In the latest episode of Hospitality Hangout, Michael Schatzberg “The Restaurant Guy” and Jimmy Frischling “The Finance Guy” chat with James O’Reilly, Chief Executive Officer of Smokey Bones.
O’Reilly has been in the restaurant industry for 25 years. Prior to joining Smokey Bones as CEO in 2019, he was President and CEO of Long John Silver’s. O’Reilly held leadership roles at other restaurant brands, including Sonic Drive-in, Pizza Hut, and KFC.
“Our tagline is meat is what we do and what that means is you cannot find a casual dining restaurant that has more cuts of meat, prepared in more kinds of ways than you can at Smokey Bones. So if you’re thinking about steakhouses, we have more, if you’re thinking about general casual dining restaurants, we have more and we have better. So we love what we do here. We’re passionate about being a protein candy store,” says O’Reilly.
Smokey Bones has recently launched Bite Hall, an e-commerce site that is taking five brands, Smokey Bones, The Wing Experience, and Burger Experience, plus two virtual brands Bowl Market and Tender Box under one digital roof. O’Reilly says, “we started with a major commitment to off-premise in this company when I joined and built my management team because we really believe in the power of off-premise and casual dining.”
O’Reilly talks about realizing consumers who are in the traditional third-party marketplace space that wanted to order different things from different restaurants, would be looking at multiple deliveries, multiple commissions, and multiple fees. He says BiteHall was born out of this idea where the consumer has all of the bites in one site, one check, one order, and one delivery.
The guys talk to O’Reilly about being the first virtual brand that was offered on Uber Eats as well as Smokey Bones going all in on drive-thrus. O’Reilly shares that they have a fully equipped digital drive-thru with everything you would find in a limited service drive-thru from the menu boards, the loop detection, the audio, and the digital menu boards as well as the pull-up window. They built a dedicated expediting kitchen inside the restaurant with its own beverage equipment its own hot and cold equipment, a fry station, and dedicated packaging.
To hear more details about BiteHall, limited-time offers, Adventures in Candyland cocktails, and Tuesday trivia answers check out this episode of Hospitality Hangout.
