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INDUSTRY: Fast Casual
PRODUCTS:
CLIENT PROFILE
Burger Life is Market Place’s newest venture joining MarketPlace Grill and MarketPlace Express. These restaurants are considered to be some of the highest volume and most progressive restaurant concepts in Arkansas. Burger Life is a fast casual restaurant located in Fayetteville where customers can choose every element of the burger, from the bun to the topping. The Angus beef, chicken, turkey, fish or veggie burgers can be topped with one or more of the 24 standard and premium toppings, 22 sauces, and at least a dozen Boar’s Head cheeses. Guests can add extras like fried dill pickles and sweet potato fries to their gourmet burger order. At Burger Life, guests can truly build the burger of their way.
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CHALLENGE
Burger Life, a fast casual restaurant offering customizable gourmet burgers in Arkansas wanted to implement a system that was “somewhat hip” and would help them reduce staff labor. Burger Life is all about customization and non-conformity, as customers can create a burger with Angus beef, fish, chicken, turkey or veggies and select from several cheeses, toppings and sauces to create the perfect burger. Any customer-facing technology needed to fit with the Burger Life atmosphere and work with existing technology.
SOLUTION
Burger Life selected Long Range System’s guest paging solution for fast casual dining that worked with the restaurant’s existing Kitchen Display System (KDS). The LRS paging system enabled Burger Life staff to automatically page customers when orders are bumped from the KDS, ensuring guests receive their meals as fast as possible. At Burger Life, guest orders are frequently split because a milkshake might be ready long before the rest of the meal, so paging guests whether all or part of their meal is ready for pick up virtually guarantees that the food doesn’t sit around getting cold.
Components:
Burger Life’s system has four components: an interface transmitter, 45 smoked coaster pagers, metal pager return holder and customer labels. LRS offers a variety of pagers in different colors including cool blue, smoke and black or shapes like the traditional coaster, pizza slices or lobsters, but the smoke coaster worked best in their environment. Burger Life also chose to do a custom coaster label displaying their restaurant logo to promote their brand.
Installation:
Initially, there were some integration problems between the new and existing systems. Pagers were going off for more than 30 seconds, and in this fast casual environment, shortening the page to 30 seconds was critical due to the split order pick up. The KDS company changed some of their code to make the pagers go off for only 30 seconds, and after that, the system worked perfectly.
Operation:
Guests order and pay for food at the register, and they receive a pager. The staff at the register inputs that pager’s number as the table number in the POS system. Guests will take their seats and wait for their order, and when any part of the order is ready, they are paged to pick it up.
RESULTS
Implementing the paging system was simple, and Burger Life feels it is very reliable. The staff can focus completely on guest needs and busing tables when customers leave. The pagers do create more traffic in the dining room because customers are picking up their food, but that actually helps establish the busy environment they purposely create in their restaurants. There’s also a sense of anticipation created by the pagers because guests are excited when the pagers light up and vibrate.
BUSINESS BENEFITS:
Burger Life installed the paging system as part of a concept change, but having the system has definitely reduced labor costs. Previously, the staff would find tables by looking for a number on a condiment stand then running the food out to the appropriate table. Without a paging system, they would need at least one more runner to serve customers. Now the food gets to the customer almost immediately, and because the customer is replacing the food runner, the staff can focus on guest needs (which can increase sales) and cleaning the tables quickly. The paging system creates the kind of self-service environment that prompts guests to buss their own tables and take their items to the trash bins, which further reduces labor costs. Initially, Burger Life checked out competitors when selecting a paging system, but selected LRS pagers because of their durability and convenient rechargeable stacking station.
Burger Life plans to continue using LRS systems in this restaurant and any future stores they build.
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