About RoyAl’s Chicken and Burgers
Based near Perth in Western Australia, RoyAl’s Chicken and Burgers is a not-so-classic burger joint. With a name that gives a nod to Pulp Fiction, the restaurant is known for two best-sellers: the "RoyAl with Cheese," a quintessential cheeseburger with a double layer of cheese, ketchup, mustard, and pickled onions, and the "Chicken RoyAl," a buttermilk fried chicken burger topped with lettuce, tomato, creole remoulade, and fancy sauce.
RoyAl’s is one of a series of creative restaurant concepts owned by brothers Alasdair and Ken Craigie. It was their sense of warm hospitality and familial values that drew in Maggie Dango—first as a customer after the restaurant’s opening in 2015, and today as the General Manager.
Adapting to lockdowns with delivery partnerships
One part of Maggie’s job is ensuring all systems and processes are functional for the restaurant’s staff. Despite RoyAl’s growth over the past few years, Maggie knew she needed to find new avenues to connect with customers during the pandemic and that delivery partnerships were a major part of that.
"We knew the value of delivery services during lockdowns," Maggie explains. "But I was apprehensive about taking on another delivery platform after a few poor experiences."
Eventually, a DoorDash sales representative convinced Maggie to give DoorDash a try in June 2021, citing its similarity to a handful of the delivery platforms Maggie knew and liked, and the partnership grew from there.
Tech helps us run every aspect of our lives—and platforms like DoorDash are crucial for helping us run our business.
Scaling a partnership with DoorDash
Maggie very intentionally launched DoorDash at one location to start. "I know from experience to bring on one store at a time," she explains. "You need to make sure these systems work for your team before scaling."
First, Maggie made sure the DoorDash dockets, the order tickets that print for each order, worked seamlessly for her back-of-house staff. "If the kitchen doesn't like the look of the docket, it’s not going to work. It’s a tough sell because they hate change—but luckily, they had no problem with the DoorDash ones." Next, Maggie touched base with her front-of-house staff on the Dasher hand-off process. "No complaints there!" Maggie exclaims. "They found the drivers easy to work with."
Behind the scenes, Maggie also found relief in DoorDash’s easy integrations with RoyAl’s existing systems, Lightspeed and Deliverect, which allow her to keep track of food and drink delivery sales and measure KPIs. After integrating DoorDash with all of her systems, Maggie began getting the other restaurants on board.
Growing sales with a big campaign
To see if DoorDash could help RoyAl’s move the needle on sales, Maggie worked with her DoorDash account manager to develop a marketing campaign that would make a splash.
In August 2021, Maggie paused all of her other delivery partnerships and launched a weeklong DoorDash promotion offering 50% off all orders over $30. It was an instant success and orders skyrocketed.
"Before, DoorDash orders made up about 6% of our total delivery sales each week," says Maggie. "The DoorDash-only campaign saw our delivery orders increase 150%. It was a big risk for us but it paid off, indicating how DoorDash could work for us."
Looking ahead with delivery partnerships
Today, DoorDash orders for RoyAl's have remained high—about double what they were before the big campaign. To keep sales going, Maggie is already working on developing other initiatives to drive awareness and sales, including an upcoming Buy One, Get One campaign.
At the end of the day, Maggie’s biggest advice to others considering signing up with DoorDash is to do it thoughtfully and ensure your team is on board every step of the way.
"Stress testing is the number one goal," she explains. "When you have high-volume stores, you want to be confident when you bring in a new system you’re unfamiliar with that it's going to work for you. How you do that is by implementing it one store at a time. You might end up with results that are better than you could have even imagined."
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