NASHVILLE, Tenn. -- Imagine a customer ordering his or her meal with a mobile app that then triggers the order so the store can deliver that hot sandwich and drink just as the customer walks in.
That day is coming soon—at least at a Wawa test store.
Michael Sherlock, vice president of fresh food and beverage for the Wawa, Pa.-based convenience-store chain, said they are about to start testing a mobile app that uses geo-fencing technology to property track where a person is, so as to make sure his or her order is hot and ready precisely as that customer walks in.
“Key principles of our [mobile food-ordering] pilot are to offer the same food quality, keeping hot food hot and cold food cold,” Sherlock told about 50 operators at a breakout session at the 2015 FARE conference in Nashville, Tenn. “We also didn’t want to build food cubby holes, or add hot holding bins or extra refrigeration. We wanted the pilot to fit with our current operation.”
At least with the initial test, customers will also not be allowed to pay until they’ve walked into the store, keeping open the potential for impulse sales, Sherlock said. At least for now. Mobile apps, of course, offer the opportunity to pay even before entering the store.
Digital-ordering kiosks were also a technology Sherlock addressed, since the company had installed them back in 2000. Since then, 100% of their orders are handled via self-serve kiosks.
“For us, it was about speed of service and accuracy of orders,” he said. “Before, we were using pen and paper. We wanted to shift the labor from taking orders to more productive efforts like making sandwiches. It was also about speed, and for us, how quickly we turned parking spaces.”
Speaking on the topic of mobile, food ordering, Michael Hagan, chief strategy officer for LevelUp, Boston, said their customers are using mobile apps to customize their orders as well as paying, so that at peak times, sites can increase throughput as people walk in for their orders and walk out.
Hagan even suggested a “radical” notion that brands in the not-too-distant future will forgo point-of-sale (POS) registers altogether, opting for mobile-only ordering and payment scenarios.
Wawa has more than 680 convenience stores, approximately 420 offering gasoline, in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and Florida. The stores offer a large fresh food service selection, including Wawa brands such as built-to-order hoagies, freshly brewed coffee, hot breakfast sandwiches, built-to-order specialty beverages and an assortment of soups, sides and snacks.
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