• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, March 7, 2019

Fast-food restaurant Wingstop points to digital advertising and ecommerce as a way to increase the company's revenue.

“Digital is important because it carries with it a $5 higher average ticket, and we think that we can continue to drive digital sales without employing discounts or incentives like other brands,” Charlie Morrison, Wingstop chairman and chief executive, told investors during the company’s latest earnings call.

By digital, Morrison meant advertising, but also a new ecommerce strategy. The custom online ordering site and mobile app, where consumers can first gauge their need for wings from “snacky” to “starving” with a wing calculator, began rolling out in December. By January 2019, the sale of food items online surpassed 30% -- up about 6% -- of total sales.

The company is also looking into self-ordering kiosks, pick-up lockers and a restaurant kitchen display system. All the digital orders not only provide higher revenue numbers, but give the company an opportunity to collect and analyze data about their consumers. 

Morrison also believes that digital ordering will help increase deliveries. All restaurant delivery orders are made online, which began during the fourth quarter of 2018. By the end of 2019, he expects 80% of the Wingstop restaurants nationally will have online delivery systems.

The strategy around deliveries for the first couple of months will rely on “a little bit of radio and some digital advertising” in the test markets.

Last year Wingstop also signed on a new creative agency, Leo Burnett, which launched the restaurant’s largest national advertising effort to date.

Advertising expenses were $8.4 million in the fourth quarter of 2018, compared to $7.9 million in the prior-year quarter.

Wingstop expects the company’s 2019 advertising strategy will create awareness. Rather than “mayonnaise-ing” the TV advertising strategy across the entire year, in 2019 the amount spent on TV advertising will roll out in two-phase, 12-week waves.

The first campaign launched earlier this year and the second one will launch later this year with the start of the football season.