PDQ, which stands for People Dedicated to Quality, is a fast-casual chicken brand built around chef-driven concepts and mindful ingredients typically found in fine casual restaurants. The brand aims to offer world-class experiences for guests and has 62 locations across five states.
Teaching guests how to build that world-class experience in a webinar dubbed “How a Growing Chicken Concept is Driving Results Through a World-Class Customer Experience” was Eric Knott, chief operating officer for PDQ, and Chris Lybeer, chief strategy officer for POS brand Revel Systems. The webinar was sponsored by Revel and hosted by Networld Media Group.
PDQ opened its first location in Tampa, Florida in 2011. The brand utilizes open kitchens, giving customers a sense of trust while they’re watching orders be made.
“We have face-to-face ordering where you go through the drive thru,” Knott said. “We don’t have speaker boxes or things like that. Inside the restaurant, we actually put a hand sink out front, and what we noticed developing the concept (is that) the mothers would bring in their children and wouldn’t have to wait in line to go to the restroom to wash their hands before they sat down and ate.
“The idea behind (PDQ) was that it was something that you could feel good about serving to your family through a drive thru and all of our ingredients, whether it be our chicken tenders or our chicken breasts that are hand-breaded on-site, everything’s made to order.”
The brand has grown on the East Coast on the vision of “great food, convenience, and feel good about what you’re eating,” Knott added.
The brand’s loyalty app, MyPDQ, rolled out about two years ago. The app has 290,000 downloads to date, and Knott said about 12% of sales is coming through that digital channel.
To learn more about how PDQ built a world-class experience for its guests, click here to watch the webinar in its entirety.
