From the Front of the Drive-Thru Line:
Amarillo, TX – A QuickByte Success Story
*Many details of this story have been anonymized and obfuscated to protect sensitive details of QuickByte’s customers. Treat this anecdote as an illustrative point, rather than an opportunity for Sonic HQ to investigate the Amarillo branch.
An ordinary origin
It hasn’t been easy to be a fast food franchisee the last couple years in Amarillo, Texas. Apart from the country-wide concerns like recovering from a pandemic, record inflation, and supply chain disruptions, the economy had historically been buoyed by on-route road-trip tourism that has been slowing down as a result of some important pandemic museum and landmark closures. Town support hasn’t been there, as recent tourism initiatives have been centered around local food hotspots, leaving chain restaurants under-visited. Labor constraints are also particularly bad, as more of the town’s youth has left town over the last few years than every before.
Enter Melissa Rodriguez, a Sonic franchisee. In December of 2023, one of her key remaining employees quit without notice. She needed to “get in the trenches” herself to keep things afloat, and had spent over 50 hours in the past month looking for someone to fill her ex-employee’s shoes. With the changes in the labor market, it was just too expensive to hire someone at the new rates. Melissa thought that her dreams of owning a successful franchise were about to be dashed. Fortunately, Melissa learned about QuickByte in January of 2024, and decided to get in touch with our founding team.
We put the “Fast” in “Fast Food”
Thirty minutes into a preliminary call between Melissa and the QuickByte team, where she was given a demo of the revolutionary software, she knew that this was the solution to her business woes. For less than she was paying her previous employee, she could reach 100% customer-facing uptime, while only maintaining a kitchen staff. This skeleton crew was well within her range of profitability, and she would be able to regain her freedom.
Her only concern – how soon could they get there!
The QuickByte team heard Melissa’s plight, and knew that it was do-or-die for her business. Given the company’s founding principles around “Franchise-first focus” they knew they had to prioritize getting there as soon as possible. The team found a three-leg-flight that would get them there the next day.
As this was the QuickByte team’s first time plugging into a Sonic Franchise, it took two nights (while there were no customers) for the team to work through all of the system integration, and had the channel working flawlessly. Any customer could now interface directly with her point of sale through the power of voice!
An extraordinary result!
After the first week with QuickByte, Melissa was thrilled. Her store was profitable again, and customers were happy!
Strangely enough, after about two weeks, she noticed that her ingredients were lasting longer than usual. Her “star employee” turned out to have been making a lot of mistakes, and remaking orders without her awareness. QuickByte reduced her error rate by over 99% overnight!
Just when she thought it couldn’t get any better a month later, she recognized that her team had over-ordered burgers, and she wasn’t sure if she would be able to get through of all of them before they would have to go in the dumpster. This could be a nearly $4,000 mistake. She got in touch with the QuickByte team again, and within 2 hours she had updated her QuickByte client to ask every customer if they’re hungry for a “juicy, delicious, cheesy burger” before they ordered. They sold through their burgers without any issue.
Since then, she has her QuickByte agent ask to add on an order of chili cheese tots to every meal – something that over 60% of customers say “yes” to. This has amounted to her store’s revenue jumping by over 20%
How does this apply to you?
While Melissa’s case was certainly on the extreme end in terms of financial needs and results, it highlights a lot of the key value propositions that QuickByte believes we offer to franchises. If you want to start finding some extra profitability, speed, and accuracy in your drive-thru business, get in touch with our team today!
