In addition to increasing digital orders, a purposefully designed off-premises operation also improves the on-premises experience, since it leads to less interruptions from delivery drivers walking in when a guest is inside trying to enjoy their meal, O’Reilly notes.
The virtual brand world emerged as another large growth opportunity for Smokey Bones to explore. In October 2022, it launched BiteHall, a virtual food hall concept that took five brands—Smokey Bones, The Wing Experience, Burger Experience, plus two new virtual brands, Bowl Market and Tender Box—and combined them under one umbrella and website.
The idea stemmed from thinking about the guest experience (sound familiar?), and in this case, multiple guests who may not want to eat the same thing for dinner or have multiple delivery charges. BiteHall has one ticket, one delivery fee, and one service fee.
“We’re designing it to be an Amazon-like experience, where you can cross shop from different brands with different menus,” O’Reilly says. “It’s really exciting, and I believe it’s in its absolute infancy.”
BiteHall took a year to develop, and O’Reilly’s team started by looking at what menu categories could drive growth from a guest-facing standpoint while being relatively easy to execute in restaurants—without overcomplicating operations, importantly. For example, BiteHall would not add a virtual pizza brand at this point, since they don’t have pizza ovens at Smokey Bones restaurants, O’Reilly says.
“But restaurant operators are experts at preparing protein-based entrees, which is the majority of our business. Meat is what we do,” he says, which led to Burger Experience and The Wing Experience. “There’s no other restaurant chain that has 50 flavors for wings.”
Chicken-centric Tender Box, meanwhile, offers crowd-pleasing combos such as chicken and waffles, chicken and donuts, and Carolina dipped tenders.
“The way we’re managing it from the back of house and BiteHall standpoint allows us to efficiently execute all these items without compromising,” O’Reilly adds. That meant investing in back-of-house technology to essentially create a mini kitchen line with a dedicated flow for virtual brands, separate from dine-in entrees.
Changing off-premises packaging to BiteHall branding was an easy simplifying solution, and also allows for cross-promotion by featuring the logos and brief descriptions of all BiteHall brands. DoorDash Drive is the company’s fulfillment partner for all off-premises orders, though Smokey Bones does some in-house delivery for its catering business.
While on-premises orders comprised 80 to 90 percent of business in 2019 when O’Reilly joined, the brand has now grown its off-premises platform to nearly 50 percent over three years. And based on the early consumer response to BiteHall, O’Reilly plans on investing more into the platform in 2023.
“The blurring of the lines has been more of an outcome than a goal in and of itself,” O’Reilly says. “If trying to make a virtual brand experience less complicated for restaurants and for guests, then we’ll do that. If providing guests with more choices is what they want, then that’s something we can do.”