Portillo’s has reduced back-of-house walking by 18 linear feet, which adds up throughout the day
“It’s a simple process and we try to keep it simple. We have been innovating in our kitchens to de-skill what is difficult, and we really had to make those changes during Covid when our business model flip-flopped to mostly drive-thru. That gave us an opportunity to really execute faster and made the entire experience better,” Dull said. “We are packing a lot of volume in a relatively short window of operation and we’re doing so efficiently.” Starbucks is also embracing equipment innovation to achieve more efficiency. Last year, the company introduced new brewing equipment backed by a $450 million investment. The “siren system,” as it’s called, trims the time it takes to make a Frappuccino from almost a minute and a half to just over 30 seconds. Beyond equipment, several chains are examining how to optimize their kitchen flow in general. Take Checkers/Rally’s as an example. The company tapped an outside firm to launch a motion study through a “fake kitchen” and concluded that team members were walking one full mile more than they should be during a shift. “That’s obviously a lot and not very efficient, so we reconfigured our kitchens to take some pressure off the fry station in particular, which set us up for success. That person on fries is freed up a little and it’s just made things easier on them,” said Kris McDonald, VP of Development.
The company is preparing to conduct a similar study again to continue making such improvements and ease some labor pressures. Portillo’s, meanwhile, is undergoing a “Kitchen 23” initiative. It’s reduced back-of-house walking by 18 linear feet, which adds up throughout the day. “That’s a big opportunity for us — consolidating the kitchen line so team members take fewer steps, giving them more time to make food or interact with guests,” said Garrett Kern, vice president of strategy and culinary. The company is also looking at simplifying other kitchen tasks. Restaurants used to prep 27 different items in the morning and now prep less than a dozen after sourcing pre-cut ingredients from its vendors, for instance. Team members also used to ladle salad dressing from gallon containers into smaller portion cups and then put the lids on. The company has since found a company that does this task at scale, giving its team members more time to improve the guest experience in other ways, Kern said. “Portillo’s differentiator is the experience — there’s a bit of theater in how we interact with our guests. So we looked at tasks that were repetitive and disengaging for our team members, and tried to eliminate those, so our teams can instead take an extra few minutes to make the perfect beef sandwich or interact with a guest,” Kern said.
19
Powered by FlippingBook