The company

Whataburger has focused on providing fresh, made-to-order burgers and exceptional customer service for over 70 years. Since its first roadside burger stand opened in 1950, Whataburger has grown to over 900 locations across 14 states and more than $3 billion in annual sales. Despite all that’s changed, their founding principles still inspire everything they do. Every Whataburger is made to order and customers are greeted with a smile 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

The challenge

Since the launch of mobile order ahead in 2019, Whataburger’s off-premise sales have skyrocketed. To maintain their high standards for food quality and service at unprecedented scale, Whataburger needed to integrate off-premise ordering with their on-premise operations.

Whataburger knew that location-awareness would be a critical capability to bridge this gap. With real-time pickup ETAs and automatic arrival detection, Whataburger could maximize efficiency in their restaurants, while optimizing the experience for customers.

However, Whataburger had even bigger goals for their mobile app, and location was relevant to many aspects of their strategy, from driving on-premise loyalty engagement to helping customers find nearby restaurants to promoting local community events.

Whataburger needed all-in-one, developer-friendly infrastructure that could support a wide array of use cases, easily fit into their existing architecture, and help them launch new features quickly.

The solution

Whataburger uses Radar to provide restaurants with visibility into pickup customer ETAs to increase speed of service and labor efficiency while maintaining food quality.

When a customer places a mobile pickup order and opts-in to location tracking, Whataburger starts tracking a trip in Radar. As the customer travels to their pickup destination, Radar regularly calculates their ETA and sends it to Whataburger systems in real-time via webhook. Whataburger displays the ETAs on their kitchen display systems and alerts restaurant staff when Radar detects the customer’s arrival. As every Whataburger is made to order, these real-time arrival signals help restaurant staff sequence order fulfillment efficiently and prepare orders quickly. Once the order is ready, Whataburger completes the Radar Trip to ramp down tracking and generate an estimated wait time.

Radar’s turnkey integration with Braze makes it easy for Whataburger to message pickup customers at the right moment. When Radar detects a customer’s arrival, Braze triggers a push notification with pickup instructions in real-time. Proactive and timely communications help Whataburger reduce calls to restaurants and build trust with their customers.

The results

Whataburger piloted the order ahead experience at one location before rolling it out nationwide. Radar’s flexible APIs and user-friendly dashboards helped Whataburger launch the MVP in less than 2 months. Whataburger found Radar’s ETAs to be highly accurate, and positive feedback from restaurant operations made the rollout decision easy. It was completed within the quarter.

By increasing the efficiency of order fulfillment and minimizing wait times, Whataburger is able to provide better customer experiences and build customer loyalty. Since launching with Radar, Whataburger has seen continuous growth in pickup order volume and order frequency. In Q1 2023, location-tracked orders increased by 25% and repeat orders grew by 27%.

With over 80% of users opted into location services, and a 12x higher engagement rate among opted-in users, Whataburger customers highly value the convenience and utility of location-aware experiences. Radar makes it easy for Whataburger to deliver seamless pickup and on-premise experiences that increase customer satisfaction and drive business results.