Inside Chili’s New Efficiency Pivot: Automated Burger Grills and More | WSJ Pivot

cooking a burger at Chili's used to look like this five minutes of Smashing flipping and waiting now it looks like this the Patty grilling on both sides at the same time it takes just two minutes and five seconds to go from order to plate and Chili's needs those three minutes to translate to bigger sales it's just one of the many changes that might seem unnecessary even pointless but they could save the company at least six and a half million dollars every year here's how Chili's is pivoting its kitchens to focus on speed and why it thinks fixing inefficiencies will bring back customers they were once a real category leader in casual dining that space now is very crowded there's a lot of other kind of casual dining chains out there so the chain tried to attract younger customers by filling the menu with more options but a big menu is really hard to manage you have to keep a lot of ingredients in your kitchens you have to train your workers so the restaurant reduced the menu by almost 20 percent going from 92 items to 73 the company says it saved Millions by having fewer ingredients what are the menu items that are either duplicate on the menu or don't really sell and create a lot of prep steps for the kitchen and so we've eliminated a lot of those take this Fried Chicken for example there used to be two types of chicken crispers on the menu and put individually coat and Fry every chicken piece to order so to make the station more efficient the restaurant got rid of tempura breaded chicken now the chicken can be tossed in just one type of breading in bulk up to 30 pieces at a time the company says that saves 10 percent of workers time that is a huge amount of not just Time Savings but more importantly it allows you to sell a whole lot more Crispers during a very tight window of time during service and the restaurant hopes service means means diners but not everyone is happy about the menu changes the original chicken crispers have been my order for my entire life 26 years of tradition and you just take it away like it means nothing there is a certain nostalgia for the food that's been on their menu you know losing a favorite menu item really might be devastating and they might not want to go back the company acknowledges that cutting down the menu could drive away some customers but it says it's worth the risk we're actually selling more Crispers now with one breading than we did with two breading because they're coming out more consistent and hotter and fresher and it's not not kitchen Time by getting rid of tasks entirely Chili's says workers used to spend at least an hour every day counting and bagging this shrimp to be used throughout service in theory it could be a whole lot faster to be able to grab that bag the reality is it's not any faster and that's just essentially wasting time during prep that could be spent on other things to make the food even better so now workers just pack the shrimp after prep by eyeballing it the only portion of shrimp when they need to cook it according to the company that shrimp bagging tour was costing it six million dollars annually across its 1 100 restaurants and though the chain says it's saving time and money with fewer tasks it's not cutting jobs as a result they're not actually cutting the money from their budget that is some of the money they're using to reinvest into you know bringing on more staff hours to helping you know with the service level but that is Meaningful I mean that is millions of dollars and it's not just the shrimp bagging getting the ax the company has also stopped serving fry eyes and baskets it says workers were washing 40 million times a year that's an estimated 430 thousand dollars in annual savings from not buying them according to the company Chili's is also buying smaller pickle jars the company says the old ones were a pain to open and Portion out now it's as easy as unscrewing the top the company says that alone will save it half a million dollars annually the tasks and changes might appear small but that does add up when you you're talking over a thousand restaurants all over the country Beyond trimming menus and chores the company is looking to make kitchens faster overall it's invested in testing new equipment like that Grill from earlier that can sell for around thirty eight thousand dollars workers don't have to worry about watching the food while it cooks and more food can be prepared with less time this is expensive it's not cheap to get these new grills or these ovens this is a really big investment but it seems that Chili's is taking this back because they do think it will pay off that section of the kitchen has gone from being the hardest part of the kitchen to run to actually being the easiest part of the kitchen but the company says that installing the equipment will be slow the new equipment is in just 67 of the Chain's more than one thousand restaurants it's going to take years to roll out between both building equipment you know assessing our restaurants on where to install the equipment and getting the equipment installed the company says that focusing on a on efficiency also makes workers jobs easier as the chain grapples with labor shortages and inflation what we're finding is ticket times are going down food scores are going up but most importantly team members are finding it really easy to serve the guests very quickly and that's exciting because we know if we can improve speed of service that's going to lead to sales growth early profits Excel down part ly pandemic though it has been improving and Chili's has been lagging in sales compared to some of its Rivals like Applebee's and Texas Roadhouse other competitors are looking to improve kitchen efficiency and customer value too some of these vintage Legacy casual dining chains real realize they have to change you know they have to make sure they're delivering for guests in a way that keeps them coming and one of the most important part of that is to have good service and for Chili's good service hinges on workers being able to do their jobs well as long as we stay focused on those things we're going to continue to see both improvements and metrics with customers as well as sustainable sales growth [Music]

Channel: The Wall Street Journal

Views: 627,821

Keywords: chilis, chili's restaurant, chilis menu, chilis locations, chilis pivot, automated burger grills, casual restaurants, casual restaurant chains, fast causal food, chilis menu items, ceo chilis, brinker foods, fried chicken, chicken crispers chili's, tempura breaded chicken, chilis shrimp, chilis operating costs, food prep, food prep jobs, restaurant operating procedures, food operations, food and beverage management, restaurant management, pickle jars, kitchen updates, bnss

Id: GnT7uTXQp-E

Length: 6min 24sec (384 seconds)

Published: Tue Jun 20 2023