As traditional holiday meals become more expensive and consumers seek convenient alternatives, chicken restaurants are seeing a significant surge in delivery orders. This shift isn’t just a seasonal trend—UberEats reports that chicken tenders and fries topped their most popular delivery combinations in 2024, signaling a broader change in consumer preferences.
For quick-service restaurants, this presents both an opportunity and a challenge: how to capitalize on increased demand while building lasting customer relationships.
Meet Customers Where They Are: Cowboy Chicken’s Story
Holiday dining habits are evolving, and smart restaurants are expanding their offerings to match. Cowboy Chicken’s Holiday Package demonstrates this approach: they’ve adapted their signature woodfired cooking technique to turkey, creating a distinctive catering option for office parties and family gatherings throughout the season.
But offering holiday-appropriate menu items is just the start. The real challenge lies in delivery execution during peak periods. Cowboy Chicken maintains control over their delivery experience by combining in-house delivery with strategic use of national delivery networks during high-demand periods. This hybrid approach ensures they can maintain their quality standards while scaling to meet holiday demand spikes.
Master Multi-Location Management: Wings Over’s Strategy
For multi-location chicken restaurants, maintaining consistent delivery execution across all locations is crucial—especially during high-volume holiday periods. Wings Over’s approach to this challenge demonstrates how standardizing delivery operations across corporate and franchise locations creates a unified customer experience.
Their strategy centers on standardized delivery processes, real-time performance monitoring, and smart order routing that automatically takes both efficiency and quality into account. This approach enables locations to batch similar orders together when it makes sense, while ensuring food arrives at the optimal temperature, regardless of which location fulfills the order.
The results speak for themselves: consistent delivery times across locations, improved customer satisfaction scores, and more efficient operations even during peak periods. For multi-location brands, this level of standardization is essential for building trust with customers and maintaining brand reputation during high-stakes holiday deliveries.
Scale Smarter with Business Catering: Bok a Bok’s Approach
For restaurants looking to grow their catering business, the holidays are a make or break season, and streamlining the ordering and delivery process is crucial. Bok a Bok Chicken’s approach to business catering demonstrates how integrating the right systems can create a seamless experience that keeps corporate customers coming back after the office party hangovers wear off.
By connecting their catering marketplace solution directly with the delivery management system used by their drivers, Bok a Bok has eliminated the complexity typically associated with large catering orders. The results align with market demands: according to ezCater’s 2024 “Feeding the Workplace” report, 90 percent of orderers are more likely to choose restaurants that offer delivery tracking updates. Bok a Bok meets this expectation by providing real-time tracking for every catering order.
The restaurant’s attention to catering-specific details also sets them apart during busy holiday periods. Features like proof of delivery and intuitive dispatch ensure that even their largest orders arrive on time and in perfect condition.
Features like proof of delivery and intuitive dispatch dashboard ensure that even their largest orders are managed efficiently and arrive on time in perfect condition”
This systematic, tech-forward approach to business catering shows how restaurants can scale their operations while maintaining the high standards that corporate customers expect.
Beyond the Holiday Rush: Building Lasting Success
As these industry leaders demonstrate, success in holiday delivery isn’t just about handling increased volume – it’s about using seasonal opportunities to build year-round customer relationships by creating exceptional experiences that turn seasonal diners into loyal customers.
The key takeaway is clear: restaurants that invest in flexible, efficient delivery operations don’t just survive the holiday rush—they create sustainable advantages that drive growth throughout the year. By maintaining quality at scale, optimizing delivery efficiency, and keeping focus on the customer experience, quick-service restaurants can transform holiday opportunities into lasting business success.
Alex Vasilkin is the co-founder and CEO of Cartwheel, a leading technology provider powering the catering and delivery operations of top restaurants like Portillo’s, P.F. Chang’s and Potbelly, where he is responsible for the strategic vision and day-to-day operations that drive Cartwheel’s impressive growth. As a business leader and entrepreneur with over 10 years in the delivery space, Vasilkin has a passion for transformative technology that fuels business success. Prior to founding Cartwheel, Vasilkin launched a restaurant with celebrity chef Govind Armstrong that quickly became the top delivery restaurant on GrubHub in LA. He also founded delivery service Gourmet Runner, serving hundreds of restaurants in Los Angeles, and has been a member of the Yelp Elite Squad for over a decade.
