Dairy Queen APAC regional director: COVID-19 requires us to look at site selection with “different lens”
The chain joins the QSR Media Asia Conference & Awards’ timely property panel.
Dairy Queen APAC regional director Michael Bruce is joining the QSR Media Asia Conference & Awards: A Virtual Event, happening on 3 September, as a panelist at our Property Panel.
Fellow panelists include Troy Kozuma, chief executive officer of Urban Kitchen Company Limited (BonChon Myanmar) and Christine Li, head of research for Southeast Asia at Cushman & Wakefield.
See Bruce thoughts on what’s going on with the industry in our Q&A below:
QSR Media: From your vantage point - how has the pandemic changed the restaurant industry?
Bruce: The big change for the Dairy Queen business has been the increase in delivery transactions. Of course, this has been industry-wide, as many countries are or were on lockdown, and this was one of the main ways to get food from restaurants into our homes.
Whilst we all know delivery is important, that importance has grown more significant for us and continues to be strong.
What emerging trends are you seeing at this stage? How are businesses and consumers behaving?
As mentioned earlier, delivery continues to be a trend that is growing at a faster rate for the industry, but also the importance of ensuring that delivery is delivered safely and in tamper-proof packaging.
Customers are very savvy and are demanding that food not only be tasty, but packaged in a way gives confidence that it is safe to eat for the entire family.
How do you imagine a post-COVID environment would look?
We are looking forward to post-COVID days, but some trends are most likely not going to change, which include the importance of delivery, and tamper-proof packaging for delivery.
Whilst Dairy Queen had very high safety standards already in place, I feel that our increased efforts of sanitation requirements, the use of providing hand sanitizers for customers, and other COVID-19 measures will continue to remain in place.
COVID-19 will certainly require us to look at where we build restaurants going forward. Whilst in the past, we might have been fine with being on the 4th floor of a large shopping mall, with the anchor as a cinema, but maybe in the future, we look at things such as paths to essential services, exterior entrances, smaller footprints, etc. Whilst there is no singular answer for a perfect location that meets all requirements, it will require us to look at locations with a different lens moving forward.
Figuring out your QSR’s property strategy post-COVID? Get insights from the QSR Media Asia Conference & Awards: A Virtual Event. Register here.
