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Is Mobile-Only Pickup More of a Convenience or Inconvenience?
Chick-fil-A opened its first-ever mobile pickup restaurant to address the growing demand for digital ordering and better manage wait times.
The location at 79th St. & 2nd Ave. in New York City also supports delivery. No seating area or dine-in services are available.
Under the setup:
- Customers order ahead for delivery or carryout via the Chick-fil-A app or website.
- Geofencing alerts the restaurant that customers are on their way to expedite the process and ensure each meal is timed with their arrival.
- Inside the restaurant, an active status board screen shows customers and delivery drivers when their orders are ready in real time.
- Once ready, orders are distributed “with a smile so they can quickly be on their way.”
The opening comes as digital orders have grown to account for more than half of Chick-fil-A’s sales in some markets.
Nathaniel Cates, Chick-fil-A’s senior principal design lead, said, “While digital concepts are becoming more prevalent, it’s important that we evolve in a uniquely Chick-fil-A way — meeting the changing needs of our customers without compromising the signature service and care they’ve grown to know and love.”
Wait times continue to be the biggest complaint when it comes to mobile ordering, particularly for drive-thru pickup. Bluedot’s seventh installment of its “State of What Feeds Us” Report that came out last year found the biggest frustration with mobile order pickups to be the order not being ready upon arrival, cited by 42%. This was followed by the order being ready but still needing to wait (40%), the order being inaccurate (39%), and the order being cold (32%).
Starbucks was the first major chain to open a mobile-only pickup location with its first Starbucks Pickup unit arriving in 2019. The coffee chain now has nearly 100 Starbucks Pickup locations in the U.S., including three inside airports.
Many QSRs have since been experimenting with drive-thru only, walk-up windows, and other ways to speed pickup. Panera, Chipotle Mexican Grill, and Taco Bell are among food establishments opening up digital-order-only concepts with limited or no seating in dense, urban marketplaces.
Drive-thru and walk-up restaurants tied to mobile ordering continue to gain in popularity. A survey of 2,000 U.S. adults from Dutch Bros found 47% indicating that they’d avoid going to a fast-food restaurant or coffee shop that didn’t have a drive-thru option.
However, a PYMNTS Intelligence study in collaboration with Paytronix based on a survey of nearly 2,500 U.S. consumers who regularly purchase food from restaurants found only 27% viewing a restaurant requiring order-ahead as a positive impact on their satisfaction. Among those planning to grab and go, only 48% felt positive about having only a mobile ordering option.
Discussion Questions
Are digital pickup locations a convenience for consumers? Or do mobile-only ordering requirements and limited seating make the option more of an inconvenience?
Poll
Loading …BrainTrust
Bob Amster
Principal, Retail Technology Group
Ricardo Belmar
Retail Transformation Thought Leader, Advisor, & Strategist
It’s inconvenient if you’re near the location and you want to just go in and order as you would in a traditional store! However, the thinking of such location is to take the pressure off mainstream stores and also to improve efficiency. Locations that deal with mobile orders, walk-in orders, and dine-in often come under a lot of pressure at peak periods of demand and that results in poor service all-round. All that said, restaurants ideally should be able to serve the customer in the way they want and when they want so this isn’t the perfect solution by any means.
Mobile-only ordering locations are an inevitability of today’s world, combining service, efficiency, and focus. A busy location in an expensive area doesn’t have to worry about management of seating areas, cleaning, or limiting seating time. The challenge is providing location options for those consumers that do want to find a place to sit, meet someone, and enjoy their meal in the restaurant. And if they have both options in close proximity, the dine-in location can opt not to serve mobile-only orders as well, which is a win-win.
The various surveys mentioned aren’t tracking the satisfaction after using mobile-only, merely the preference for/against it as a concept. QSRs have the data to validate that enough customers want a mobile-only option (emphasis on “enough”), and from there, that more will want it based on demographic shifts and growing familiarity. Choice and convenience are inextricably linked in the minds of consumers. Mobile-only must be in the mix.
It’s a convenience if the location wouldn’t otherwise be opened; that seems rather obvious, I think, so the real question is how many (potential) locations does this describe? I don’t know, but my feeling is “not enough to get excited about”. Back to the original point: I can see any number of reasons – ranging from security to pricey real estate – to 86 the dining areas; I don’t really see much point to requiring pre-ordering.
Mobile-only pick-up is too restrictive. Customers like options. With the exception of specific locations in which mobile-only is a no-brainer (I can’t think of a reason), in-store and mobile should be offered. stores can be configured to handle both with the same staff, depending on times of day.
Figuring out efficient digital options and combining with a in-store option would seem to be the best answer, by using the real estate they already have to provide the best experience for all.
If the digital order is hot and ready when I arrive then a pick up location would be attractive to me, but only if it was on my way to wherever I was going. This, however, rarely happens, so I tend to skip digital ordering.
This isn’t anything new, but I do know that Chick-fil-A will somehow make it uniquely theirs. On your worst day the welcoming associates at Chick-fil-A just make it better.
Ideally one location could do it all, but there is a great deal of convenience more inherent in this model for many. I’ll be curious if the demand volume ends up being sufficient for many of these chains to have standalone mobile ordering locations.
Wouldn’t customers prefer to eat the food while it’s hot, rather than letting it cool in the car? (I’m sure this makes me sound like a geezer, but…)
Some of us don’t let it cool in the car and the Chick-fil-A cups fit so well in my cupholders!
Ha ha, yeah my lemonade and waffle fries are usually all gone before I get home with the sandwich!
A mobile-only location like the one in Manhattan makes sense as one of several options. (Obviously there is no opportunity for drive-thru in that neighborhood.) Chick-Fil-A is experimenting with other formats, such as the drive-thru-only (no dine-in) store near my house in suburban Milwaukee.
Busy operations like Chick-Fil-A need to find alternatives to the traditional model of dine-in and drive-thru, and the Manhattan site is just one of those alternatives.
I prefer the Caribou cabins here that are drive-through only compared to going in the store and waiting for the same thing. If I want the in-store experience, it is also available within the same geographic distance but I find myself doing that less and less. I’ve done the mobile ordering at Chick-Fil-A and it has been super convenient to just pull up, get the order, and go. I think the convenience certainly appeals to many customers.
Was just going to mention Caribou. If the real estate is too tight / traffic too low to support dine-in, but has enough drive-by appeal, why not try it? I almost always order ahead now with Caribou and Starbucks, but the snarl now is sitting in the same drive-through lane for pickup with the folks who didn’t order ahead – the time savings goes out the window.
Once again, Chick-fil-A is pushing for a better service experience. All you have to do is drive by one of their stores during lunch hour and you’ll see lots of cars in line and extra Chick-fil-A employees helping to get them through the line quickly and efficiently. This Mobile-Only solution will make enjoying that chicken sandwich more convenient.
The real point here is that you need multiple formats to serve e multiple types of customers. If you’re like everyone in my household, and most everyone we know around us, the ONLY way you order from QSRs or even convenience stores is through mobile ordering ahead. Why? It’s because we’ve all learned that the QSRs in our area operate more efficiently this way in terms of your food being available when you get there without waiting too long. That said, it doesn’t mean no one uses the dining area. Sometimes, you do want to take a break from where you’re going and sit down and eat your meal. So customers need choices, not necessarily at the same location.
Chick-fil-A is smart to try out a pickup only option. Will see large numbers of these locations over time? I expect there will be many in certain locations, but won’t make sense everywhere. The concept is here to stay as more consumers want to pickup food on the go!
As a consumer, digital pickup locations are a convenience – IF I am able to get my order faster than the regular order on-site approach. This seems to be the real challenge.
As a frequent Chick-fil-A customer, 90% of the time I order online, but almost always park and go inside to pick up the order so I don’t have to wait in the drive-through behind all of the customers who didn’t order in advance. There seem to be two opportunities:
I’m confident that Chick-fil-A, and others, can figure this out if they aggressively experiment and innovate like they were forced to do for COVID.
The article mentions the use of geofencing. That’s critical to fresh, hot and on time delivery. Customers are notoriously high on their expectations of delivery timing promise and low on showing up on time. Geofencing solves for that to the customer’s benefit.
When traveling together my wife likes using the Chic-fil-a mobile app. She orders ahead and the geofencing does seem to expedite our pickup time, but queuing is still necessary at busy times AND inability to make special orders like no-ice-in-drink means we still have to interact with a curbside agent or talk to the menu post intercom. I’m not a fan of mobile apps when infrequent use means I’m not familiar with the app’s ordering process and arthritic fingers on a small smartphone doesn’t help!
Vending machines have been around for decades. Micro markets have become very popular in office buildings and factory breakrooms, Many of these retail solutions allow cash or card payment. Mobile ONLY pickup at fast food restaurants will be considered discriminatory. QSR locations will always need an opportunity for underprivileged customers to purchase food and beverages without a smart phone or digital payment methods. JM2C