Michael Haith, the CEO of Teriyaki Madness, has been making this prediction for a few years: In the not-too-distant future, when delivery orders come in, his restaurants will prepare and package the food, and then drones will zip the meals over to customers while the orange chicken is still hot and the egg rolls are still crispy.
It makes sense that drone delivery piques the interest of Haith and many others. Any technology that increases convenience for customers can’t be ignored in the rough-and-tumble world of restaurant franchising or any other kind of franchising.
The digital revolution has kicked into overdrive for franchisors and franchisees alike. From spiffed-up apps and detailed analytics to emerging artificial intelligence, all of it is being deployed in the fight for consumer dollars and loyalty. When drone delivery becomes widely available, it’s a safe bet it will be widely used.
But if you think Haith and his franchisees are waiting for that day to make their customers’ experiences as quick and easy as possible, you’d be sorely mistaken. Teriyaki Madness is constantly looking for ways to use technology to make operations more efficient and to respond to customer needs, he says.
“If we can create a really high-quality product and know exactly when our customers want it, we can cook it as fresh and as quickly as possible and get it in the hands of the customer with as little friction as possible. That’s really our goal,” he says.
Toward that end, Teriyaki Madness, which has 130 locations, is testing something new. The company has incorporated technology from the navigation app Waze into its own app. If all goes well, he says, “We can actually see our customer driving to our shop, so we’ll know when they are pulling into the parking lot and be standing out there with their food and put it in the back of their car. It’s actually faster than a drive-thru,” he says.
