— By Savneet Singh —
How cutting-edge tech helped Hooters of America upgrade its dining experience.
Americans love experiences, with the majority (61%) of Gen Z and Millenials choosing to invest in them, according to Experian, over retirement savings. And with all the money they’re spending, they anticipate outstanding outcomes — especially when it comes to dining. Competition in this sector is fierce, with seemingly endless options for the 9 in 10 customers who enjoy going out to eat, per a February 2024 report by the National Restaurant Association. The most forward-thinking restaurants are investing in cutting-edge technology that can help engage and retain guests, leading to strengthened customer loyalty and more repeat business.
One organization investing in such tech is Hooters of America (HOA). A critical element of Hooters’ success is ensuring that their guests have a legendary experience: By moving to a new POS, Hooters will get increased automation within the store that allows Hooters’ wait staff to focus on exceeding guest expectations rather than time-consuming administrative POS functions (think manual order entry, payment processing and menu updates).
HOA is currently refreshing its tech stack with a solution that improves the dine-in experience and provides post-visit incentives for customers. Hooters is still early in the deployment process of this end-to-end technology upgrade for table service, demonstrating how integrated loyalty, POS and inventory solutions can transform restaurant experiences, order accuracy and operational performance at enterprise-level establishments. After implementation, patrons of HOA’s 367 locations (spread across 36 states and 18 countries) can expect a smoother, swifter and more satisfying dining experience.
The Challenge:
Enhancing Dining Experiences to Drive Customer Loyalty
Six businessmen founded the first Hooters restaurant in Clearwater, Florida, in 1983. They had no restaurant experience and wanted to open a place they “couldn’t get kicked out of.” Since the first location’s inception, the brand has focused on providing best-in-class hospitality and great food. However, increased industry competition drove Hooters to find a differentiator that could set them apart and maintain their edge in the market.
Hooters delivers outstanding hospitality, legendary table service experiences, and tasty menu items like their famous chicken wings. These front-of-house factors play a major role in an overall enjoyable restaurant visit, but customer service will suffer if back-of-house causes bottlenecks and operational inefficiencies. Having disparate systems that can malfunction or miscommunicate is a one-way ticket to missed requests, incorrect orders and dissatisfied customers.
Research shows that it takes more than just comping part of a check or having the manager apologize to undo the negative impact of a bad experience, even if they’re infrequent. According to PwC, nearly a third (32%) of customers will entirely abandon a brand they previously loved after just one bad experience. To prevent such dining-out disappointments and ensure their customers are happy, HOA decided to add to its tech stack to enhance its operational efficiency and order accuracy.
The Solution:
Innovative Tech to Streamline Operations
HOA is working with a powerful technology partner to revolutionize the table service experience. This collaboration will expand HOA’s toolkit to unify its loyalty program, POS system and data/inventory management. This approach enhances guest engagement and retention, aligning with Hooters’ objective of fostering long term customer loyalty. Furthermore, adopting a configurable, user-friendly POS system improves productivity, while incorporating an inventory module ensures a centralized repository for data, optimizing inventory management processes, minimizing food waste and reducing expenses.
HOA’s loyalty program is powered by an industry-leading platform that engages and retains guests through personalized offers and rewards while enabling frictionless back-end campaign management. This system helps increase return visits and customers’ per-visit value through automated acquisition tools and AI-driven recommendations. An added bonus? The loyalty program technology integrates seamlessly with HOA’s existing POS system so restaurants can deliver the ultimate loyalty experience, uninterrupted.
And that’s not all the POS system can do. It’s configurable, easy to use and scalable, making it ideal for an ever-growing enterprise like Hooters. The customization enables teams to tailor the system to meet the specific needs of individual restaurants and optimize workflows. An intuitive, user-friendly interface minimizes errors and reduces new hire training times, allowing staff to focus on customer service rather than constantly battling complicated software. Scalable systems can grow alongside the business, eliminating the need for costly upgrades or replacements as the enterprise expands.
Like other brands, Hooters’ off-premise business grew significantly over the last 5 years and has become a critical revenue stream. The new POS integrates with online providers and delivers improved data synchronization and accuracy between Hooters and its online food partners.
Also in the works for this new tech stack is the data/inventory hub, a reliable cloud-based data pool acting as HOA’s single source of truth for precise inventory accuracy and food waste reduction. This platform is known to significantly reduce food costs, typically by 3-6%, when transitioning from no back-office software solution and another 3-6% on labor costs, on average.
The new data hub also builds staff schedules. Hooters managers can now accurately and efficiently schedule staff to match historical and forecasted store traffic. Additionally, this solution can coordinate complicated data sets like payroll, supply chain, accounting and sales to give a holistic view of the entire operation for deeper insights and smarter planning. What makes this technology even better? It makes real-time data available and accessible from any device as needed; operators can now make decisions that typically require hours of data collection while checking a smartphone.
With the new platform, Hooters will access a table service technologies roadmap, such as tablet-based ordering and pay-at-the-table. As the brand progresses with its implementation, the appropriate technologies can be custom-matched to each store based on their volume and configuration.
Embracing Innovation:
A Win-Win
Having a single POS, loyalty and restaurant back-office provider gives HOA a 360-degree view of its business, safeguarding historical data and existing partnerships. This decision maximizes customer value by offering tailored solutions that drive efficiency and innovation across operations.
HOA teams will be able to allocate more time and resources to building customer relationships. This comprehensive, customized tech solution will equip the enterprise with the efficiency and innovation necessary for creating positive, memorable experiences that fuel business success and foster customer loyalty.
— Savneet Singh is the president and CEO of PAR Technology Corp., one of the largest restaurant technology companies in the world, and president of ParTech, Inc. After taking the helm at PAR, Singh restructured and recapitalized the business from near bankruptcy to a market cap of over $1 billion.