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M A R C H / A P R I L 2 0 1 5 • R E S T A U R A N T D E V E L O P M E N T + D E S I G N • 3 5 "We seem to be coming to the end of the communal seating trend," he says. Many restaurants that adopted this concept believed more seats would boost business. Instead, Americans typically don't want to sit down to a meal with strangers, so seats between parties lie empty. Thus many restaurants have ditched the concept in favor of more traditional seating styles. Rethink Positioning of Kitchen Equipment, Work Stations The back of the house also presents notable opportunities to raise effciency. Take the cookline in a QSR, for example. "If you have a 14-foot line in the back, you may analyze how you use the equipment and fnd that you don't need a 6-foot rail," Martinez says. "A 4-foot one will do. And you don't need eight burners; four will do. So you reduce the line from 14 feet to 10 feet." That reduces the amount of space that cooks need to traverse to fulfll orders, result- ing in improved labor effciency. Such nips and tucks also reduce the overall footprint required for back- of-house operations, which can free up more space for revenue-generating front- of-house areas. Checkers' recent prototype redesign embodies this strategy. In addition to a de- sign refresh, this 800-plus-unit brand was given an effciency and space utilization refresh as well. One of the biggest changes was going from the chain's traditional double drive-thru lines to a single line. "Historically, we had two assembly lines — one for fulflling orders on the 'driver's side' and one on the 'passen- ger's side,'" notes Jennifer Durham, vice president of franchise development for Checkers Drive-In Restaurants Inc., which also owns the Rally's brand. That served the brand well for decades, but the chain's menu had changed since its original prototype was designed, Durham explains, and newer items such as chicken wings and ice cream had been added without a signifcant reconception of the production area layout. "We started over with a clean sheet of paper," Durham says. The company brought in experts to perform time- and-motion studies on how employees cooked and assembled every product. The fndings guided the reconfguration of the kitchen area and the revamping of order-fulfllment processes. Checkers' new design features just one assembly cookline that performs more effciently than the old two-line setup. In the new assembly line, the areas between the kitchen, sandwich assembly area and register were shrunk, and new equipment has helped to speed up production. For instance, cooks now have headphones that allow them to start orders from the moment customers speak into the menu board. Video monitors display orders to cooks so that they can easily confrm or- der accuracy if they are unable to hear an order or if they forget an item in the heat of battle. "Technology helps us accelerate the orders," Durham says. "We've made one line move faster than two." It's All About You sales@fwe.com 800-222-4393 www.fwe.com FWE recognizes the challenges that restaurant operators face. We focus on them, knowing that solutions will be found... solutions that streamline and enhance the dining experience. It's your vision, your experience that we embrace in order to design more efficient equipment. At FWE, it's all about you. It always has been. Cook and Hold Oven Heated Banquet Cabinets Mobile Bars C O O K | H O L D | T R A N S P O R T | S E R V E | R E F R I G E R A T I O N | B A R S