No baloney: Wireless fidelity is attracting new customers to Schlotzsky’s
Schlotzsky’s Inc. President and CEO John Wooley had a hunch that offering free wireless fidelity Internet access would draw new customers to his restaurants. He was right: A recent survey showed 6% of customers came in mainly for the wi-fi web access. The increase in business, about $100,000 over the course of a year in a single restaurant, is 20-25 times what Schlotzsky’s pays to install wi-fi at each location. "We’re seeing a really positive response from customers of all ages," Wooley tells Internet Retailer.
Wi-fi, which extends high-bandwidth Internet access from fixed lines to wireless access, enables Schlotzsky’s customers to quickly download Internet content, including streaming media, music recordings and other data-intensive files, to their personal laptops or PDAs or to one of Schlotzsky’s iMac computers.
The cost to implement a wi-fi network in a retail location depends on the range of applications involved. Schlotzsky’s used its own IT staff to install wi-fi at a cost of $4,000 to $5,000 per location. But Wooley figures the new revenue at each location from customers attracted mainly by wi-fi amounts to about $100,000. The average ticket in a Schlotzsky’s Deli is $6, and each restaurant handles about 300,000 customer orders per year.
The only additional costs related to the wi-fi program are the 3 to 6 iMac desktop computers the company installed in each Deli, though Schlotzsky’s had planned to purchase these with or without wi-fi, Wooley says.
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