Boston Pizza

Problem

Boston Pizza, a casual dining operation with 325 stores stretching coast to coast, provides home delivery for most of its extensive 125-item of pizza, ribs, pasta, salads, sandwiches and more. Like most delivery chains, it relied heavily for years on telephones to direct takeout and delivery orders to restaurants, including the use of a one-number call center in one region.

Yet as company officials had long believed, and extensive researched has proven, customers often want to order food from their home PCs and increasingly from their mobile devices. Therefore, Boston Pizza's goal was to develop an online ordering channel that would allow guests the option of using smart phones and computers.

Approach

After an extensive review of online ordering options, Boston Pizza selected ONOSYS Online Ordering to customize its system. A nine-month development and implementation process followed as the system was tailored to Boston Pizza's specific needs including a specific look and feel that was refined in a multi-store test.

The complex undertaking included integrating many components from the payment and point-of-sale systems in all of the chain's restaurants to synchronizing pricing and menu information with the data warehouse in Boston Pizza's Vancouver, B.C. based data center. Electronically mapping delivery areas was also a key factor in the program’s success, ensuring guest orders were directed to the most appropriate location.

Once the system was ready, it was quickly rolled out to every restaurant in the chain with a comprehensive training and support package to ensure a consistent guest experience across the country: a very important criteria for a national brand like Boston Pizza.

Results

The benefits of the new system are already evident. The average guest transaction is higher when placed online rather than by phone or in store, and guests report higher satisfaction using the online system rather than phoning orders in. Other benefits have been realized as well: The system directs online orders directly to the restaurants kitchen video system, eliminating waste through the elimination of paper chits and making the order process more reliable.

Historically, 10-15 percent of its annual sales are generated by takeout and delivery, a number Boston Pizza wants to drive through online ordering as soon as possible. With online orders growing at a speedy clip of 25 percent per month, that goal might not be too far into the future. With online ordering now running smoothly, the chain is well on its way of achieving its aims of unparalleled guest service and store-level profitability.