Starbird Virtuals
Virtual Concept Creation / Whitespace Identification / Virtual Restaurant Strategy
What does it take to grow a successful restaurant brand into a virtual empire?
70%
OFF-PREMISE SALES
2
LIVE VIRTUAL
CONCEPTS
+40%
SALES FROM
CLOUD KITCHEN
The advent of third party delivery has created a food delivery industry on pace to surpass $200 billion by 2025. Seeing this opportunity, Starbird sought to grow its brand footprint outside of its brick and mortar locations. The goal was to take an omni-channel approach, selling across multiple physical and digital platforms with a suite of brands. However, questions existed about how these brands should come to life. Should they bear the Starbird name? Its logo? What offering will slide seamlessly into today’s operations, but still warrant the existence of a whole new menu and brand?
The Opportunity.
Our Insights.
Starbird’s virtual suite of brands was built on one core insight: Our chicken has legs. Despite the variety of our core offering, there was more to be done with our perfectly crispy chicken - new crispy chicken parts to be perfected and more product platforms in which our existing crispy chicken could be enjoyed. Our greatest reach could be had by not reaching too far, and sticking to the one thing we do best -- and do better than everyone else.
To develop our suite of virtual brands, TCE first looked inward into the Starbird brand. We looked to customer insights gathered from PMIXs and existing loyalty data to understand how guests use the core offering. We sought to understand where there might be guest need states and occasions not being fulfilled by the current offering that a new virtual concept could serve. We analyzed the operational platform to understand its efficiencies and bottlenecks, uncovering where new concepts could be layered in to still achieve an optimal evolution in design, labor and equipment. We examined Starbird’s pantry to understand how to create the maximum impact with minimal new SKUs.
Similar to creating Starbird’s original, core concept, we then completed a marketplace whitespace analysis. Despite the number of restaurants launching onto 3PD platforms everyday, there were still significant gaps in the marketplace when it came to addressing guest needs and emerging trends.
Our chicken has legs.
The first gap identified was a lack of compelling wing concepts serving the Bay Area. From there, we took to the kitchen to develop the perfect crispy chicken wing. We were authentic to Starbird’s core brand ethos, creating a wing offering only through testing hundreds of recipes and making sauces and dry rubs in house.
Knowing that we were staying true to the Starbird brand and recognizing an opportunity to capitalize on our credibility in chicken, we opted to keep the new wing concept under the Starbird name, launching Starbird’s branded house. We partnered with Strohl to design a modified Starbird Wings logo that emphasized both speed and wings.
Our Results.
Since launching Starbird Wings, TCE has continued to collaborate with Starbird to design and launch a full house of virtual brands, with Starbird Salads already in market. Starbird Bowls® is scheduled to launch Fall 2020, and Gardenbird® (a plant-based concept) will launch in Winter 2021.
Today, Starbird’s Virtual brands makeup 40% of all Cloud Kitchen sales.
This multi-brand approach has created significant franchising and growth potential for Starbird. Not only can the brand boost street-side sales with virtual brands, it can also open a Cloud Kitchen anywhere in the country with immediate high capital return. Starbird is proving an innovative force in this new landscape, acting as a pioneer and defining best practices for other brands.
In just 4 years, Starbird has grown from a single unit to five Bay Area locations and an SF-based cloud kitchen. Currently, we have plans to open two additional Bay Area locations and enter into additional cloud kitchens in Los Angeles. The brand has received national recognition and numerous awards, including FastCasual.com’s Top Movers & Shakers in 2017, 2018, and 2020 and Nation’s Restaurant News 2020 Most Influential CEOs and 2017 Breakout brand.
