Problem is, when hitting the deadline takes precedent, ‘good enough’ equipment design often isn’t.
Here are 3 common mistakes in judgment that might look like worthy sacrifices upfront, only to wind up putting a drag on the process and, perhaps, even sinking your LTO completely.
But if your partner doesn’t stress the importance of ongoing collaboration, even after the most thoughtful and comprehensive kickoff meeting, that’s a red flag.
Why? Because the unexpected is going to happen.
And it could come from anywhere.
If your manufacturing partner is just an order taker, eager to run with your initial specs, the inevitable challenges will translate to unbearable delays.
If your partner reviews your specs, then comes to you with a new idea, multiple sign-off phases in the design-development process or, quite frankly, questions that come from shift-on-the-fly experience, that’s not a waste of time.
It’s quite the opposite.
It’s a wiser call for flexibility that can preempt issues or find shortcuts to better outcomes—all without changing your deadline.
If it’s even possible for a foodservice chain to ratchet up emphasis on menu consistency, it’s during an LTO promotion.
So, when your new food-equipment device is performing to that tune in its test phases, it can be tempting to press the accelerator without gaining a separate performance assessment from the manufacturing team.
If that team is experienced in foodservice, they should have a sense of how the equipment’s ‘lab’ performance will translate to the field. In actual kitchens, chain-wide, holding consistency falls to a much wider range of skilled hands, from the most entrenched franchisee to the newest upstart, from the most seasoned culinary pro down to a cadre of teenagers.
This can justify further development to ensure the equipment is easy to train on and use, easy to clean and maintain, and designed to optimize safety. These aspects can seem like sacrificial nice-to-haves when under the gun, but can be difference makers when the LTO is winning customers on taste, yet can’t prove repeatable or can’t hold the profit margin.
Very closely dovetailing off the first two misjudgments is the tendency to see the food-equipment dimension of the project as simply a means to the end.
Carrying the collaboration tenet well past the restaurant trial phases can uncover new LTO fulfillment opportunities and accelerate the process toward actualizing them.
Partnerships in development can lead to solutions that fully deploy the menu concept, from, say, warming or other holding solutions that can extend the LTO to carryout or food truck applications, or additional ideas to facilitate menu tweaks in an LTO series—something as simple as introducing a new condiment or sauce to a base item.
Going one step further, this kind of follow-through collaboration can also lead to design versatility that expands the equipment’s use beyond the LTO, perhaps to the extent the equipment can still deliver your return on investment should the LTO falter.