Yeah, Chuck, we can't hear you, unfortunately. Are you on mute? You were fine before.
Okay, we'll try and connect with Chuck. Let's get the process going, and Chuck can join us. Chuck was our client at International Dairy Queen, where we did the DQ Grill and Chill, and he was past chief operating officer, I think, of Panera Bread. Lots of experience in the food service industry.
So just one slide about us. We spent our time really understanding the connection between the consumer and brand, specifically in the built environment. And we spent a lot of time doing strategic foresight, looking at what are the future trends impacting the food service industry. And we actually, unfortunately, predicted the pandemic in November of last year as part of a greater context called Fortress America. You can read that on our website if you go and look for 2030 predictions. I think you'll find a great interest of how that's played out, unfortunately.
So we did a study about three weeks ago to really understand the impact Covid-19 would have on the marketplace. We wanted to find out specifically how the pandemic was impacting food operators in addition to consumers. We wanted to find out what are the mindsets. Chuck, have you joined us? No, still don't have Chuck here. I know he's here. Just we can't hear him. So the goal of the research was really to understand current and future restaurant patron behaviors. On that note,
during the pandemic and post-pandemic, how are consumers reacting? Where are they spending their money? Coming out of the pandemic, where are they going to spend their money? I think that's going to be very relevant to you as food operators and CPG brands. Identify which relevant social distancing and healthy safety processes. We asked respondents a whole list of things food operators can do to reinforce safety within the restaurant and within the takeout and drive-thru. Look at potential different behaviors happening in the marketplace that you can then take into impact. And obviously, we wanted to look at what are the potential risks in the marketplace food operators should be aware of.
So we looked at a whole bunch of metrics. We looked at confidence level, and we've been tracking confidence level now for the last two months. Interesting, we just came out of another study yesterday for CPG brands, and unfortunately, the confidence level keeps on tanking. We looked at what are the food service behaviors and how do those behaviors impact sales. We looked at does those behaviors impact based on geographical boundaries, age, gender, income levels. We looked at the different strategies, what comes into play. And we also did a separate study of 500 food operators to find out what are the correlations between what consumers are saying and what the staff are doing. And we have a poll here to describe your current status. If you could just answer that poll, that would be great. That would be very helpful.
So just to ground us on this study, you can see we had fairly good representation of the different age groups. 50% of the study was done in Canada, 50% was the US. We had 56% women and about 43% males.
Income levels and education. For example, here, the education, a significant percentage of response were from university. We had technical college, post-graduate, and obviously middle school because the study targeted younger consumers. In income levels, you can see here lower income had the largest percentage, but we had fair representation across the income levels. And this is important because we want to look at what are the responses based on income levels, age, and depending on the strategies we explored, it was either triggered and influenced by the income levels or triggered and influenced by the age of the respondents. And we'll get into greater detail in the next couple of slides. So I'm just going to share with you a very high-level kind of what came out of the study, the six insights. Obviously, cooking at home is on a significant rise. If you just read the papers about CPG brands, they've been having their best year
ever. I think PG just posted their best quarter ever. And obviously, consumers are forced to remain at home. They're spending more time in their house. They're experimenting with cooking. They're ordering in more food. They're, and we'll talk a little bit about that, which is the next point. Convenience has
changed forever.
Consumers are expecting a much higher level of convenience, specifically take home. When they come out of the post-pandemic, they're going to be craving physical experiences. They are going to be looking at... And we've actually identified where they're going to spend their money coming out of the post-pandemic. So it'll be interesting to see how that lines up with your brands and your experiences. Obviously, staff hygiene and social support were very important, both during the pandemic and post-pandemic. It was interesting that center promotion had limited impact, that consumers were looking more at
ensuring that the level of hygiene and safety. There's a lot of information coming out now of restaurant chains looking at opening their facilities in the next couple of weeks, couple of months, and the fact that they're going to have to charge more in order for them to break even, considering that they're going to have to have safety, let's just say fewer seats in the restaurant. And digital remains a very important tool. If anything, and we see this across the various studies we've done on COVID-19, is that COVID-19 is actually accelerating the use of technology. This whole idea of touchless technology is going to be very prevalent as we look at how consumers are engaged in built environments, and that's something that a lot of restaurant chains in North America are looking at. It's something that's very prevalent in Asia, where a mobile wallet, the ability of ordering and paying without ever coming in contact with
a server, is very prevalent. So let's get into the greater details of this study.
Chuck, do you have any comments or thoughts as we progress in this, were you able to connect with us? Yes. I'm not sure what happened early on, JP, but I'm back with you. And it's always good to see you.
But I would give one high-level thought maybe before we get into this, which is if I think through history, disruption has always been part of life. And you just think about the number of big events that have happened over our lifetime, and somehow, some way,
humanity and society always overcomes it, and we always come out better the other side. But the tough part is going through it and getting to the other side. And so, as you know, you kind of have to do what you have to do to survive during that time period. So when I think about what we're all facing as restaurateurs, right now it's just a battle to get to the other side and a battle to get into the channels that the consumers are willing to use, and then there will be this cautious emergence time period that we're about to go into, and then at some point, we're going to get back to the old restaurant behavior. Some other professions claim to be the oldest profession, but I actually think it's restaurants- ... to tell the truth. So what I'm curious about from this group is to understand how long it'll take before we get back to the pre-pandemic time period of how people use restaurants. Well, interesting, Chuck, that you ask because we have a poll here, and
58% say 12 months back to normal. There's, I think here, 17% say six months, and two years, we actually have a large percentage, 28%, that it's going to be two years before we're back to somewhat of a normal. Yeah. I would say that to the fellow restaurateurs I've talked to, most people are seeing it's literally sometime spring or summer of '21 before we're back to that. Yeah. Absolutely. So there's going to be some real things we have to think through, and I know this study is going to help us do that. Great. Thank you, Chuck. So this is just an aggregate. These are all the factors of responding to COVID-19, and what we've done here on this one page is, and we'll go into greater detail, is we're looking at connecting the dots, looking at the patterns. And what we saw in the patterns is that health and safety is definitely number one in consumers' minds when it comes to putting their mind at ease of
ordering food or going to a dine-in restaurant. Social was second. So how restaurants respond in supporting their communities and their healthcare workers is really important across all age groups, but specifically the younger consumers. Then support, which is supporting the community from a standpoint of knowledge and information. And then you can see value played very much a lesser role as we look across what we could do to help drive more visits and frequency post-pandemic. And then obviously we looked at subscription economy. It was interesting, though, that 25% were gravitating towards looking at a hot meal subscription program. So there are some emerging trends here that as food operators you should be looking at. So let's get into the deeper insights. So here's a great quote, "Picking up the food at the restaurant yourself means that there are not too many people involved who are able to
touch your food." And this is very much a prevalent factor that drove a lot of the statistics that we're going to share.
So when we asked consumers how do they view the pandemic, they saw it as extreme. 48% saw it as extreme crisis. And then actually, if you do the top two boxes, you're talking about 70, 80% of respondents viewing this as a severe crisis. And then as you look at the age groups, obviously as you look at older consumers and you look at lower income, there's a greater impact of COVID-19 on the consumer and their mindset, which is very concerning because when you look at these consumers when they're visiting your restaurants at the takeout or drive-thru window, there's a high level of anxiety.
And that leads to when we ask them, "What is your mood? How do you feel?" A great percentage are pessimistic. Obviously, the younger consumers are more optimistic, but overall, the overall mood of the marketplace is very much pessimistic. Again, it's not just COVID-19, it's what COVID-19 is creating from a financial security standpoint, financial anxiety with their customers. And Chuck, we talked about this when we were rehearsing for this presentation. I think there's going to be a lot of stress on value or on ... the ability of generating sales because customers are going to be looking for savings or looking at where they invest their money. Would that be a fair thought? Well, I'm going to say yes with a twist, which is I think consumers are going to get very tired of eating in, and they have already. And that's why what we're seeing is a growing shift from everything being at the grocery store to actually coming
back to some of the restaurants. And so we're seeing weekly comps build from becoming less negative. And as you're pointing out, the channels that create the social distancing and can be done in a safe manner are the ones that are growing quite rapidly. But in terms of the value piece, aligned with what the study was saying, which is we haven't seen people seeking that out as much
for it. What I am seeing, though, is a big difference in how different segments of the business are attacking this. And so if I could illustrate that for a second. QSR was basically 60 to 70% drive-through before all of this and the balance being the dining room. They're now doing 100% of their sales through the drive-through, but their comps are almost flat with what they were pre-COVID. On the other hand, if I go to the extreme of fine dining, takeout was minimal. They're fighting to put the channels in place, including ones like being grocery and serving the folks. And those are starting to get adopted, and people are, if it's the symbiotics or the cues are right in the sense of the safety and food quality, people are actually starting to use these folks for that because, again, they're getting tired of just doing all the cooking at home. Yeah, we're seeing that at one of the famous restaurants here, Central, is
a high-end restaurant, has actually have had to hire more chefs to be able to handle the takeout and pick-up orders. So it's interesting that indeed we're seeing that. Which is actually good for the fine dining industry, which has been kind of lagging when it comes to takeout.
So when we look at these buckets, social support ranked very high here. How important is it for the fast food or restaurants to support your country's needs during the COVID-199? You can see here, and later on we'll actually talk about one of the strategies, but very important. So if you're not actively visible in the marketplace, supporting healthcare workers, supporting your community, you're missing something. This is going to play out, building these brand loyalty during the crisis is going to play out when the post-pandemic is over. So really important to understand that. Yeah, and I would just say the restaurant industry in North America, I think, is doing a wonderful job. José Andrés, with his World Kitchen, they're doing over 200,000 meals a day through the various partners that are working with them. And I know restaurants are getting called on a daily basis about people wanting to
donate their food to the frontline workers. And I think it's just a beautiful thing that's not only helping support the frontline workers but also supporting these local small businesses. Yeah, that's great. Absolutely. And when we ask, building on your comment about the takeout, you can see here that the consumers are ordering takeout at a pickup window, drive-through, really, really important, doing really well. Ordering home delivery on Uber Eats, Grubhub outperforms ordering from delivery from the restaurant website or from their app. So you can see that consumers are looking for aggregates, they're looking for diversity of choice. But if they're going to order something not cooked at home, they're going to do it by picking it up at a pickup window or a drive-through. Yep. And I also want to give points to people that are being highly creative that don't have drive-throughs. They're creating these curbside situations, and
I've seen some beautiful things happening in urban areas as well, both in curbside and how they do the online pickup business in a way that can actually handle large groups of people but with good social distancing. Yes. Well, one of the things that important when we aggregate the various studies we've done on COVID-19 across different industries, that COVID-19 is actually accelerating behaviors that had started, a shift to more digital touchless. That's going across all channels. But the other one is the supermarkets have been doing inroads, eating in on the day parts for food service operators. You can see here that picking up at a supermarket food kiosk 10%. If we did this study a year ago, two years ago, you'd see that that number would be maybe 2% or 3%. So you can see that this is a growing segment as consumers doing their grocery shopping and wanting to have less contact when they leave their home, that they are picking up meals at supermarkets, and we
could see that trend accelerate post-pandemic. So that's something to keep in mind if you're a food operator competing with the supermarket chains, or if you're a supermarket chain competing with food service operators, you can see that that is an opportunity. Yeah. And JP, to that point, you're seeing again in the industry, a lot of restaurants are creating meal plans or family meals. So a meal that can serve for multiple days or a complete menu for the week, and people can buy "a box." And then the recipes come with it, and they can finish it at home. And again, it's accelerating behaviors that you talked about earlier, and it's interesting to see the crossover between the two. Yeah.
When you look at cooking meals at home, cooking meals from scratch at home, you can see the numbers here. Right across total aggregate is 57%. When you look at meals cooked at home by someone other than myself, which could be a family member, could be friends, 34%. And then the other thing that's really emerging is this, and it was happening before COVID, this idea that snacking is replacing one of the meals during the day. You can see here the growth of snacking, both sweet treats, salty treats, and healthy foods. You can see a significant growth here of that trend accelerating in the marketplace. It's something definitely worth considering as you're looking at day parts. If you're a food operator or if you're a CPG brand looking at day parts and filling those day parts with needs that consumers have.
So we asked, and this is a really important slide. Where are you going to spend your money? If you had your eating and lifestyle habits changed since COVID-19, yes, and you look at the age groups, where has the changes happened? And what you'll look here is you can see that going out to bars and restaurants coming out of COVID-19 is going to play a really important role. So you look at across the age groups, where are you going to spend your money coming out of COVID-19? You're going to see that bars and restaurants are going to do very well, followed by the platform of visiting retail stores and malls. People are going to want to go out and socialize again. Back to, I think, Chuck, to your comment, people will want back to humanity and meeting with individuals. I think cinemas, attending, hosting dinner parties will do well, but cinemas and business travel are not going to do so well, and going to work
and business meetings, not so well. So when you look at operators that play in the micro markets, for example, food service operators play in the micro markets, I think they're going to have some challenges post-pandemic for a while. They're going to be challenged on meeting those needs. And that would be the same with micro markets for hotels. You're going to see consumers reluctant to travel, business travel, and hence reluctant to attend or go to hotels. Your thoughts here, Chuck? I don't have much to add to what you said. I think the survey is hitting it head on. Okay.
So when we now go into the strategy. That's overall behavior and patterns. Now let's go into some of the strategy we looked at. For the order through a restaurant so I'm not limited to those restaurants that use Uber, et cetera. That's actually a small percentage of respondents that made those comments.
So we use a filter here in our business. We have an omni-experience model. We look at the customer needs, the operator's needs. We're going to get to both of these in our presentation. We're going to start with the consumer. What are the strategies across structure,
physical distancing process, what are the steps they take in messaging, what's the role of digital and physical? And we're going to get through all of these strategies. Again, I'm going to skip this. This you can, in the deck when you read it, it provide that context if you like.
So you look at process and structure, safe distancing, cooks and delivery employees wear protective gear, staff go through daily health screening, and strict sick employee stay home policy. Those are really, really important for consumers, and so how you articulate that is critical. And we have a
questionnaire here that you can fill out. How confident are you in the plans your company is creating for post-COVID operations? Love to hear what your thoughts are here, but these are the key. Obviously, it's back to Maslow hierarchy of needs. Safety and security are before you can move and provide a sense of belonging or aspire, you really need to answer those safety needs, and this slide talks to those. JP, I would like to add, and you were just saying this. I concur that all these things are foundational and necessary. But in addition to this, I believe that if the operators don't have some sense of humanity in this. In other words, it's very sterile what's happening over here. Mm-hmm. And people are looking for normalcy. They're looking for comfort. They're looking for still some kind of connection point. And so I think we have to do what's exactly on here, but we also to get through to the other side, people are still looking for that humanity
piece. Yeah. Interesting. The poll, let's see, 57% very confident and only somewhat confident was 14%. And we have a question from the audience. Basically, how do you create the emotional connection with the... Here you go here. The question really is: How are you maintaining the emotional connection with your customers right now? Yeah. So in your facilities, how are you doing that, Chuck? Well, some of the beautiful things that I've seen to date is we have our people who are packaging up all the food, and by the way, there's a safety sticker that goes on it so that we know the seal's been broken and all that kind of good stuff. But we have some people that are writing notes To the guests back, or they're putting artwork on it for the people that are coming in for the pickups, and there's relationships that have been developed. Obviously, there's a quick exchange from a safe distance. The other thing I think I've seen interesting is because a lot of people are
wearing masks now, they have their name tag on it, but then they actually have a picture of themselves and their family below that, so that there's, again, some human touch that's coming with it. Those are great ideas.
So moving on.
When you look at that humanity, when you're looking at adding that humanity during the moment of crisis, treatment of your employees is really important. So ensuring they have protective gear, ensuring that they're well-treated is a critical factor in how consumers, your customers, your patrons, are evaluating you. And then obviously provide helpful tips in staying healthy and safe is really important. So the opportunity, as Chuck mentions, of writing little notes about staying safe and two or three tips on things they can do in their house, reminding them about washing their hands. All these things are really important to do. You can see here they're very relevant. And women play a more bigger role. Yeah. J.P., I'd love to add one that's more behind the scenes, but since it's related to hockey, which I know Canada loves- ... I thought I would bring it up. But I think one of the most important things for operators,
especially if they have extended hours of operations, is having the shifts work in hockey lines. In other words, it's a group of people that stay together always. And so what you're doing is you're preventing cross-contamination across groups of people. So line A goes out, they work, line B comes in after that. B always follows A, and you sequence the days, and you sequence the shifts in a manner that there's never crossover. So it's always independent. So if you can think hockey lines, you can create some real safety for your employees as well as the guests. It's like a form of social distancing. That's a fantastic strategy. Thank you.
Again, from a social standpoint, companies lending manufacturing lines to support health, companies lending their trucks for delivery, food and beverage donations to care workers or the less fortunate. Those are really, really important factors
for food service operators to do and to be visible in the marketplace while you're doing it.
By the way, one of the ones that I would just say to the other food service operators, because I know a lot of people are doing a lot for frontline workers. I would also just tell you right now that the food banks are really stressed with the number of people that have become unemployed. Anything you can do to help the food banks out, I know they would greatly appreciate because their numbers have tripled, quadrupled overnight. Yeah. That's a great point. You look at some of the other policies. Strict sick employee stay home policy is really important. In Canada, we're fortunate we have universal healthcare, and we have very strong sick leave policies. Not every state has similar policies. So being able to compensate your employees while they're ill so the patrons know that employee's not showing up because they need a paycheck even though they're ill. Those are really important. The rest are hand sanitizers. Again,
very basic things. When we asked them how do we drive frequency post-pandemic, and what are the things that you can do as an operator? It was interesting that entertainment scored so high. Bundle promotional programs depending on the US. Obviously, US is a more value-driven consumer than Canada. And I would say that if we did this study a month from now, or two months, or four months from now, I truly believe that the value would start scoring much higher with more and more consumers struggling with employment. But entertainment played a very... Longer hours is one other opportunity. Customer appreciation party. But really entertainment bundle programs, sweepstakes, and coupons, those are opportunities in the US and across.
Then we asked the food operators, and I need to go through this for those food operators who are on the call. We also have another poll. Do you agree with these results you think will be the biggest driver in bringing people to your restaurant? I'd love to hear what you think based on your own observations and what you anticipate. So we asked food operators, 500 of them, what they thought.
Basically, this captures, I think, Chuck, what you've been saying. We're doing everything we can and constantly coming up with new plans. So very nimble, agile, looking at ways of solving these issues.
Interesting though that the operators were more optimistic. So when we did the poll, a lot of you said it was going to be 6 to 12 months. I think 40% of you said that. Actually, the study we did, and there's a reason for this which I'll go to the next slide, insightful reason, but basically three months, 29%. And obviously another segment said it was going to be longer
Sorry.
One of the things, the areas of focus that take, obviously again, social distancing and take home. So a lot of these strategies that the consumers are looking for, your approach are looking for align with what you are doing as operators, really important. I think I jumped a slide. Yeah.
Yeah, I think to your point, and I'm not sure what slide we're on right now, but if we were on the one that was just up there, to me, what's so evident is that consumers are looking for all the right cues- Yeah ... as it relates to your
safety, sanitation, health practices so that they in turn feel safe inside of it, but they're also feeling a big need to understand what we're doing for each other, and to help out. And I think restaurateurs naturally want to do that, whether it's the front line, whether it's the food banks, even the people that they had to furlough. In many cases they're getting meals to those folks so they're not food insecure. Yeah. Exactly. But that's important for the customer. Yeah, it is. I just want to go back to this slide. Just the point here, the circle really, what was interesting is that about 11% of these food operators said, "We're operating as usual with little disruption," or slightly impacted our business, or had no impact on the business. So there are regions within the US and Canada where the pandemic has had less impact. And we see that again across our numerous studies we've done on COVID-19,
that urban centers have been impacted the most, significantly the most. And there's going to be a residual behavior coming out of the post-pandemic, with those markets. And so when you start looking at your strategy, don't look at it as a universal strategy. You need to really look at these strategies as those markets that have what I'll call low impact. Safe distancing is going to be important, but it's going to be more about staff wearing the proper gear and that there's hand sanitizers available, things what I'll call simple things that need to be done in the dining area and in the takeout area. But in the high impact areas, this safe distancing is going to have to take a much more permanent or semi-permanent factor. And we're seeing restaurants now putting plexiglass dividers in the booth and things like that. This slide talks to that. And JP, one other thing to build on what you were saying is it's not only by
geography, but I think it's by category of restaurants. So QSR, fast casual, casual dining, fine dining. Yeah. Each one of those are going to have... They're being impacted differently now, and then the result of it, what behaviors and what they need to do going forward will also be different because of channels and stuff like that. Exactly. And again, we're looking at here post-pandemic, the chart on the right-hand side, what you're seeing is integrate social distancing in takeout area, invest heavily in staff protection gear. Those are really, really important factors, and they mirror what's happening during the pandemic. Same kind of scenarios. And the reality is we view a lot of those behaviors. What this study tells you is that a lot of the behaviors happening during the pandemic are going to mirror post-pandemic. They're just going to carry over post-pandemic. Then in the poll, then how do you
expect social distancing to impact your revenue over 2021? Expect it to decrease significantly, 42%. Expect it to decrease somewhat, 50%. So 90% of the response in the group here identified that this will impact your revenue, and I'm sure it will with you have fewer patrons in your restaurant, but you're still operating. It's going to put a challenge.
So we're just going to wrap with some of the strategies here, and I'm not going to read every single one of these. But in the process, putting a lot of emphasis on your staff, both your frontline staff, the staff that engage with their customers, and the back-of-house staff that are preparing the meal is really, really important. How you treat your employees is going to reflect how they treat your customers. And back to Chuck, your comment about humanity. We go to restaurants to socialize, to meet other people, and if that experience is negative because the staffer feel that they're not being appreciated or their life is at risk, their health's at risk, that just creates a negative experience. Would you agree? Yes, totally. And I think people are going to remember how we, meaning restaurateurs, behave during this crisis, whether it's their guest or their employees. And, subsequently, it will either
pay dividends or have a high cost. Exactly. Some other strategies here in the process. If you're contemplating use of digital as a way of ordering the food and paying, this may be an opportunity for you to accelerate. I'd go back and look at your POS provider. A lot of them do have a mobile application. We've done research previous years on food service, and we know that two key friction points customers have is ordering Getting the attention of the waiter to order, and then paying. And the pandemic has only accelerated this need to go touchless. And so if you were postponing the opportunity to go digital via a mobile device, this is the time to move it forward. Any other thoughts, Chuck, on this slide here?
I think it's captured well, so thank you. So now we move on structure. And this is something that when I talk to our food service clients, and I think, Chuck, we were talking about this also, is that not every food travels well. Not every meal will travel well in a takeout or a home delivery format. So you really need to go back and look at your menu offering and design it in a way during the pandemic that is takeout friendly. And so things like breaded fish, things that where moisture degrades the quality of the product, you got to look at those as things that you don't really want to sell your customer because it's not going to be delivered properly or deliver the right experience. So revamping your menu is really important. Look at your packaging. I think, Chuck, you talked about the stickers and humanizing the packaging. I think those are really important factors. And even your operating hours.
Obviously your dine in you're going to have to relook at your seating, your safe distancing. Those are all really important factors. So I would add two things to this one, JP. Oh, you're still on structure. Keep going. Yeah. Your staffing model's going to change. A lot of you had identified in the survey that you're going to have to spend more time cleaning the restaurants. If you look at the hotel industry, as Chuck was just mentioning before we had this webinar, is that hotels now are ensuring that the rooms are not used for three days so that the patrons feel confident that there's no viruses in that room. But these are additional strategies you need to look at as you look at opening up your dining room. Chuck? Yeah, I was going to add, and this slide is starting to touch on it, is I think what's happening behind the scenes is just as important what's happening in front of the consumer's eyes.
And so all those back-of-the-house practices that sets the right tone with your employees is also going to transfer to the guest. I also would just say that as you're looking at your menu, it's not just the
food cost, so to speak, that you're trying to rationalize your menu, but making sure the complexity and the labor margin that's attached to it to help you think about what is the 80/20 rule I want to put forward to help me get a bridge to the other side. And I just want to support one more time this concept of the hockey lines, which prevents the cross-contamination, so to speak, of human beings, in helping really keep this COVID-19 at bay. Well, that's great, Chuck. We'll add that to this slide, your hockey line concept. We'll add it to this slide, and so then when we send it out, we'll incorporate that thought. That's a great thought. In the message, the idea of using every occasion to reinforce that you're empathetic and supportive of the plight of your patrons through helpful tips and ideas. And those ideas could also be menu ideas. These could be ideas of complimentary products with their meal that
expands a sense of discovery. And so obviously the packaging plays an important role in reinforcing your social commitment. Those are critical, and I think we have another one here, some other ideas we had. Staff communication is critical. Very often it's not just procedures and processes we got to communicate to the employees, it's to build their morale and appreciate the fact that they're on the front line. They are putting their health at risk coming to work every day to support your business, and I think that's really important. Chuck? Yeah. Everything that's on here is wonderful, and I'd love to add one that I think is just naturally built into restaurateurs, and that's that we need to practice optimism, both with our team members as well as with the customers. Disruption has always been part of our lives. You think of 9/11, you think of the great financial crisis that everybody's gone through. You pull together,
you figure out how to make it to the other side, and we always become stronger and better, whether it's at the local level or the city level, or the state or the country level. So I do think we have to have a sense of optimism, even with all of this going on right now. Yeah, I agree, and that's a great point. And that really concludes the session. I'd like to open it up. If you have any questions, there's a question box or a chat box that you can type in your questions for Chuck or myself. And we will add some additional notes to this presentation. We both have this keynote that we video recorded in addition to the actual research document that we'll be sharing with you following this webinar. But if you have any questions we'd ask Chuck while we have his attention this time.
Give it a couple of seconds. Chuck, is there anything else while we're waiting for the questions that you're doing that we haven't covered in this presentation? Or are there other strategies you would want to impart with our audience? Well, it's something you taught me a long time ago, JP. And so I will say, reimagining the customer journey through these particular phases. In other words, right now it's a battle for channels, and you're thinking about how to do curbside or how to do drive-through or whatever. But instead of just doing it the way you've always done it, reimagine the customer journey in every step of it, and figuring out do we want to bring a new level to that experience? And so whether it's the channel, the day part, whatever, you almost have permission to reinvent and try things at a time period right now. And so to take advantage of this, it's a wonderful time to do that.
Or I can't remember, was it Rahm Emanuel said, "Always take advantage of a crisis," right? Well, every challenge is an opportunity, right? Yeah. But I do remember our customer journey discussions from our Dairy Queen days. Yep. Really important, that path to purchase. Let's just wrap up with another question here. Oh, here it is. What advice do you have for non-alcoholic beverage vendors who want to support restaurants who are reopening with these new priorities?
So if you're Diageo or Hiram Walker or some of these- For alcoholic or non-alcoholic? Oh, sorry, this is non-alcoholic beverage. So this would be the Pepsi beverages. Yeah. Well, I think so much about beverages is they're filling different need states, and there's a certain branding or identity to them. And when I think about those need states and identity, you want to match up with those brands that fit that. Mm-hmm. And I think the brands that have that, they're looking to figure out how to further solve the needs of people through this crisis. So I guess my major thought would be it's not about a shotgun, it's about really focusing on the ones that it's a win-win situation. And I suspect that given where restaurateurs are and the need for sales, they're going to be very open to listening to those folks. But the identity and the-- It's got to be a good match. Yeah. That's great. There's another question: Do you see
QSR restaurant design changing post-COVID? What will be the biggest change? What's your thoughts on that, Chuck? Well, I think it's very interesting because remember what I shared in the beginning, I've talked to a lot of my friends in the QSR business, and they're literally now seeing 100% of their sales coming through the drive-through. And by the way, their sales are flat to the pre-COVID time period. So if you think about it, they're not hurting very much. But on the other side of it, what I start to think about is do you really want your whole brand to be built around a drive-through? Or in other words, you're now a functional business. You're an unbranded food vending machine versus something that has an identity that people are attracted to and want to be a part of. So I think the hardest part for QSR going forward is are they going to build back those other channels or not? And I'm going to say the world is
going to go towards
not building those channels back, and I actually think the successful ones are going to rethink the dining room experience and other aspects of themselves to actually bring humanity back to their brand. They'll be the winners. Yeah. I agree with you, Chuck. And I think that's a really important point that you're raising, that you need to reinvest in driving the consumers back to your dining rooms. QSR, fast casual, obviously casual dining, and fine dining is at different dynamics. But really important because we've seen, and we've lived through assignments, and I won't name brands, where they went the convenient way of saying, "Hey, the consumer wants takeout, home delivery. Let's focus on that because it's easier than reinvigorating our dine-in rooms." When you look at the investment cost, it's significant, and the amount of time to build that across your entire network is long. But we've seen that brands that have done that have actually
eroded their equity and have moved from an experienced brand to a commoditized brand, moved from a brand that has an emotional connection to a brand that is tied to a discount coupon offer. And so, I think the point that you just said is critical, that if you're casual dining, QSR, fast casual, it's imperative that you reinvigorate the dine-in experience because that's where you build your customer loyalty, and that's where your margins are better, and your comp sales are better. So that definitely peaks the thought. And by the way, just to match it up with what the survey said, people are going to desire that human connection. Mm-hmm. They're not going to want to experience the drive-through window. Absolutely. Great point. Well, I'm going to wrap it up. I want to thank Chuck. Thank you very much for joining us. And Chuck, we didn't really have a chance for you to formally introduce yourself.
Can you tell us a little bit about your background? Oh.
30-year restaurant vet. I've worked casual dining, fast casual, and QSR, both public and private companies, and it's been a wonderful journey all the way through
it. And it's been fun to work with you, JP. Although it's been 20 years since we've worked together, it was a wonderful experience when we did. Great. We were younger and
full of... Yeah, anyway, we'll leave it at that. Yeah. I had hair back then, so yes. Well, thank you very much, Chuck. Thank you for all of you for participating on our webinar. I hope you found the information relevant too as you look at opening your restaurants to the consumers and using this as a way of evaluating what you're doing today and what you plan on doing in the future. Thank you very much. We'll be sharing this podcast or this video webinar with you in addition to the research report in the next couple of days. Thank you very much. Have a great weekend. Thank you. And stay healthy.
