To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily QSR AM Jolt. Your Pie emerged from the pandemic with a different business than the one it had built before 2020. For example, off-premises orders once accounted for roughly 10 percent of sales at the fast-casual pizza chain.
Today, that figure sits near 40 percent and has climbed as high as 45 percent in recent weeks. For CEO Ken Caldwell, the shift required more than adding digital ordering and accommodating delivery drivers. Your Pie had to reconsider nearly every piece of its restaurant model without sacrificing the hospitality that had long distinguished the brand.
This was the mindset as the brand navigated an 18-month period of refinement. The response touched technology, equipment, menu development, restaurant size, catering, corporate stores, and franchise expansion. The roughly 60-unit Your Pie installed a new point-of-sale system and loyalty app and added Tattle for guest feedback.
Its integrated technology stack connects Toast, Tattle, and Thanx, giving operators a clearer view of restaurant performance and customer behavior. The objective is also simplicity. Digital ordering and off-premises occasions added complexity to a model originally built around customers moving through a pizza line and dining inside the restaurant.
"One of the things that I have been trying to solve for a long time is to reduce the friction, not only in the guest experience but also in our operating model. Where we used to just be able to make pizza, it's a lot more than that now and so in order to hire and retain good people, we have to reduce the friction in the operating model." Data from those systems gives Your Pie insight into inventory, food costs, scheduling, customer frequency, and other key metrics. Guest feedback can identify shortcomings in individual stores and give the company information it can use for training.
Physical operations are changing, too. Your Pie adopted a self-rotating version of its brick oven during the past year, reducing the expertise required to operate the equipment. The menu has expanded with wings, additional wing flavors, and Pizza Shop Sandwiches, giving restaurants products suited to more occasions.
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