New Restaurant Design

Arby’s has re-engineered its restaurants to reduce development costs, expand site selection options, and deliver an upgraded guest experience

Arby’s has done more than grow top line revenue in recent years — we have also improved ROI by stripping out some of the costs of opening or remodeling a restaurant.

The Inspire design reduces development and remodeling costs, increases restaurant efficiency, and is highly adaptable to a wide range of site opportunities: traditional locations, end caps, urban inline locations, and non-traditional formats.

Restaurant design: Smaller footprint, greater efficiency

Much of the savings comes from a reduced footprint that holds down real estate costs. The freestanding Inspire 2000 model is just 2,000 square feet, with room for 65 to 80 seats. End cap locations are 1,650 square feet to 2,000 square feet. Inline urban locations can be as small as 1,500 square feet. Our new Delight production line helps make the smaller footprint possible without sacrificing speed of service and restaurant volume.

“One of the innovations of which I’m most proud is the Delight Line,” says Chief Development Officer Greg Vojnovic. “It’s completely non-traditional for Arby’s, and quite frankly, non-traditional in the QSR space. We’ve pivoted the entire production system 90 degrees.”

The pivot changes the way guests interact at the counter. Now, when they arrive at the counter to order, they see Arby’s meats and deli slicer. Once they’ve ordered and begin to move toward the food pickup station, they can watch as their order is assembled. This reinforces our Brand promise of authenticity. The Delight line reduced the square footage needed for the production area by 20% and improved workstation efficiency, saving both labor and equipment costs.

Best of all: Nine out of 10 guests report increased satisfaction.

Multi-unit Arby’s franchise owner Rick Bentley recently opened a new Inspire design restaurant at an endcap location in Sturgis, SD. It opened only days ahead of the annual Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, which draws hundreds of thousands of motorcyclists to the town of about 6,500 residents.

The efficient design allowed employees to handle the rushes while still serving guests quickly.

“It was a mad rush, but everything came together well,” Rick says. He also says that sales have stayed very strong. “I expect the restaurant to generate sales comparable to my freestanding locations despite the smaller size.”

“The guests are just very, very pleased with what they see when they walk in,” he says.

 

Making the remodeling process easy

Arby’s provides franchisees a Revitalization Roadmap to help them manage the remodeling process.

John Wade owns more than 20 Arby’s locations and has been remodeling them at a pace of one per month. John says, “When you call the architect, they’ve already been certified by Arby’s and you know that they know exactly what they’re doing to build an Arby’s. Every vendor down the line is just like that, whether it’s the lighting guy, whether it’s the stainless guy, whether it’s the equipment companies. They’ve all been approved by Arby’s. They know exactly what they’re doing. You’re dealing with nothing but experts. It makes it much easier for you as a franchisee.”