Not many restaurant chains have surged at the pace of Wingstop. Same-store sales climbed nearly 40 percent over the past two calendars and average-unit volumes ended Q1 at $2.135 million. That latter figure was $1.9 million a year ago, $1.7 million the year before, and $1.6 million in 2022. If you stretch back to 2014—the year before Wingstop went public—AUVs were a shade over $1 million at $1.073 million across 693 restaurants.
The first period Wingstop declared after its IPO (Q2 2015) touted 785 systemwide locations, split at 714 domestic and 52 international, with systemwide sales of $202.793 million.
Today, there are 2,689 Wingstops (388 international) and systemwide sales of $1.3 billion, and $3 million AUVs in sight, the company said in April.
As lofty and sustained as this elevation has been—Wingstop recorded 21 consecutive years of same-store sales growth—BTIG Peter Saleh said Tuesday he feels the brand has reached “an opportune moment in its history.”
The reason boils down to what Wingstop ideated behind the curtain as sales popped outwardly. Namely, multiple years of technology investments and goals to hike digital and advertising efforts, as well as ramp up international development.
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Wingstop’s same-store sales inched 0.5 percent in Q1 2025, but it’s a relative number. The chain lapped back-to-back Q1s of 20 percent-plus comps expansion, including 21.6 percent in Q1 2024. So it was no mean feat to stay above the line and do so with transaction growth during a time when cautious, price-weary consumers are pulling back.
One example: in March, Wingstop achieved its largest single month of guest acquisition yet. All while opening 126 locations—also a record mark.
Sales comparisons won’t get easier in Q2 considering Wingstop’s comps rose 28.7 percent in this period last year. The brand expects about 1 percent growth for the year, down from low- to mid-single digits.
However, returning to opportunity, Saleh said another multi-year cycle of comps growth could be in store due to backend efforts. It’s a lineup of sales drivers comprised of Wingstop’s Smart Kitchen, loyalty, and some other triggers.
The Smart Kitchen is essentially a KDS with four touchscreen monitors and a predictive order management system. Saleh said it’s a modern and more intuitive approach with a “number of employee conveniences.” It displays ounces of fries to cook rather than guessing portions and offers printed item stickers for better accuracy. Additionally, the model progresses Wingstop’s kitchens beyond paper tickets.
Notable as well, the Smart Kitchen doesn’t require additional IT hardware—it runs on Wingstop’s existing server/tech stack—and, in turn, can be installed overnight and ready to power the next day, although, Saleh said, it’s not typically that fast. Franchisees pay a monthly fee to a vendor (SaaS model).
Wingstop spent nearly three years working on the Smart Kitchen, which forecasts demand in 15-minute increments so operators know how many wings to drop. It considers more than 300 variables tailored to each location, like weather, sales trends, and sports.
Why Wingstop poured funds here comes down to speed and reach. Pilot locations saw wait times cut in half to about 10 minutes. Guest satisfaction, accuracy, consistency, and employee turnover metrics improved, too. With delivery, Wingstop said orders showed up in less than 30 minutes.
Faster service times have long been a friction point in Wingstop’s competitive set. While it, rightfully, characterizes itself as a “category of one” brand at scale, Wingstop does cede share to quicker, more convenient options. That’s particularly true with delivery. Saleh said solving this can be a vital component to bridge Wingstop’s divide from 30 to 50 percent delivery mix (the latter being a company goal), as customers on apps sort by criteria such as “fastest near them” and “delivery within 30 minutes.”
Simply, Wingstop will now join those occasions.
Saleh, who recently met with Wingstop CEO Michael Skipworth and CFO Alek Kaleida at the fast casual’s Dallas headquarters, said two comments stood out: how accurate the predictive ordering system proved to be, and the fact there hasn’t been a noticeable increase in food waste. Management said employees likely cooked extra product during busy times before the system, resulting in some amount of waste already.
Digging deeper into this time unlock, Saleh in June conducted a delivery preference survey. He found, of more than 1,000 third-party guests, 67 percent expected food to arrive in that magical 30 minutes or less window. With current ticket times of roughly 20 minutes, Saleh felt Wingstop was being left out. If ticket times cut to 10 minutes, though, Wingstop will open up to a new subset of delivery users who value speed.
A compelling case in action—Skipworth said only a mid-single digit percent of UberEats customers have even tried Wingstop.
“Awareness” as an overall topic is something Wingstop has spoken at length about in the past. Skipworth said in Q1, even as comps lifted close to 40 percent, awareness moved just “a few percentage points.”
An area to broaden reach, naturally, will come from aggregator-loyal users trying the brand for the first time. Wingstop can then try to funnel those incremental visits toward first-party ordering.
What the delivery guest wants, and where Wingstop fits in
When Saleh asked consumers to rank the delivery factors most important to them, about a third picked “speed of service” as their first or second attribute. Thirty-one percent ranked price/value at the top. But the takeaway, Saleh said, was a clear cohort of users who value quick delivery over price, value, or overall costs.
Again, with the Smart Kitchen, he expects Wingstop to begin to fight for share in a place it hasn’t before.
Furthermore, Saleh found Wingstop under-indexed with customers who value speed of service. The survey showed 16 percent of delivery customers who ranked speed of service No. 1 ordered from Wingstop in the past six months. That’s a massive strip of runway considering 38 percent of all surveyed diners said they’d ordered from Wingstop in the same period.
Saleh’s data also reflects comments from Wingstop brass. Leaders said the brand boasts an average frequency of three times per quarter and once per month. It’s seen as more of a destination occasion than a spontaneous one. Getting quicker allows it to service more on-the-go timeframes like the afternoon daypart. “I think it’s pretty powerful,” Skipworth said earlier, adding Wingstop refers to the Smart Kitchen internally as a “game changer.”
Picture the Super Bowl. Generally, Marisa Carona, chief U.S. franchise operations and development officer told media at an event to showcase the kitchen, average speed of service at peak times can reach 30 to 45 minutes, or more. But Smart Kitchen restaurants—during the biggest wing-eating event of the year—averaged 16-minute wait times in February when the Kansas City Chiefs lost to the Philadelphia Eagles.
As you’d imagine, Wingstop plans to make this happen quickly. The Smart Kitchen was live in about 400 stores in May, with expectations to reach the entire system by year’s end.
If that unfolds, Saleh said, Wingstop would advance from being in the consideration set for about a third of delivery customers (due to speed concerns) to at least two-thirds or double the current crop.
Wingstop claimed in Q1 it was only winning 1 percent share of its larger core demand space. Meanwhile, more mature QSR brands were securing 20 percent in their respective segments.
Saleh added he wouldn’t be surprised to see Wingstop follow up with a “fryer to finish” tracking feature similar to pizza brands, which allow diners to monitor order status from cook to arrival.
Wingstop will disrupt the delivery field by sheer volume as well. In Q1, 50 Wingstop franchisees opened a restaurant in 11 markets and 33 states. Given the record rate, the brand updated guidance to 16 to 17 percent unit growth in 2025, which implied net expansion between 410 to 335 stores globally. Wingstop is working off a global development pipeline of more than 2,000 restaurants.
Some other levers
Wingstop is on the doorstep of piloting loyalty. The brand hopes to drive lesser-used products or dayparts, like weekday lunch or late-night, with the program, scheduled to test in Q4 and spread systemwide in 2026.
Skipworth noted in Q1 it would hit market as a “one-to-one experience” with unique access to the brand. Wingstop isn’t taking a traditional transactional approach, he said. Two years ago, the brand invested in its database with an eye toward more sophisticated customer profiles. That led to a fresh CRM platform designed to unlock first-party data at scale and personalize experiences across channels. Next was the proprietary digital ordering and customer engagement platform called “MyWingstop.”
While details of the chain’s loyalty program are forthcoming, the company said it’s working on hyper-personalization strategies and developing insights into guest behavior, using a database of more than 50 million users, to power the pilot. “We’re almost coming at this from a completely different angle from other brands in the industry because of the wealth of information insight we have,” Kaleida said. “A good example is the largest cohort we’ve seen in new guest acquisition has been that Gen Z, Millennial consumer. And we know they embrace brands that provide some type of experiential aspect to their engagement. And so, a loyalty program is something we see as a way to enable that.”
Wingstop has been on a journey to “digitize every transaction.” Loyalty, naturally, represents an important cog. Digital mix increased to 72 percent in Q1. It was 68.3 percent a year ago; 65.2 percent in Q1 2023; 62.3 percent in 2022; 63.6 percent in 2021; 43.3 percent in 2020; and 30.2 percent in 2019.
Lastly, Saleh said, traditional advertising strategy remains largely the same for Wingstop, although there has been some added partnerships and sports placements, like the NBA, soccer, WWE, and UFC.
Wingstop’s ad fund has been growing by double-digit percentages during 2025. It was the most seen brand during NBA games this year. Recent creative featured Wingstop’s Crispy Chicken Tenders that relaunched in Q1.
