Blaze Pizza, Bojangles execs discuss switching from a transactional mindset to a customer mindset

There's no such thing as restaurant transactions — there are only customers. The top 5% of guests drive approximately 30% of sales, and any restaurant brand that doesn't prioritize increasing customer lifetime value is now at risk.

Those are the big takeaways from the "Why Restaurants Are Ditching the Transactional Mindset to Focus on Customers" panel session at the recent Fast Casual Executive Summit held in Charlotte, North Carolina. The annual event was well attended, according to organizers. The summit is one of several foodservice and technology industry events run by Networld Media Group. A virtual event, #QSRNext, will take place Nov. 9.

Panelists included Todd Madlener, president and COO of Coolgreens; Aaron Noveshen, CEO of Starbird and founder and chairman of The Culinary Edge; Sergio Perez, senior director of Omnichannel, Bojangles and Vince Szwajkowski, CMO at Blaze Pizza. Mike Vichich, co-founder and CEO of sponsor Wisely moderated the panel.

Interacting with customers

Vichich said it's important to understand how customers interact with a restaurant brand in all the different channels, from dine in and carryout to delivery and digital.

"I think that lifetime value is the fundamental metric that is really important for brands to be watching right now," he said. "It's something that if you look at retail, e-commerce, mobile gaming — lots of industries revolve around lifetime value. They look at what is it that causes someone to become a high lifetime valued guest or customer? How do they engineer everything about their experience such that they're likely to become a high valued guest?"

On-premise guests will naturally patronize the places where they get the best experience, and off-premise affords third-party delivery companies all the data that should be gathered by the restaurant. Restaurants should be gathering data from all customers if possible.

Szwajkowski, a former movie theater executive, said he had more information about movie customers than he did taking on his position at Blaze Pizza. The company simply didn't do much tracking when it came to customers due to the high volume.

"There's been less of a focus on data to drive transactions (and) drive personalization," he said. "I think this industry over all have a lot of runway because we're just scratching the surface of what's possible. I think there's a lot of learnings to take from other industries."

Perez said Bojangles is working on an engagement program looking at how to deliver relevance and generate demand to drive action. An engagement program differs from a loyalty program in that it looks more at engagement and how consumers interact with a brand rather than offer discounts or rewards to generate revenue.

"You have to think about how you redefine that experience for people that really delivers on your brand promise," he said. "More people are transacting with you digitally. How do you maintain that brand equity to ensure that if that's the only touchpoint you're going to have, let's make sure from a brand perspective we also deliver."

People don't buy brands, but they buy brand promises and "product that delivers upon the brand," said Noveshen. "There's a nuance to that."

Starbird promises food that will "blow (customers) minds" and then delivers on that promise by following through with trends that are happening.

"Just try a lot of stuff. The digital arena allows for trial," Noveshen said. "You can try something and stop doing it the next day. We have a virtual brand. We can turn it on and we can turn it off. Someone walking in your door, you can't be as nimble sometimes. … But make sure what you're measuring is something tangible."

Madlener said Coolgreens knows the top 100 guests visited 6.5 times on average in September, more than once a week. The top 500 guests were in 3.4 times on average. The brand is reaching out to those guests to determine LTOs and for menu development by e-mail.

They had a flatbread category with 20 SKUs, but found that the top users weren't ordering flatbreads despite the fact that the POS system showed they were a good seller. They killed the category and found that speed of service increased and customers became happier with service.

Madlener also said Coolgreens asked top users where to put pick-up in the store, and overwhelmingly the response was near the front door with shelves for each of the third-party delivery companies and online pick-up.

Listening to customers gives those customers a sense of ownership over changes made in the restaurants. It creates a culture of putting the consumer at the center of operations, he said.