Dive Brief:
- Wingstop has installed the Wingstop Smart Kitchen, a new kitchen operating system, in 1,000 restaurants, with full deployment across its U.S. system expected by the end of the year, CEO Micheal Skipworth said Wednesday on the chain’s Q2 2025 earnings call.
- Restaurants with the Wingstop Smart Kitchen have seen a 40% reduction in ticket times within four weeks of implementation. “Markets with the Wingstop Smart Kitchen are delivering faster speed, a more consistent guest experience and sales outperformance, and all of this without additional advertising to the guests,” Skipworth said.
- These kitchen changes will likely help bolster comparable sales, which fell 1.9% in Q2 2025, the first decline reported by the fast casual chain since Q2 2022. Skipworth said that the comps were up against strong sales growth of 28.4% in the year-ago quarter and 16.8% in Q2 2023.
Dive Insight:
Restaurants with Smart Kitchens, including the initial 160 stores in the Dallas-Fort Worth test market, reported “meaningfully higher same-store sales growth relative to control restaurants,” Skipworth said.
The new KDS includes four touch-screen monitors and uses predictive order management, BTIG analyst Peter Saleh said in a June 30 report detailing a restaurant tour. The system offers greater operational precision. For example, the KDS displays how many ounces of fries need to be cooked, an improvement on employees guessing portions, Saleh said. The system uses a restaurant’s existing servers and tech stack, and can be installed overnight and enabled the next day.
Ticket times in modernized kitchens are down to about 10 minutes, compared to 18 to 22 minutes “on our best days,” Skipworth said, adding that it takes restaurants about four weeks to acclimate to the new system and hit these ticket times. These restaurants also have seen an eight-point increase in guest satisfaction scores compared to restaurants without a Smart Kitchen, he added.
Wingstop Smart Kitchen is also decreasing delivery times, which sometimes exceeded 40 minutes and frustrated customers, Skipworth said. Delivery times are now under 30 minutes for third-party delivery.
“We believe the faster service times will be a key component to bridge the gap from 30% to 50% delivery mix, as customers on delivery apps can sort by criteria like fastest near them and delivery within 30 minutes, so Wingstop can now be in those consideration sets,” Saleh said.
In Dallas-Fort Worth, year-over-year sales growth is already outpacing U.S. delivery sales by mid-single digits.
“The results we are seeing from the Wingstop Smart Kitchen are exactly what we had anticipated and are validating the opportunities we have within our strategies supporting our long term target of scaling AUVs to $3 million,” Skipworth said.
