The food industry is a broad area of business. If you want to open a restaurant, there are various types of restaurants you can choose from.
Some restaurateurs want to open a full-service restaurant, prioritizing high-quality food and excellent customer service. Some prefer to serve food as quickly as possible to ensure a high customer turnover. Others want something that’s the best of both worlds — that’s where fast-casual restaurants come in.
But what is a fast-casual restaurant, and what sets it apart from other fast-food establishments? Are there benefits to opening this kind of quick-service restaurant?
Our helpful guide to fast-casual restaurants is here to answer these questions.
A fast-casual restaurant is a type of quick-service restaurant (QSR) that focuses on speed of service but serves food of a higher quality than typical fast-food restaurants.
The fast-casual restaurant concept is a kind of hybrid between fast-food and full-service restaurants. Compared with fast-food chains, they prioritize the overall dining experience and ambiance — but the decor and quality of ingredients won’t have the same standards as a high-end restaurant.
To help you better understand what a fast-casual restaurant is and how it’s different from a fast-food restaurant, we’ve identified five key features of this type of eatery.
As the name suggests, fast-casual restaurants emphasize speed of service. They may not serve food as quickly as a fast-food chain, but they’re able to get food to customers faster than a full-service restaurant.
While fast-food chains like McDonald’s, Burger King, and KFC prepare food ahead of time to prioritize quick service, restaurants with a fast-casual concept serve higher-quality food that’s made to order.
Although fast-casual restaurants prioritize quality more than fast-food restaurants, fast-casual dining is not the same as fine dining. Fast-casual chains will cook food fresh to order, but they still won’t be using the high-quality ingredients that you’ll find in a fine-dining restaurant. They also don’t have the same level of service.
The menus in fast-casual restaurants make it easy for customers to customize their food. In McDonald’s, you might be able to ask for no pickle on your burger, but in Five Guys, you have total flexibility — you can add as many toppings as you like and make it your own.
This is possible because fast-casual restaurants make food fresh to order rather than cooking ahead of time.
The price point in fast-casual restaurants usually sits between full-service restaurants and fast-food chains. It’s certainly much cheaper than eating at a fine-dining establishment, but it’s also more expensive than grabbing an order of fries at a fast-food joint.
Unlike full-service restaurants, fast-casual restaurants tend to operate with counter service rather than table service. This means restaurateurs don’t have to hire a full front-of-house (FOH) team, as there’s no need for them to wait tables or take orders; the customers come to them instead.
Now that you know what a fast-casual restaurant is, you might be wondering how they actually work. How do customers place orders? How is the staff organized?
Since table service isn’t typical, most-fast casual eateries use a counter-service model. Customers place their orders at the counter, either with a staff member or at a self-service kiosk. The order goes through to the kitchen, and the back-of-house team prepares it fresh to order.
When the order is ready, staff can take the food to tables or let customers know their food is ready to collect. Some fast-casual restaurants just use customers’ names, while others prefer to use pager systems to alert customers when their orders are ready.
It’s unusual for fast-casual restaurants to have a drive-thru station, but many offer takeout. Customers place their orders the same way, then wait until their food is ready to pick up and eat off the premises.
Given that fast-casual restaurants are a kind of QSR, certain types of cuisine work better than others. But what is a fast-casual restaurant best suited to serving, and what doesn’t translate to the quick-service format?
Let’s look at some examples of fast-casual restaurant chains to see what they have in common. Some of the most popular fast-casual chains in the United States include:
Chipotle
Shake Shack
Panera Bread
Five Guys
Panda Express
Wing Stop
These companies don’t all serve the same kind of food. There’s Mexican food, burgers, Chinese food, chicken wings, sandwiches, and more. They don’t fall under one type of cuisine.
However, the menus of all these restaurants consist of food that can be prepared ahead of time, then cooked and served quickly.
They might have components that are cooked ahead — particularly items that take a long time to cook, such as bread or rice. But they also have things that can be cooked fresh to order for each customer without long cooking times.
The restaurant industry can be a competitive space. If you’re considering opening a restaurant of your own, there are several benefits to choosing a fast-casual setup.
Unlike fast-food restaurants or fine-dining restaurants, fast-casual restaurants have a diverse target market.
Their typical customers are people who want to eat quickly but also enjoy a sit-down meal. That means they can target fast-food customers as well as full-service restaurant customers.
A broad customer base means restaurateurs don’t have to rely on a niche market for success. They’ll have equal success targeting office workers at the lunchtime rush, families coming in for an early dinner, and couples looking for an easy-going date night.
Fast-casual restaurants also benefit from high customer turnover levels. Customers eating in this type of restaurant won’t be sitting down for a long time, simply because the food doesn’t take a long time to arrive.
That means each table can be used multiple times during service, so the restaurant can serve more customers and maximize its profit margins.
Fast-casual restaurants serve higher-quality food than fast-food restaurants, which greatly appeals to restaurateurs who want to take pride in their work. Chefs can operate with more freedom and flexibility, and you could even offer monthly specials to change the menu items regularly.
Fast-casual restaurants serve food that customers enjoy, which keeps them returning for more.
Since most, if not all, fast-casual restaurants operate without table service, restaurant managers can reap the rewards of lower labor costs.
Operating with counter service means you don’t have to have as many FOH staff. With chefs and kitchen staff working behind the scenes, you’ll only need a couple of FOH employees to attend to customers and take orders.
You can also set up self-service screens to let customers place and pay for orders themselves. With KioskBuddy, you only need a tablet and payment hardware like the Square Kiosk to set up a fully functional self-ordering kiosk. It can help you further reduce labor costs and transfer those savings to other areas of your business.
There’s a lot to think about before opening a new restaurant, including the type of restaurant you want to run. Fast-casual restaurants provide business owners with access to a significant share of the market, attracting a variety of customers who want fast food that’s high in quality.
When starting a fast-casual restaurant, you’ll need to establish an ordering system that works for you. Choose a self-service kiosk system like KioskBuddy to let customers place and pay for orders themselves at the touch of a button. It’s quick and easy to set up — all you need to get started is a tablet and any form of Square payment hardware.
Sign up for KioskBuddy today to set up an easy-to-use self-service kiosk in your restaurant.