Restaurant Operators Sharpen Off-Premises Playbooks

Restaurant executives are trading tactics on how to keep off-premises business — delivery, takeout and drive-thru — robust at a time when convenience orders remain a decisive share of industry sales.

Franchise Times reports that restaurant leaders gathered to share the operational strategies behind strong off-premises performance, a segment that has held onto gains made during the pandemic and now functions as a core channel rather than an add-on.

The publication's coverage centers on what operators identified as the practical levers of off-premises success: kitchen workflows designed around packaging and handoff speed, menu engineering that favors items that travel well, and channel management that balances third-party delivery economics against first-party ordering.

For franchise systems, the stakes are structural. Off-premises volume affects site selection, footprint size, labor deployment and technology spend. Operators that treat carryout and delivery as an afterthought, several leaders indicated, pay for it in food quality at the customer's table and in margin erosion from unrecovered fees.

The strategies come as the industry continues to absorb elevated costs for labor and ingredients, putting pressure on operators to extract more revenue from every square foot — and every order — without raising prices to the point of demand destruction.

The full discussion, including the specific operators and practices cited, is detailed in Franchise Times' report.

What is clear from the exchange: off-premises is no longer a pandemic workaround but a permanent pillar of restaurant economics, and the operators refining it now are positioning their franchises for the channel mix customers have already chosen.