The destination is delicious: Mobile technology is driving food changes, and restaurants are scrambling to prepare faster.

INDIANAPOLIS – They don’t eat stale, run-of-the-mill food, says Chris Baggott, CEO of Cluster Truck. That’s why the Indianapolis company pioneered the “ghost kitchen” concept of preparing food just for delivery.

By using technology to determine when drivers will pick up orders and serving specific geographic areas, the company ensures that no ClusterTruck meal takes more than 10 minutes.

Typical restaurant cluster track ways of doing business.

In a 2022 survey of more than 1,500 adults by location technology firm Bluedot, it identified three frustration trends related to mobile order fulfillment: “orders are cold,” “orders are not accurate,” and “employees are busy.” He said.

More than 45% of respondents mentioned cold food in February 2022. More than 40% did not get the food they expected, and more than 20% said they experienced inattentive restaurant staff.

According to Judy Chan, vice president of marketing for Bluedot, restaurants are refining their approaches to improve the customer experience. By September 2022, “orders are cold” complaints had dropped to less than 35 percent.

“Many restaurant brands have integrated or are in the process of integrating location technology into their mobile apps, which is key to ensuring orders are ready at the right time and when customers arrive – whether at the mobile reception area or at the drive-through window,” said Chan.

Fast-food and fast-casual restaurant chains are experimenting with take-out concepts. McDonald’s opened a digital-only restaurant in Texas in December. Chipotle operates “Chipotlan Digital Kitchens” in Ohio and Maryland, serving customers through drive-up and walk-up windows.

Among the 20 Chipotle locations in central Indiana, six feature app and online ordering “Chipotlanes.” Customers no longer speak into an intercom system or wait in a drive-thru line while placing an order. at 905 N. Green St. The planned Chipotle in Brownsburg will include a Chipotle in addition to the restaurant’s casual dining room.

A Chipotle spokesperson told EBJ that by 2022, in-restaurant dining will make up about 60% of the company’s business, while off-premise dining will account for about 40%.

“We have seen strong growth in off-premise dining and have enhanced our digital offerings to support the growth of this channel,” a spokesperson wrote in an email. However, our restaurant experience is just as important.

McDonald’s is the restaurant industry’s undisputed leader in mobile applications. According to information company Aptopia, it will collect 40 million downloads by 2022. The next three companies on the year’s top 10 chart — Starbucks, Domino’s and Taco Bell — combined for 34.6 million downloads.

James Poore and his wife Pam own six McDonald’s locations in Indianapolis. He said the popularity of the app is driving his business.

“Over the last three or four years, our customers have shown us that this is what they want,” Poore said. “This is how you want to handle transactions. And we follow the client as long as it suits the client.

Made to deliver

Last summer, Clustertrack spun off its software platform into a standalone business called Empower Delivery. Baggot said Empower intends to work with restaurant groups that are ready to launch “ghost kitchen” operations and have no ties to third-party delivery providers.

“Nobody orders from DoorDash for any kind of culinary experience,” Bagot said. “It’s for convenience. When something better comes along, people switch to it. That’s what we’ve proven with Cluster Track in three states.

In addition to ClusterTruck kitchens in Indianapolis, Broad Ripple and Castleton, the company has locations in Columbus, Ohio and Kansas City, Missouri.

Empower Delivery CEO Meredith Sandland is a former Yum! Brands executive who has co-authored two books on the transformation of the restaurant industry: 2021’s “Digital Restaurant Delivery: Plan Your Food Future” and the newly published “Digital Restaurant Delivery: The Road to Digital Maturity.”

In their second book, Sandland and co-author Carl Osborne argue that “digital native” restaurants are emerging as a different business model than fast-food, casual dining or fast-casual styles.

For starters, digitally-based restaurants pay less for labor and real estate by focusing on delivery. From the consumer’s point of view, the interaction with the restaurant takes place only in the digital space.

“Ghost Kitchens is zero,” Baggott says of the cluster track, though he’s not a fan of the term “ghost kitchen.” Real things happen at ClusterTruck, which is a purpose-built, delivery-only kitchen.

“We bring people here every week from all over the world to study what we do,” he said.

Archers app

If you’ve visited McDonald’s recently, you’ve probably seen or heard a reference to the company’s mobile app.

Customers use the app to make 27.4% of orders at the company’s restaurants in the Indianapolis metropolitan area, according to Mia Smith, owner of six McDonald’s locations in Indiana. By 2024, the goal is to increase app usage to 40%.

“Everybody’s moving around with phones and apps,” Smith said. “We want to be there. We want to be there for you at all times. It’s just one part of your life, period.”

Smith and fellow McDonald’s franchisee Poore have done food collaborations with celebrities like Travis Scott and Mariah Carey, driving the app’s downloads. This year, rappers Cardi B and Offset have created a custom meal to tie in with Valentine’s Day that customers can order.

Using the app provides data that McDonald’s can use to tailor incentives and offers to customers, Smith said.

Poore said app users can place an order, walk into a McDonald’s, pick up their food, and find other customers waiting in line at the drive-thru.

“When you get here in the lobby, we’ll grab your food,” Poore said. “No need to wait in the back for cars you haven’t ordered yet. It’s a bit different thinking, but we understand that if timeliness and speed are your priority, you’ll want to do it on the app.

In the year As for the self-order kiosks that arrived in McDonald’s lobbies in 2018, Pure said touchscreen devices were critical during the pandemic.

“Without those kiosks, Outbreak wouldn’t have been as successful,” Poore said. “Even today, we don’t have enough staff to open the front counter all the time. Having a kiosk there and having the option for customers to come and place their own order has been a brand saver for us.

Smith Kiosks reduce customer frustration and increase a company’s bottom line.

“It really helps with accuracy because[customers]get a chance to really pick the items they want and don’t need,” she said. “Then when you see the pictures, you’re like, ‘You know what? I want to have a delicious meal.’ I’ve noticed that the average check at a kiosk is higher than ordering at the drive-thru or at the front counter.

Faster, fresher

Cluster Track bills itself as “America’s first delivery-only kitchen.” Baggot has Domino’s Pizza as a trailblazer.

Since 1960, the Michigan-based pizza chain has focused on delivery and carryout, or “Delco” in restaurant-industry jargon.

In the year In 1973, Domino’s launched its “30 Minutes or It’s Free” promotion, which was discontinued after traffic accidents involving delivery vehicles in the United States.

In the 21st century, GrubHub emerged as a food delivery service partnering with contract drivers and more than 300,000 restaurants. Competitors in this field include DoorDash, Uber Eats and Postmates.

Tech companies that have built digital ordering systems for restaurants include Olo, Toast, and Lunchbox.

When Baggott founded Cluster Track with Dan McFadden, they wanted to beat the clock.

“The problem we plan to solve is the problem of time,” said Bagot. “Old food doesn’t taste good. When you order with DoorDash, and it takes 45 minutes to get your order, that food is done five minutes after that order.

ClusterTrack uses technology to track the location of delivery drivers (company employees as opposed to their own contractors).

“Until we know where the driver is, the system won’t let it cook,” Bagot said. “If I’m making pad thai, which takes six minutes to make, and I know my driver is 20 minutes away from the kitchen, we don’t start cooking until the driver is six minutes away from the kitchen.

According to Bluedot executive Chan, conventional restaurants use location technology to detect the proximity of customers on the street.

“Mobile technology in particular is helping restaurants deliver food at the right time,” Chan said. “When a store can see when the customer is nearby, the staff will know when to start preparing the order and have it ready to say ‘hello’ when the customer walks through the door or through the drive-thru window.”

Driving in ClusterTruck

Baggot said about 35% of ClusterTruck’s orders are made through the company’s mobile app, which isn’t necessarily the gateway to the business from clustertruck.com.

He said the website is efficient for customer and company interaction.

Co-founder of ExactTarget and years as a technology innovator, Baggott has decades of experience analyzing data.

“When you have an online order, you can hold a lot more information,” he said. “When I walk into McDonald’s, they don’t know anything about me. But when I order online, whether it’s through an app or online, now you know my phone number and you know my address. Now you know what I’m ordering you to follow me and make my content more relevant, which is a good thing.

With more than 3 million meals delivered to customers, ClusterTruck’s next step could be franchising locations in other cities, Baggott said, and possibly parts of central Indiana not served by existing kitchens.

Bagot said it’s important for franchisees to maintain the ability to prepare ClusterTrac’s 90 different menu items at a high level of quality.

Customer service is one more element that depends on the data collected on the website and the app.

“If I have a customer who has ordered 300 times and they have a problem, that creates a lot more urgency in our system than someone who orders once a year and complains every time they order,” Baggott said. “This kind of information is critical.”