Fiesta Restaurant Group powers arrival detection for curbside pickup

Fiesta Restaurant Group, Inc. owns and operates restaurant brand Pollo Tropical, and is known for rich histories rooted in great food, hospitality, and warm service. In light of the pandemic and a shift in ordering behaviors, their restaurants needed to adapt to provide users with safe, convenient, and seamless ordering experiences that upheld the same quality of service and freshness.

The challenge

In response to COVID-19, Pollo Tropical operated on tight timelines to quickly spin up a Curbside Pick-up service for their mobile users. Powering a curbside experience was a necessary part of their digital experience, but the initial solution had many gaps that led to painful customer experiences and operational challenges for restaurant teams.

• With no visibility into the customer’s ETA, restaurant teams were unable to effectively prioritize order prep between various order modes (e.g, in-store, curbside, delivery) which often led to longer customer wait times and inadequate freshness
• Customers were often unsure of whether they needed to call the restaurant, engage with the app, or park in a designated area
• The Fiesta team was under tight timelines to launch an enhanced curbside experience as quickly as possible

The solution

Fiesta selected Radar to fill the gaps of a non-location based solution, leveraging trip tracking and flexible geofences for all Fiesta locations. Now, when a customer places an order, trip tracking initiates a trip in Radar, generating real-time customer ETAs for the Fiesta team. Once a customer enters a restaurant’s geofence boundary for a pickup, an arrival event triggers a notification providing timely curbside instructions to the customer.

This location-enabled service empowers staff to manage time and orders effectively and ensures a more convenient experience for customers, who no longer experience the frustration of having to call the restaurant to retrieve their order. Furthermore, new insight into their average wait time and contributing factors across locations enables the Fiesta team to optimize further and continue to build brand loyalty.

It was important to the team to utilize a solution that could be built alongside existing tools like Olo, Punchh, Xpient, and OneSignal, and Radar's entire solution fit into Fiesta’s existing technology stack by adding a critical location layer. The Radar team worked with Fiesta's mobile agency and Radar Solution Partner, Bottle Rocket, to design and engineer a delightful order and curbside pickup experience for every Fiesta customer. Olo supports digital orders, Radar creates trips when users are on their way to power arrival detection, and OneSignal powers the arrival push notifications when customers pull into the lot.

Fiesta was able to complete development in just two months thanks to the ease of integration and support from the Radar team.

Using Radar, Fiesta is able to address the operational challenges of curbside pickup to minimize wait times and drive repeat orders.