Restaurants

Applebee’s franchisee introduces pickup lockers for food delivery services

Image courtesy of Doherty Enterprises.

April 28, 2022

Doherty Enterprises, an Applebee's franchisee, has introduced a pickup locker system in its Applebee's restaurant in East Islip, Long Island to enable contactless, food order handoff to popular delivery service providers such as Uber Eats, DoorDash and Grubhub.

"Drivers no longer spend time at the counter requesting their pickup order, instead, they are alerted when the order is ready," Kurt Pahlitzsch, vice president of operations, Doherty Enterprises, said in the press release.

Once the order is ready, the Applebee's team member loads it into the back of the locker straight from the kitchen. When the delivery driver arrives, they go straight to the locker and enter their unique code to unlock their order.

The solution features indicator lights to guide DSPs to the correct compartment that contains their delivery. The entire pickup process lasts less than 10 seconds.

After testing and refining, Doherty Enterprises plans to roll out the technology to additional Applebee's restaurants in its portfolio.

This is not an Applebee's systemwide initiative.