At more than 2,000 restaurants nationwide, Wingstop CEO Michael Skipworth believes the chain is still “the biggest brand no one has heard of.”
For years, the fast casual has sought to grow its awareness. Compared to similarly sized national brands, there’s an over 20 percent gap. Even with same-store sales growing by almost 40 percent over the past two years, Wingstop has only moved awareness by a few percentage points. Meaning, as much as the chain has expanded—21 straight years of same-store sales expansion and AUV above $2 million—the opportunity ahead is still significant.
Wingstop has levers to lift its awareness, starting with throughput.
For two and a half years, the brand worked on a new Smart Kitchen that forecasts demand in 15-minute increments, telling the restaurant how many wings to drop. The system takes into account more than 300 variables tailored to each store, like weather, sales trends, and sports.
It also features digital touch-screen displays at every work station instead of paper chits and an order-ready screen at the front so consumers can keep up with their order. Another small, but interesting feature: there are now sticker print outs that identify what flavors are in each package.
At restaurants where the technology has been installed, wait times have been cut in half to about 10 minutes, and there have been notable improvements in guest satisfaction, accuracy, consistency, and employee turnover. In the delivery channel, Wingstop has been able to show up in under 30 minutes.
The company believes the shorter wait times will allow it to become a greater consideration. Instead of serving as a destination occasion—with an average frequency of just three times per quarter and once a month—the quicker service could entice guests to visit more often, especially during on-the-go periods like the afternoon daypart.
The Wingstop Smart Kitchen is in 400 restaurants. The chain hopes to complete the rollout by the end of the year. The company expects it to play a big role in achieving its new goal of $3 million AUV.
“We internally refer to it as a game changer,” Skipworth says. “And not only is it allowing us to be faster and deliver on guest expectations and become more of their consideration set, it’s making us more consistent, but then we’re also seeing incredible benefits for team members in the restaurant. It’s providing them such role clarity in their jobs, whereas before our traditional approach, it is a hard job in the back of the restaurant. It’s still paper kitchen tickets and they get printed from one spot. If you’re the person dropping chicken in the fryer back there, you’re relying on voice commands from this person and then the tickets start to add up. It’s a challenging environment, yet we’ve grown our AUVs to over $2.1 million with that. So we think about how our team members can get better, provide role clarity for them, make them better at their jobs, ultimately delivering better guest experiences. I think it’s pretty powerful.”
Marisa Carona, chief U.S. franchise operations and development officer, says that at restaurants without the innovation, average speed of service at peak times can reach 30 to 45 minutes or more. During the Super Bowl—one of the most demanding days of the year—Wingstop locations with the Smart Kitchen averaged 16-minute wait times.
There’s minimal downtime in the restaurant while the technology is being installed. Employees are able to pick up the system quickly too. One of the restaurants with the Smart Kitchen is the original store in Garland, Texas, which has been there since 1994.
“So you can imagine, we’ve had some really tenured team members that have been on the existing operating platform of paper tickets for quite some time,” Carona says. “They’ve loved the transition to the Smart Kitchen, and we’ve also seen those dramatic decreases in speed of service. And we’re talking about locations that are $4–$5 million average unit volumes that are able to deliver that 10 minute ticket.”
Wingstop hasn’t revealed the cost of the technology, but Carona says it’s “not material to industry-leading our cash-on-cash returns.”
“We’re asking our brand partners to invest as well, but I’m getting phone calls every day. Our partners want to be moved to the top of the rollout list. They want Smart Kitchen as soon as possible,” Carona says.
The technology speaks to Wingstop’s longstanding mission to digitize every transaction. Web and app mix more than 70 percent, far greater than most of the chain’s peers. Additionally, the company has a database of more than 50 million users.
Alongside the Smart Kitchen, Wingstop has internally built a CRM tool and digital ordering platform MyWingstop to increase insights around the customer journey and create targeted personalization. The two systems will feed into the brand’s upcoming loyalty program, which will be piloted before the end of 2025 and will launch nationally in 2026.
Wingstop is faring better in the macroeconomic environment than most. It’s same-store sales rose 0.5 percent in Q1, fueled by transaction growth. That may seem slight, but that’s lapping two straight quarters of over 20 percent comps growth. In March, Wingstop had its largest single month of guest acquisition on record. Additionally, it opened a record 126 stores in Q1.
“As we looked at the consumer behavior, the macro environment, we said it looks and feels a lot like 2022 when there was a bit of a knee jerk reaction to the onset of inflation, gas prices soared above $4 a gallon, and Russia invaded Ukraine,” Skipworth said. “There was just a lot of anxiety. Or even to some, it looks a lot like 2017 when Trump was initially elected and there was a lot of immigration. In both of those instances, those proved to be a temporary reaction by the consumer. That’s what this current environment feels like. Obviously there’s a lot of unpredictable updates that come out of Washington, but with that said, we feel really good about where we are and and how our brand is performing. The one thing I would say is when we talk about 2025 and what we expect for this year, we still expect to be able to deliver strong results.”
