Off-premise dining has become a critical driver of restaurant growth. Digital orders, delivery, takeout, and catering provide restaurants with more ways to capture demand and reach guests beyond the dining room, but they also add complexity to kitchen operations. Leading restaurant brands, like Buffalo Wild Wings and Lazy Dog Restaurants, are finding new ways to manage that complexity, improve efficiency, and turn off-premise demand into profitable growth.
Here are seven ways leading restaurant operators are optimizing off-premise operations
1. Design Kitchen Workflows Around Different Order Types
As off-premise demand increases, treating every order the same creates congestion. Dine-in, takeout, delivery, and catering each have different production priorities and guest expectations.
Instead of forcing all orders through a single workflow, forward-thinking restaurants are creating dedicated production paths that keep teams focused.
“At Buffalo Wild Wings, we moved from a single expo screen to dedicated dine-in and takeout screens using Crunchtime Kitchen, eliminating bottlenecks and keeping our kitchen teams from getting in each other's way,” said Chad Steves, Director, Technology Operations, Buffalo Wild Wings.
By separating production flows across dedicated kitchen screens, operators can reduce kitchen congestion while helping each order channel move at its own pace.
2. Make Quote Times a Competitive Advantage
Accurate quote times improve more than guest expectations. They help restaurants better align kitchen capacity with incoming demand, give delivery partners reliable pickup estimates, and create a more predictable experience across ordering channels.
“Using Crunchtime Kitchen's highly precise quote time capabilities, we reduced our quote time variance from 12 minutes down to just 3.5 minutes on average,” said Jarrod East, Chief Technology Officer, Lazy Dog Restaurants.
That level of accuracy can also influence how a restaurant performs on third-party ordering platforms. By providing more reliable estimates, restaurants can build trust with guests and delivery partners while creating a more consistent ordering experience.
“Lazy Dog Restaurants ranks at the top of the listings on DoorDash and ezCater because our quote times are accurate, and that's driven by Crunchtime Kitchen,” Jarrod added.
3. Improve Pickup Accuracy and Control
The pickup process is one of the final opportunities to get an order right. Digital systems can help teams verify every order before it leaves the restaurant.
“At Buffalo Wild Wings GO locations, we use Crunchtime Kitchen's item indexing to automatically track how many boxes belong in each order, helping ensure nothing gets missed. This has been a game-changer for us in increasing ordering accuracy and improving customer satisfaction scores,” Chad commented.
Combined with automated calculations for sauces, sides, and accompaniments, restaurants can improve both operational control and guest satisfaction.
4. Turn Kitchen Displays Into Communication Hubs
Kitchen displays are evolving beyond production screens into communication platforms that connect the kitchen, front of house, and guests.
“At Lazy Dog Restaurants, Crunchtime Kitchen's Order Ready boards enable us to communicate directly with guests from the kitchen, without any intermediaries,” Jarrod said.
With real-time updates flowing directly from the kitchen, restaurants can reduce manual communication while providing guests with more accurate information.
5. Give Guests Visibility Into Their Orders
Guests expect the same visibility from off-premise orders that they get from other digital experiences. Clear order status updates let guests know what to expect while helping restaurants create a faster, more seamless pickup experience.
“Buffalo Wild Wings guests can see in real time when their order is still being prepared versus ready with Crunchtime Kitchen, reducing uncertainty and improving the guest experience,” Chad said.
Order-ready screens can also streamline the pickup process for restaurant teams. Guests can quickly see when their food is ready and head straight to pickup, reducing the need to wait in line or ask employees for updates.
Buffalo Wild Wings has deployed Crunchtime Kitchen Order Ready screens across all Buffalo Wild Wings GO locations, giving digital-order guests the visibility they need to efficiently grab their food and go.
6. Bring Catering Into Daily Kitchen Operations
Catering shouldn't live outside normal restaurant operations. Integrating large orders into everyday workflows gives teams more time to prepare and fewer surprises during service.
“The flexibility of Crunchtime Kitchen allows Lazy Dog Restaurants to push catering pre-orders directly to kitchen screens, so teams can prepare in advance,” Jarrod explained.
Lazy Dog Restaurants uses expo screens as a catering calendar, giving teams visibility into upcoming large orders well before production begins.
7. Connect Kitchen Execution With Inventory Planning
The next evolution of restaurant operations is connecting production with inventory planning. When kitchens know what's coming (and inventory systems know what kitchens will need), restaurants can plan labor, purchasing, and prep more effectively.
Large orders can create a very different set of operational challenges than individual digital orders. They require advanced preparation, coordination across stations, and enough visibility for teams to plan around existing service volume. Bringing those orders into the same kitchen workflow earlier gives operators more time to prepare.
“Our next step at Lazy Dog Restaurants is integrating catering with Crunchtime Inventory so we can get ahead of large orders, both operationally with Crunchtime Kitchen and from an inventory standpoint,” Jarrod said.
This connected approach allows restaurants to move from reacting to demand to proactively planning for it.
Bringing It All Together
Strong off-premise operations can do more than improve speed and accuracy. They can help restaurants capture more demand and turn off-premise volume into profitable growth. By connecting kitchen execution, guest communication, order accuracy, and inventory planning, operators can serve more guests efficiently while giving teams the tools to perform at their best.
Buffalo Wild Wings and Lazy Dog Restaurants show how a smarter approach to off-premise operations can create meaningful value for both the business and the guest.
Ready to optimize your off-premise operations? Request a demo today.
The customer perspectives in this article were shared during Crunchtime's 2026 Ops Summit.
