Experts: Customers still clamor for what fast-casual restaurants deliver

A long line at Southern restaurant The Coop is not a strange sight to behold. The counter-service restaurant in Winter Park bustles, especially on weekends for breakfast.

The wait prompted owner John Rivers to survey diners if they would prefer table service for breakfast. The results surprised him.

Of the nearly 2,000 diners who responded, about 1,500 didn’t want The Coop to transition to table service. In their survey comments, diners wrote that fast-casual eateries such as The Coop were less expensive and more inviting with communal dining and less tipping.

“The most common feedback was if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” said Rivers, who was in favor of the change.

At most fast-casual restaurants, customers order and pay at the counter and a server brings the food to the table. The eateries tend to have higher prices, better quality food and a snazzier decor than fastfood restaurants. They also are more open to customizing meals. Fast-casual restaurants have had a meteoric rise in recent years,

spurred by consumers wanting to enjoy quick, reasonably-priced meals. Their growth has slowed recently, but experts say the dining style is here to stay.

”It’s a good fit in almost every demographic, small towns, bigger cities — it seems to have definitely found a foothold everywhere,” said Heather Lalley, an editor of Restaurant Business Magazine.

Bakery-cafes, Mexican restaurants and sandwich-focused eateries are the more popular options, making up more than half of the $47 billion of fast-casual restaurant sales in 2016, according to research and consulting firm Technomic. Those numbers are up from $29 billion in 2011.

Still, the fast-casual restaurant annual growth rate has dropped from 12 percent in 2015 to 10 percent in 2016, according to Technomic. Lalley attributes the decline to oversaturation, especially with concepts such as pizzerias.

However, “We’re not seeing the death of fast-casual,” she said.

The dining style appeals to guests who are less likely to want to sit and wait for their meal, Lalley said. Owners struggling to find skilled food-industry workers are also facing an increasing minimum wage. No table service usually results in fewer waitstaff.

“People are trying to get around this labor issue,” Lalley said.

A smaller waitstaff doesn’t necessarily make running the restaurant easier, said James Petrakis. The chef co-owns several eateries in Central Florida, from fast-casualesque barbecue joint The Polite Pig at Disney Springs to table-service restaurant The Ravenous Pig in Winter Park.

Fast-casual makes business sense, Petrakis said. “You can also [serve] more volume, keep costs in line a bit easier,” he said.

The Polite Pig is a mix of dining styles. Customers order at a counter, but servers are assigned to tables to check on diners.

“We can add the little touches of table service without table service,” Petrakis said.

This “elevated fast-casual” approach gives guests a better experience — and can boost sales as well, he said. Diners open to lingering, but bothered by a line, may purchase another drink or food item from their server.

“I think you’re going to see more of the hybrid system coming,” Petrakis said.

Rivers still wants to tweak service at The Coop, such as adding more dining-room staff to check on guests and seat those in need of tables quickly, namely the elderly or large families.

“Our team wants to make it as guest-oriented as possible,” Rivers said.