Restaurants
Bojangles leverages kiosks to navigate labor shortages, boost sales
Bojangles has rolled out kiosks in about 25 of its units. The brand will retrofit existing restaurants with the kiosks in the near future, and they have become standard in new Bojangles build outs.
November 26, 2024 by Mandy Wolf Detwiler — Editor, Networld Media Group
QSRs are increasingly embracing the use of kiosks to enhance the customer experience and streamline operations. These self-service terminals allow customers to independently browse menus, customize orders and even pay for their meals.
This shift towards digital ordering has several benefits, including reduced wait times, increased order accuracy and the potential for upselling as customers are exposed to a wider range of options. Additionally, kiosks can free up staff to focus on other tasks, leading to improved efficiency. While some customers may prefer traditional counter service, the growing popularity of kiosks suggests that they are becoming a permanent fixture in the QSR landscape.
Bojangles has become the latest brand to embrace kiosk technology. The Southern comfort brand selected Grubbrr as its kiosk technology partner for a trial run beginning late in 2023. There are 25 restaurants retrofitted with kiosks today and they have become the standard in new Bojangles restaurants.
Richard Del Valle, CIO and chief of staff and Bojangles, said the brand has been experiencing some challenges with "manpower availability" post-COVID, like many restaurants in the industry. Kiosks, it would seem, would help future proof the business and address the shortage in workers.
Bojangles also rolled out kiosks because the brand is in a growth pattern, especially into Western states like California and cities like Las Vegas.
"The other piece of the puzzle for us that we've been trying to solve is that as we get into these extremely high-wage environments (with) extremely low manpower availability environments, we needed to have tools ready for our franchise partners that were going to be opening up in these newer markets," Del Valle said. "We also knew that kiosks could increase your checks a little bit. It has to do with the 'anonymous' order point. If you look statistically, online ordering is always higher than in-person ordering. And kiosk ordering is always higher than in-person ordering."
Kiosks also allow Bojangles to visually present products the brand is encouraging guests to try, such as cookies or LTOs.
How is Bojangles grappling with the customers who prefer not to use a kiosk when ordering?
"We haven't — and we never will — do anything that makes our guests uncomfortable," Del Valle said, "so, when we install kiosks in a restaurant, we preserve the cash register environment. We might go from instead of having two we have one, we move it a little bit down always because we're putting the kiosks where the cash registers would have been. But any guest that isn't interested in using the kiosk has a human being available to take their order. It's a tool for those comfortable using it and we have the human back-up for somebody who isn't comfortable using kiosks."
Del Valle said that back-up person is cross trained to fill orders as well.
"The kiosk is not necessarily replacing the human being per se because we still need somebody to build the order, check the order, deliver the order and interact with the guests," he said.
As a high-hospitality Southern brand, Bojangles is not looking to get impersonal and still relies on staff to be the faces of the company.
Jonathan Elster, president of Grubbrr, a self-ordering kiosk solution for the restaurant industry, said every brand is different when it comes to rolling out a tech solution and the length of time it takes to launch varies by brand. The company met with Bojangles in November 2023 and went live with a few kiosks in stores in January 2024 and launched more in April and June.
"We were lucky enough to present at their franchise conference this past October, and they made their decision to roll out our kiosks at their locations," Elster said.
Operational efficiencies
Del Valle said Grubbrr kiosks will help the brand improve its order accuracy by freeing up employees from doing several tasks at once to simply fulfilling orders. Frontline employees also take care of digital and online orders.
"It's a busy and important job," Del Valle said, "and the kiosk technology is basically helping them do that job better."
He added that many franchisees are looking to retrofit their restaurants with kiosks and seem excited about using them.
Grubbrr was selected because it's POS agnostic, meaning it doesn't matter what system a franchisee uses, Grubbrr will work with it. If a kiosk stops working, employees know to fall back to traditional ordering.
"I think what you're seeing now, Bojangles in this case, they saw the increase in throughput, which is basically leading to efficiencies across the organization," Elster said. "At the end of the day, we're obsessed with that customer experience so it's that operational efficiency. It's allowing the owner/ operator to redeploy labor to work through different parts of the restaurant location. It's just driving that efficiency."
Elster said in certain locations Bojangles is seeing more than 50% adoption rate, so customers are actively choosing kiosks to place their orders.
Still, kiosks can't manage heavy customization that some regulars rely on. "It's a balancing act," Del Valle added. "We put the most popular things on the kiosks, but we know that there's going to be some guest requests that they're going to have to go over and work at the register for."
Bo University, Bojangles' sophisticated online training program, is still required for frontline employees and managers. There's a series of training modules and videos that employees can leverage to learn how to greet guests and handle orders. Once employees pass the training, only then are the kiosks launched in a restaurant.
The kiosks can pad checks by encouraging guests to upsize their orders or choose a dessert they normally wouldn't at a traditional counter.
Bojangles chose Grubbrr after piloting a few solutions, including one from their POS provider.
"What we were most impressed with Grubbrr was … the flexibility with the POS system," Del Valle said, "but beyond that was the quality of the Grubbrr team."
He said the executive team at Grubbrr is a group of seasoned restaurant professionals, including celebrity chef Robert Irvine, who understand the needs of today's QSRs and fast casuals. He said Grubbr is thinking ahead of Bojangles on many operations. "Without pushing, they are pulling," Del Valle said. "That's kind of the ideal environment you want with a technology vendor. They're thinking ahead."
The kiosks don't even need to be on a restaurant's property to interact with the interface, making them ideal for college campuses and healthcare facilities.
The brand has been testing kiosks for a year, and customer response has mostly been positive to extremely positive depending on the location, "but we really haven't come into any situations where a guest pushes back or says 'I hate these. I'm never coming back' because they can order however they want to order," Del Valle said. The kiosks seem to excel in tourist areas versus the suburbs.
The kiosks appeal to the digital demographic — those already comfortable ordering by devices.
"In a perfect world, I'm able to provide each guest with the way to order that's most comfortable to them," Del Valle, said.
Elster said Grubbrr is enthusiastic about their partnership with Bojangles. "We're just really excited about the opportunity to work with Bojangles," he said. "It's an incredible brand. They're laser-focused on the customer experience like we are, so it's a great partnership we have with them and their team, and we're excited about the rollout with Bojangles across their locations over the next several months."
About Mandy Wolf Detwiler
Mandy Wolf Detwiler is the managing editor at Networld Media Group and the site editor for PizzaMarketplace.com and QSRweb.com. She has more than 20 years’ experience covering food, people and places.
An award-winning print journalist, Mandy brings more than 20 years’ experience to Networld Media Group. She has spent nearly two decades covering the pizza industry, from independent pizzerias to multi-unit chains and every size business in between. Mandy has been featured on the Food Network and has won numerous awards for her coverage of the restaurant industry. She has an insatiable appetite for learning, and can tell you where to find the best slices in the country after spending 15 years traveling and eating pizza for a living.
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