Whataburger opened a digital-only kitchen in Austin, Tex. this week. | Photo courtesy of Whataburger.
By Jonathan Maze
Source: www.restaurantbusinessonline.com, September 2023
The location in Austin, Tex., is cashless and seatless and without a traditional drive-thru. Customers order via mobile app or kiosk.
Whataburger’s latest restaurant doesn’t take cash.
The Whataburger Digital Kitchen, which opened in Austin, Tex., this week, is the chain’s first digital-only restaurant, where customers order via the company’s mobile app or through kiosks and get their food through a pick-up lane or a food locker.
The location does not have seats and it doesn’t have a traditional drive-thru, joining the ranks of brands experimenting with locations targeted specifically at the digital consumer. The location has a staff of 50 people, which Whataburger calls “family members.” The location is open 24 hours a day. The mobile pickup lane replaces the drive-thru, and food lockers on the exterior of the building are weather-resistant.
Austin, a technology hub, also made sense for the test. “Our Austin guests were early to embrace other digital innovations, making it a perfect fit for our first Whataburger Digital Kitchen,” CEO Ed Nelson said in a statement.
Restaurants continue to experiment with new prototypes targeting takeout customers, as to-go orders remain dominant in the post-pandemic economy. They are particularly interested in encouraging more digital orders, which are more profitable because they tend to be larger than in-person orders and operators don’t have an employee taking the order.
Such orders also come with more data, and potential tie-ins with companies’ loyalty programs give them the prospect of one-to-one marketing. Chick-fil-A this week, for instance, announced plans to expand its mobile order lanes to some 300 restaurants by the end of this year. Brands are experimenting with digital kitchens, drive-thru-only locations and various takeoffs.
Whataburger is the nation’s fifth-largest burger chain by sales, according to data from Technomic. The San Antonio-based chain, founded in 1950, generates more than $3 billion in annual system sales from its 950 locations.
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Restaurant Business Editor-in-Chief Jonathan Maze is a longtime industry journalist who writes about restaurant finance, mergers and acquisitions and the economy, with a particular focus on quick-service restaurants.
