenue or a growth driver. And I think there's a lot of untapped potential there. One of the reasons, and we, one of the questions was barriers that remain. And one of the barriers is ROI and cost or it doesn't fit our brand or our service model. So there's still like some questions and people, like it's not right for every concept. But overall, like we're definitely, there's definitely an increase in QS. The other watch out is, are you sharing your menu and your data? We're again, you know, the watch out is that you're gonna find yourself in the same position where it could be a momentum crusher when you're like, oh, well, let's look at the full picture of our guests. And you have, you know, there's a couple concepts I go to, sometimes I use the QS, sometimes I go to the counter, sometimes I go on the drive-through, right? So are they capturing all that? If your QS provider is different from the other providers, then you're not seeing the menu, you're not getting the food inventory data. You know, you 86 something off your POS, then you got 86 out of the QS. So it does complicate things. - Yeah, I agree with all of this. So, 'cause I have a similar feeling where there are brands, sometimes, that I go into, that have them, that I don't understand why they're there beyond they probably just thought they should put it in there. And so it doesn't fit, the flow doesn't work. I was just talking about this on a recent podcast that I've gone into some locations where the actual flow itself is so confusing that the cashier will be standing there alone and then the line in the kiosk will be three, four people long per kiosk. And it's like something went a little wrong here. But what's the larger issue is just, I think the labor efficiency side of it is so alluring, right? Sometimes they don't really think beyond how that actually flows and operates and what you need to do to capitalize on that from a revenue standpoint versus, like you said, just being more efficient. Because this is also an example I've used before, is I've seen this flip in the waiting. So it's like I waited to get my order taken. But then I got my order really quickly. Kind of like, I would say that's like a Chick-fil-A model, right? At least inside the store, obviously, if you're in the drive-through, you get your order taken in five seconds. But if you go inside and there's a whole bunch of people, it might take you 10 minutes to get your order, but they bring it to you in like two minutes. And I've been in certain situations where the kiosk has now changed that. So I take my order really fast and then I wait 15 minutes to actually get the food. And it's not a good experience. And so what that usually tells me what happened is that they put this in here. Now they're collecting 3, 4x the order volume. But they're not actually adding any allocated labor into the back to serve any of these orders that are coming in. And so now everybody is kind of losing. So I agree. I mean, I think that we're at a point where people are adding them because there's just so many reasons to make that sale. But I think there needs to be a future-- probably like the POS evolution where we start asking whether or not it speaks to the rest of your technology. Because yeah, right now I don't know that it does all the time. And yeah, that's my kiosk rant. It's kind of-- Yeah, I mean, we're right. I mean, we took a new channel and put it in an old footprint effectively. Or the traditional footprint that didn't have a kiosk, we put in a new type of ordering methodology. There can be a lot-- the flow has-- you have to nail it to your point. If the flow isn't right and the guest walks in and they're confused, how many-- I can name a few as well. When you walk in, you look to the right. You see kiosk, you look to the left, you're in front of you, and you might see someone at a POS. There's a concept near me that has a POS. only one you walk in. and there's like six kiosk sort of in the middle of the store like you kind of can't miss them and Then but then there's a POS over to the right But there's usually not anyone standing there so what What they're saying is please go to the Yeah, it's like the airport model Whenever I go to airport if they just like they want they don't they want you to do anything but walk up there So half the time there isn't even anyone over there, but Yeah, it's it's just an it's just an interesting space to me because I They're obviously going to keep the adoption is going to keep going up these are not going away. They're going to Continue to improve and come into restaurants, but you know there are there are times where You know that so it kind of reminds me of years ago when I used to do these drive-through study reports We would always talk about the drive-through is kind of like a A different transaction center like your your site or your building or your parking lot was like a transaction center for Wendy's or so to speak right Yeah, and now what happens is like yet that's a transaction center The counter is a transaction center and then the kiosks are also a transaction center So you have like three businesses within one business and well, then you have delivery is coming in right? That's exactly how do you got curbside and delivery? Right where are those guys going where they picking up? Where's that data coming from so yeah, it's a Going back to the simplifying tech stack. That's probably why I think we're I think there are a lot of headaches and the Different or omnichannel of possibilities, but you know opportunities. It's just I Do think that's where we're at though is kind of going circling all the back to the beginning of this conversation is like I got a Figure out now Instead of just adding all these solutions Actually realizing like what I can make profit or make my life easier make Employees lives easier which I suppose can take us into this next point here on smart kitchens driving accuracy and productivity so Yes drop the knowledge on that one for us Well, I remember a kiosk revolution at your conference in September you had a chemical what the brand was that you had on stage And they essentially were announcing like we're scrapping and rebuilding our entire kitchen effectively Do you remember who that was it was one of the big kiosk? Yeah, I think it was I think it was Popeyes Was a Popeyes. Okay. I think you're right and then there's been a few more brands that have come out since then I think wingstop has come out and said like the point here is like the kitchen has been completely ignored from Advancement and technology perspective. We've seen robotics. We've heard about robotics, but beyond that There's not really any innovation that's happened in the kitchen I have the most respect for our CEO who came up with this This whole premise like over a year ago where he's like the smart kitchen He came up with a smart kitchen idea that has like a lot of AI and really interesting tech driven into it Which we've been slowly building that But the whole idea here was to survey Brands around where again, we had a lot of efficiency questions here Where are you looking to invest to drive efficiencies or what tech are you prioritizing to drive efficiencies Along with some questions that focus on what are your top challenges? So the convergence here was order accuracy is such a problem for the online orders for the digital orders It's close to 70% of restaurants are trying to improve that and that's this came up two years ago as well So order accuracy continues to be a problem because we know that guest satisfaction is lower on Those off premises transactions if the accuracy is wrong You know the chances of like to your loyalty your retention the chances of them coming back It's can be can be very low So we are starting to see brands prioritizing investing in Modernizing and upgrading the kitchen. That's essentially what the data so nearly 70% of enterprise brands reported Order accuracy the biggest efficiency challenge followed by speed of service and stop productivity Yeah Technology conference those at recently that I referenced quickly Somebody asked them on stage If I had a mat like you have magic wand and you can wave it and Like we can help you out or like we could fix something that we're doing What would it be? You know answer was accuracy So It was and it wasn't you know through the digital channels like that that's remains the The thing and so I really like this chart in here of kind of You know biggest challenges with digital ordering because yeah Accuracy and it's funny because it kind of mirroring the Growth of the drive-through when like there was a time and place where the drive-through was entirely speed and convenience related and You'd stick your hand in the bag and you'd be like I hope it's in here And like and if it wasn't you know not that people were happy with that But they easily didn't like hit McDonald's on it to that degree, but they do now because I think we're just not used to as consumers in this world of not getting what we order Like I tell this anecdote is like If I order soap like on Amazon Who who goes to their email right after to like make sure you ordered the right soap? You know, it's like we're very far removed from that point of life where we would just scream something until like a scratchy order box And hope it's there like we want to see what it is the minute that we order it and this is true and like food procurement now too And so I just thought these were interesting numbers So you know kind of beyond the order accuracy the throttling and turning off was 34% Yeah, these are the biggest challenges with digital ordering quality 34 Which is a tough one because you know half the time that's not the restaurants fall we can't do anything about it so 28% understanding data around order failures menus not sinking across technologies also 80% difficult to 86ing items as you said before 25% Customer details not shared with restaurants 24% integration with loyalty 20% Integration of POS 20% and balancing order volume on off premises 20% so really interesting numbers there The throttling and the turning off the systems if you want to talk again about a canary and a coal mine the fact that Starbucks could not do this actually stunned me when I heard that a few months ago Like it just I could not believe they weren't throttling the order of their mobile orders, but That was the first thing they don't need a KDS right so they don't have like a fulfillment center if you will Right exactly I just never even thought that they were doing it one-in-one out and then you wonder kind of why the chaos was so bad in there But fixing it Wow and think about like you know as a kid growing up going to like a McDonald's a one days what not remember the screens you would see them up there Well, that was 50 years ago. They haven't really changed Yeah, they're kind of the same. I mean we built a new KDS in the pandemic. We were like let's invest Let's but like we need the we recognize there was a need for the matter so We're like integrating the KDS integrates all the channels We try to make it easy to drive the efficiencies for the labor we color code things like if it's drive through if it's online ordering If it's come you know if it's in store if it's delivery if it's so everything is sort of you know kind of cascading to help staff Because again the traditional model didn't have Eat different order channels coming into one location right So it's just overburdened the kitchen. It's made the kitchen super complex. It's confused staff Right like what's going where so yeah, I think there's you know what we're saying is there's a lot of opportunity for improvement You got to invest you got to invest in tech in the kitchen If you want if you want to see order accuracy improvement You got to invest whether it's like threading that data together so you can see like how you know if a guest got the wrong item what it was So it again, it's all related for for what we saw it all points back to the data You know being able to have that picture that unification of the data across your channels But yeah order accuracy is huge Yeah, I mean one in one order or one in one out non-throttling was probably not a big of a deal back in the day when the only people using You know mobile ordering were basically Rewards members right and also before the remorz member group was like 40 million people You know, it's just like they didn't keep up with their own growth which I Could see why they see the opportunity, but then okay, so we've reached to the final trend here Which actually we already spoke about a little bit, but I will give you allow you to kind of chime in on it Which is again the Push toward the focus on profitability is the digital sales level off so Yeah, kind of a good way maybe for us to bring us to the closing thread, but Where do you so yeah, where do you think we're going? I mean what is we've talked about a lot of things on this podcast, but what's kind of the Where is the road you know what's uh Well if you had to guess what this is gonna look like in the future in next year the rest of the year What are we doing? Well, I think it's the the profitability right that's looking at that P&L I mean restaurants are still working on razor thin margins And they've had a lot of momentum crushers with delivery eating into that and with other third party providers and needing to really build up tech to be able to just keep operating and keeping those those orders. And now it's about maybe we could say it's a return to hospitality. Yeah. Yeah, happy nice. Let's all be as human as humanly possible. I heard someone say that the other day and I was like, yes, but maybe it's a return to like again, we want to know who our guest is. We want to own that guest. There are guests. So instead of having 20 vendors or systems, well, if I had maybe just three, I could work with those partners and those systems and have them all work together to help me win back and own the guest again. So that I can deliver the hospitality that I'd like to deliver. And there's obviously digital components, but it's really about marrying the human and the digital. I mean, we could, you know, I know you and I have talked about AI on the past and there's a lot of one of the threads that came out that one of my colleagues said was, you know, eight from looking at the data, AI is still looking for a job. Like that's what this told him, AI is still looking for a job, you know, restaurants. And it's like, it's there. And the last particular last trend, the digital growth has stabilized. You mentioned it in the beginning, but it's just it's calm down. There's a more predictable mix like we talked about. We are seeing almost half of brands now have over 25% of their mix is digital for half and it obviously it's more for fast casual and a little bit less for QSR. So it's only increased by one or two percent a year in the last three years. So it's up 4% total in the last three years. There are shifts in each category. So we look at the zero to 10. You can see as the lowest category. There's about 20% there in the zero to 10% digital sales. You see the 11 to 25% digital sales is portion of the whole category. And there's about 35% there. And then you see the over over anything over 26. We took out the 50% category, although we did say one in 10 fast casual brands has over 50%. And that's a pretty big like, oh wow, like fast casual clearly is made progress with their digital guests. They were faster at the gates and the QSRs. But yes, more predictable. And restaurants need to be profitable. I mean, they're they're now saying like, let us take the reins back. Right. There was a lot of them sort of losing that ownership for a while, I think. And, you know, we heard this from our industry advisory board too. It's like, you know, big, big chains talking about still talking about like these negotiations with delivery providers, you know, and trying to get the PNL and the margins more profitable for them. And so I think now they even can do it, which is great. Like things have settled down. So when you're talking about like a five in a chain, whatever it's the numbers aren't as big. Well, was you talk like over like 20, 30 chains brands? I mean, locations in your brand. That's going to be a big savings if you can consolidate. Yeah. So what you were just saying, it kind of hit this bulb in my brain about something you said earlier in the year that was actually, I guess it was the end of last year. That was one of my probably favorite things that I heard all year, not to just tell you you're awesome. But no, no. So when you mentioned the two things that you basically didn't want to talk about anymore that you blacklisted, which was frictionless and seamless experience. And so, you know, and someone I remember I had posted about this and someone responded that, you know, they actually pay for friction in their restaurant experience. And it was such a, I mean, it was such a smart thing because I could not agree more with that. Honestly, I mean, of course there are different ways to look at this. But that I think does not get talked about enough because we always talk about removing friction. And it's like, what is it? What are we, what are we even talking about first of all? It's like no one really understands that concept beyond like, get the problems out of way for technology that just doesn't work. But then when you actually get into that, your hospitality that you were mentioning of being more human. Like we could get too far away from that in this QSR space sometimes. And we definitely did during COVID for sure kind of at a necessity. But yes, I think that was one of the best things I heard all of last year. So maybe that's the call to action here is stop trying to remove friction or at least rethink, you know, what you're talking about there. I assume you agree with me since you originally said this, but yeah, this being real, right? Be real, be authentic, be transparent. There's going to be friction. You know, like we're talking about in these enterprise brands. There's 30 text stacks. I mean, there's there's good things are going to go awry. But if that's the goal, like just to like not have friction, you're looking at the wrong goal. I mean, look at what is going to make your guests happy. Look at ways that you can surprise and delight them, you know, look at ways that you can get, you know, put them in your swag merch giveaway program. Look at how it works with you. You're always post you like, look at this swag I got. Like do that with your goal. Right. Oh, I see this is your third time here this month. You want a hat? Yeah, you know, I always appreciated I miss funny. I got this. This guy like, you know, we had this LinkedIn guy come in or whatever and just talk to our whole company about like things you should do and how the algorithm has changed and blah, blah, blah. And I was like, I am breaking literally like every rule that this guy is telling me. And you know what, I'm going to keep breaking them. So sometimes there is not a playbook for everything in the world. That's my wise old man advice of the day is you don't need to break rules on purpose. But maybe sometimes you just do things because they seem like the right thing to do. I don't think beyond that about second guessing if I feel like posting a picture of my dog wearing a hat. I'm just going to do it and you could either look at it or not. It's not a problem. Yeah. And I think that's a great way to end like the right thing to do. I think that's what restaurants are looking at. Yeah, like what's the right thing to do is for us to on the guest. Please the guest bringing the hospitality Mary the hospitality with the technology. Yeah, have fun with it and improve our our top and bottom lines. Yeah, I agree. Well, Jen, it's always been a pleasure. Two things before I let you go. Number one is you mentioned our conference ago with time I will shamelessly plug the Jen is also moderating another session this year. So if you want to come see Jen moderate her second straight session on AI, we're kind of bringing it back is like a although it has different speakers. But point being it's another conversation on AI please look at us our evolution conference dot com or message me whatever you like to do in life. And then the second part Jen is I'm going to as I always do just give you the floor if you want to learn more about you. How should they do so and yeah, again, thank you for being here. Thanks for having me, Danny. It's always fun to chat with you and you've done a great job with not not only the podcast, but the QSR evolution has really came on the scene pretty hot and heavy and I feel like we have a lot of the same values like prioritizing, you know, the restaurants and doing the right responsible thing for the industry and that's what we're about a queue. And we're going to have a session where you know, if I commerce platform we exist to propel restaurants beyond their limitations and beyond what they believe they can achieve on their own. And so we really like to partner together closely with restaurants to help them understand the technology landscape and how they can really identify their order, order channels their menus so that they can deliver that better guest experience. Just google us. It's easy enough. All right, well, thank you Jen and everybody out there who's listening as always we appreciate it and we'll see you next time.