For its guests and its team members, Del Taco is in the early stages of delivering a new look and brand refresh.
— By Katie Lee —
When Southern California-based Del Taco recently launched a brand refresh that puts a more modern emphasis on its value, freshness and heightened hospitality, it embarked on several back-of-house and guest-facing initiatives that, yes, better serve its guests — but also better serve (and inspire) its team members.
Chad Gretzema, Del Taco
“When people think about innovation, they tend to think just consumer-facing,” says Chad Gretzema, senior vice president of strategic planning and innovation for Del Taco. “To me, the most innovative product or the most inviting building really doesn’t matter if your team can’t or doesn’t want to deliver on the brand promise.”
Twice a year, Del Taco conducts research surveys as well as roundtable focus groups with employees across its 585 corporate and franchise locations. Improvement and innovation are key topics of discussion. What are some things employees would like to see Del Taco or their supervisor do to make their jobs better? Nobody knows the reality of day-to-day operations like a cashier or fry cook.
“As you’d expect, some of the best ideas come from team members,” Gretzema says. “If we don’t spend as much time innovating on their behalf, so they can deliver a great experience to the guests, I think we’re only working on half the equation.”
“Innovation in the restaurant space is moving at such an accelerated rate right now,” Gretzema says. “A lot of that is because technology has a greater influence in all of our lives. But the quick-service category is as competitive as it’s ever been — with not only all of the quick-service players evolving quickly, but fast-casual players becoming more and more convenient, with order-ahead and delivery options. What that means is all brands need to have a good handle on what makes them convenient and stand out from their competition.”
Del Taco did not arrive in the present day without change along the way. Dubbing its new brand refresh as “more evolution than revolution,” Del Taco is in the early stages of testing its ‘kitchen of the future’ design in preparation for an eventual next-generation design and new facility prototype.
“It’s definitely been an iterative process,” Gretzema explains. “We’ve had various pieces of that ‘kitchen of the future’ in small-scale operational testing. We’ll take a handful of stores and test different pieces of equipment and different configurations of the kitchen. Some of those elements perform so well in that small scale, that they have earned their way in to the remodel testing.”
“Essentially, the team member can put the tortillas in and then go do something else — it allows them to multi-task and be a little more efficient. Additionally, it significantly improved the temperature of our tortillas,” Gretzema says.
For the first round of remodels Del Taco selected several older, high-volume locations that have begun to outgrow their capacity. “These are stores that were built and designed in the early 1970s, and as you can imagine, the menu and the guest expectations was very different from what it is today,” Gretzema says.
Gretzema lists four phases for the remodel testing. First, exterior design: improving appeal from the street to attract new guests. Second, the company plans to enhance the convenience of its drive-thrus via new ordering processes and technology. Third, Del Taco is reevaluating its interior dining experience, making the dining room more inviting and contemporary to increase dine-in occasions. Fourth: improving the kitchen to increase the ease of execution and efficiency for its teams, and also to showcase its fresh food prep.
To emphasize its fresh ingredients and onsite food prep, Del Taco now showcases freshness coolers and walk-in refrigerators in several of its restaurants. “It’s amazing how many guests will say, ‘Is that block of cheese real? You guys really shred your cheese here?’” Gretzema says. “We can put up all the posters we want to tell people that, but sometimes it takes seeing-is-believing. Same thing with grilling, too. In these remodels we want to spotlight that grill because we know a lot of our QSR competitors aren’t grilling chicken fresh, and they’re not grilling steak fresh. We really think it’s a point of differentiation for us.”
Technology — from drive-thru monitors to high-tech menu boards — is also driving operational innovation at Del Taco. Within the past year, the company partnered with a learning management company to bring bilingual e-learning training to all of Del Taco’s employees. When a brand has 11 promotions per year (such as new menu items), there is always something new to train employees on. “The great thing is, we’ve leveraged technology to ensure well over 90% of our folks pass a training course on each promotion,” Gretzema says.
Interior menu boards are also getting an upgrade. The new magnetic system looks more like a fast-casual menu board, and it definitely exudes an elevated perception versus a traditional “trans light” menu system. In the near future, Del Taco plans to test digital menu boards in both its dining room and its drive-thru.
The first remodel test opened in late March in Mission Viejo, California. “This is really an iterative process, so it’s going to take us a little bit of time to refine the various elements and costs and what we want to include — what’s a ‘nice-to-have’ versus a ‘have-to-have’?” Gretzema says. “That will be something that we’ll partner with our franchisees on — where do we think we can get the most return on investment? What are the key pieces we have to have to really set our teams up for success?”
Most of the older Del Taco restaurants range about 1,900 square feet. First-generation Del Tacos devoted minimal square footage to in-restaurant dining, preferring to keep the focus on California car culture and drive-thrus. Today, new builds allot more space to dining rooms and span 2,400 square feet.
Keep evolving, keep innovating — those are words that Del Taco has lived by for more than half a century. “There is always an exciting opportunity to innovate, whether we’re working on making it better for our teams or making it better for our guests. I think the best part of my job is when folks who have worked so hard on an innovation see how their efforts have made it better for somebody else. I guess you could say I’m ‘proud as Del’ that our team takes so much joy in serving others.”
SIDEBAR:
Del Taco: Repair & Maintenance Plan
R&R: Describe how Del Taco handles repair and maintenance.
Chad Gretzema: “Our franchisees handle R&M individually, although some larger franchisees have folks dedicated on their team to handle it. For our [320] company restaurants, we’ve got a talented facilities team that manages the repair & maintenance requests utilizing a cloud-based facilities management system. Dean Norby is our senior director of facilities, and his team leads all of that R&M for those restaurants.
“As a 24/7 business, when a piece of equipment goes down, we can’t wait. Having a team that makes sure that we get things fixed quickly is a high priority for our operators.”
R&R: Do you use local or national vendors?
Gretzema: “I would characterize them as regional vendors because we want vendors that can cover a large number of stores. For instance, we’ve got longstanding partnerships with really great HVAC [Air Rite] and plumbing [Plumbing Masters] vendors that can cover the bulk of Southern California for us. Which is great, because they know our restaurants really well. Those regional partnerships are really valuable for us.”
R&R: By what criteria do you choose your R&M vendors?
Gretzema: “A combination of service and price. Again, it’s a 24/7 restaurant — we’ve got to have vendors that we can count on. Really building those vendor partnerships and having folks that we can trust, to handle after hours emergency repairs is critical for our business. Additionally, we regularly sit down with our vendor partners and discuss areas where we can achieve cost savings.”
— This article originally appeared as the cover story of the April 2019 issue of Retail & Restaurant Facility Business magazine. Email the editor, Katie Lee, at katie@francemediainc.com.