6 insights foodservice operators missed if they weren’t at COEX

Politics rudely butted into this year’s Chain Operators EXchange, with talk of President Trump’s inflation-fueling tariffs coloring casual conversations and formal presentations alike after the duties were levied mid-conference. 

But the likely effects on menu prices and food-away-from-home profitability were far from the only insights served up to chain restaurant executives and onsite foodservice professionals during the idea-sharing forum known as COEX. 

True to its theme of “Stronger Together: Fueling Innovation,” the three-day event provided food for thought on a variety of issues of significant import to operators, including these.

Service is a casualty of the pandemic

Attendees repeatedly heard assertions from the stage that service took a permanent hit during the pandemic, providing an opportunity for concepts to steal customers by taking better care of guests than competitors do.
The fast-growing Dave’s Hot Chicken chain is aiming to be one of the standouts. “Covid killed service,” declared President and Chief Executive Officer Jim Bitticks. For Dave’s, “everything for the next 18 months is wrapped around bringing service back.”

...But be careful how you define service

Just be careful how you incentivize franchisees and unit-level teams to define service, Bitticks added. He explained that Dave’s had put its emphasis on minimizing the time customers waited for their orders.  With speed of service set as the goal, he recounted, stores started pre-preparing and holding the chicken, leaving it “old and cold” by the time it reached guests, albeit in a flash. 

That prompted the home office to shift its emphasis. Guests’ evaluation of food quality was elevated in importance, and less sensitivity was given to serving times. 

Customer retention is as important as spurring trial

Softening traffic has operators scrambling to win customers, with discounts and head-turning limited-time offers often figuring into the effort. But just as important is giving those first-timers and sporadic visitors a reason to become regulars, stressed Jim Holthouser, CEO of McAlister’s Deli and Moe’s Southwest Grill parent Go To Foods.
 
The company, which franchises seven limited-service concepts in total, has rejiggered its bonus compensation program to intensify brand executives’ focus on customer retention along with boosting transactions. “You can’t just focus on driving traffic. Once you get them in, you have to keep them,” said Holthouser.
 
“It’s paid off,” he added.

Factor 3rd party delivery into your development strategy

Because third-party delivery services like DoorDash and Uber Eats can distribute a concept’s product over a considerable swath of geography, traditional siting criteria may not hold, suggested Bitticks. In the instance of Dave’s Hot Chicken, a brand whose development roughly paralleled the rise of the services, “We started opening further apart specifically because of third party,” he revealed to the COEX audience.

Customers don’t have to be treated equally

“One of the things we’re doing to provide value is segregating our loyalty members from our non-loyalty members,” revealed Go To Foods’ Holthouser. 

He explained that McAlister’s, one of his charges, tags orders from loyalty-program members with a different color to be sure they get some extra love. 

“That instantly allows the manager to tell the loyalty members from the non-loyalty members,” Holthouser continued. 

The flagged loyalty members might find something extra in their bags, like a cookie, or maybe a handwritten thank-you note. Or they may get a table visit from the manager.

The extra attention pays significant dividends, Holthouser stressed. “We took two price increases in that brand (McAlister’s), and the loyalty scores went up. It’s a way of providing value without having to discount.”

Consumers are quivering in their uncertainty

The economic and political turmoil of recent months is taking a dire toll on the public psyche, reported Charlie McConnell, Vice President of Industry Insights, Education and Research for IFMA The Food Away from Home Association. Research he aired during COEX showed consumer confidence, a significant influencer of dining-out behavior, was lower in February 2025 than it was in April 2020, when no one knew what impact the pandemic might ultimately have.

He cited a projection from the research firm Datassentials that menu prices will rise about 3.5% in 2025, on top of a deflated or “real” industry growth rate of 1%.

COEX, presented by IFMA The Food Away from Home Association, is the annual conference for the whole food-away-from-home ecosystem.

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