In today’s hyper-competitive restaurant landscape, guest experience isn’t just about customer satisfaction, it’s about market share. During our recent Ops Innovators Webinar, leaders from CAVA and Panera Bread shared how they’re building customer loyalty and operational consistency with Crunchtime’s execution platform, Zenput.
The session explored how brands are leveraging technology to reinforce standards, train teams, and ensure flawless execution across every location, every shift.
Click here to watch the webinar recording.
Restaurants face a range of challenges that can disrupt the guest experience:
Lucretia Quigley, VP of Operations Standards & Growth Initiatives at Panera Bread, captured the issue plainly:
“The restaurant industry and landscape have changed a lot over the past couple of years. You had COVID and ‘the great resignation,’ which have caused long-term impacts on the industry as a whole… our production systems and the way we did business changed a lot. We lost a lot of knowledge during that period of time, and some of our connection to culture. The lack of tenured workers caused a combination of issues and erosion against the overall guest experience.”
So how are top brands addressing these challenges?
To create exceptional experiences, brands must bring their identity to life at every location and on every shift.
Jennifer Sommers, Chief Operations Officer at CAVA, emphasized the importance of values-driven leadership:
“It is hard to get your restaurant in California to speak the same language as your restaurant in Texas and New York City, and so it starts with hiring the right people who truly embrace your brand’s mission and values and exhibit the behaviors and competencies that you believe are important for your brand.”
“Our missions, values, and competencies (MVC) into the entire employee lifecycle, from hiring to onboarding to training to development, succession planning. We are also very intentional about creating programs that will create a lot of engagement and excitement about MVC.”
Lucretia added:
“The most important thing in our organization is people first. Being very consistent in the discussion about how the standards tie into your core values. We teach this through the interactions we have with our associates and how we exemplify it throughout all levels of management.”
Proactive issue resolution is key to protecting the guest experience. That means real-time visibility and clear accountability across all levels.
Lucretia explained:
“To protect guest experience, it is important to ensure that you have strong operational standards and that you set clear expectations around how important those standards are. In order to set that foundation, you need to have an excellent training process.”
Panera’s above-store managers use Zenput to complete site visits, reinforcing brand standards and surfacing issues fast. Consistent language and clear, repeatable standards are core to the strategy.
Jennifer shared how CAVA takes action:
“We make sure that the locations have all the right checklists, and that they are time-bound, so if it isn’t done within a certain timeframe, it shows up as incomplete, and if that happens regularly, it sounds the alarm that upper management needs to visit the restaurant to get it back on track.”
Creating emotional loyalty requires more than great food, it takes a culture of consistency and recognition.
Jennifer highlighted how CAVA turns values into action:
“Two of our core values are ‘passion for positivity’ and ‘generacity first, always,’ so we want to make sure that we are creating that kind of atmosphere throughout all of our restaurants. There are a few ways we implement that, one is that we regularly recognize our teams with values cards, we write a little message on the back of the card with how they are exemplifying that value.”
Lucretia agreed:
“Building that culture, and that deep brand love, the connection to the organization, is super important, and we love to celebrate our associates that are upholding the culture.”
Shift readiness is a non-negotiable part of delivering on brand promises. It's not just about checking boxes, it’s a mindset.
Lucretia detailed Panera’s approach:
“We have many processes in place to make sure a shift is customer-ready. We have our Zenput daily agenda, which is a timed readiness checklist to make sure that we have everything in place to provide the service that our customers expect.”
Jennifer emphasized the risks of neglecting readiness:
“Shift readiness is paramount. We are in the fast casual space, which means that people are often looking for something fast, but while still delivering great food, so if we don’t have the right number of team members working, or they aren’t deployed the right way, or the right amount of food on the line, it is going to create a negative customer experience, and if that continues to happen, then we would start to lose customers in the long run.”
Operationalizing food quality helps remove subjectivity and drive consistency from prep to plate.
Lucretia explained Panera’s method:
“It is very important that each step of the food preparation process is clear and simple and easy to execute. So we have some very clear guidance on our kitchen display systems to help each team member ensure the build and the quality of the product is the same.”
Jennifer shared CAVA’s focus on simplification:
“We ensure that wherever we can simplify the food we are simplifying the food, and when that isn’t possible, we find other ways to make the execution more manageable so that we can do it consistently across the system.”
Delivering a world-class guest experience across hundreds (or thousands) of restaurants is no small task. But as the leaders from CAVA and Panera Bread showed, it’s possible when people, process, and technology work in sync.
At Crunchtime, we’re proud to support brands that are elevating standards and driving measurable impact, one shift at a time.
Click here to watch the webinar recording, and for more on this topic, download our free guide, 5 Ways Restaurants Secure Market Share Through Guest Experience.