There’s nothing like the smell of chicken wonton tacos with a hint of modern technology to go with it.
Applebee’s, a Dine Brands Global franchise, is spicing up its point of sale (POS) systems as part of a larger technology transformation occurring at the food and beverage company.
You’re toast! IT Brew caught up with Dine Brands CIO Justin Skelton to learn more about what the company has been cooking up on the back end of the popular restaurant chain. Skelton, whose favorite Applebee’s dish is the riblet platter, told IT Brew that the franchise was due for an upgrade from its legacy technology, given that its current POS system has been in production for about 20 years. He described the tablets used by servers to take orders as old and clunky.
“It’s sort of like using an old Atari system versus using a PS5,” said Skelton, who joined Dine Brands in 2019 as VP of IT infrastructure and operations.
For those of us whose restaurant knowledge comes solely from The Bear, Skelton said a good POS system can elevate the service a restaurant is able to provide to a customer.
“A lot of times when our guests come in, particularly during the lunch day part...they’re very busy. They need to come in, they need to leave,” Skelton said. “So, the fact that we can improve our service level and get our guests on their way and improve that guest experience is something that’s significant.”
During his search for a next-gen POS system, Skelton outlined the need for a system with several qualities. For one, it needed to be able to accommodate the rate at which Applebee’s changed its menu, which happens any time it has a new menu item, promotion, or limited time offer.
“The platform needs to be flexible enough to be able to accommodate that change at scale,” Skelton said. “So, an enterprise capability was critically important for us.”
The new POS system also needed to be modern, cloud-based, and compliant with the franchise’s security and governance requirements, Skelton added.
After a “fairly lengthy journey,” Skelton said the restaurant chain—which has more than 1,600 locations globally—ultimately selected Toast as its new vendor. With the new POS system, restaurants in the franchise would be able to send orders directly to their kitchens through their kitchen display systems (KDS) and accept payments directly on tablets.
Top insights for IT pros
From cybersecurity and big data to cloud computing, IT Brew covers the latest trends shaping business tech in our 4x weekly newsletter, virtual events with industry experts, and digital guides.
“The fact that you can actually take payment right there on that device is really transformational for our Applebee’s system,” Skelton said.
Breakfast club. IHOP, Applebee’s sister brand, went through a similar digital transformation last year when it upgraded its legacy POS system to Tray, a cloud-native platform. There are more than 1,800 IHOP locations worldwide.
“Before the Tray rollout, if you walked into an IHOP, largely the servers would actually take your order on a paper pad,” he said, adding that the pancake house restaurant chain also installed new KDS technology into stores to help bolster communication between servers and cooks.
Skelton, who prefers IHOP’s classic french toast over an order of pancakes, said Dine Brands learned several lessons from IHOP’s migration process that will be leveraged in Applebee’s legacy system overhaul, including the importance of change management. He said the company has made sure to maintain frequent communications with Applebee’s employees about the rollout of the pending POS system and what they can expect down the line at their stores.
“You’ve got change management that goes from being able to write down the order to actually hitting the buttons on a screen on a tablet,” Skelton said. “It may seem little. These changes may not seem that dramatic, but they are change management things you have to consider.”
Taste test. Applebee’s is currently piloting Toast in select stores. Skelton said the chain intends to roll out the new-gen POS system “in earnest” next year. He added that a similar transformation is in the works for Fuzzy’s Taco Shop, another franchise in Dine Brand’s portfolio.
Skelton advised companies looking to undergo a digital transformation to understand who their customers are and to make sure new technology meets functional requirements, end user demands, and non-functional requirements.
“Those are things like system availability. It being cloud-based,” Skelton said. “The things [that] aren’t visible easily to…the guest.”
He added that companies should be willing to face challenges during the process.
“Along the way, if you don’t get it right, that’s okay,” Skelton said. “You got to be willing to fail.”