Chili’s and Maggiano’s started selling It’s Just Wings out of 1,000 locations during the pandemic. After seeing booming sales, it’s testing additional virtual concepts.
Source: Brinker International Inc.
Your Next Favorite Restaurant Might Not Be a Restaurant
Covid-19 has sparked a surge in virtual eateries, including from legacy chains. But will they last?
At Chili’s and Maggiano’s, the buzz is about their booming new side hustle—It’s Just Wings. Same at Applebee’s, where its startup, Neighborhood Wings, is doing a brisk business.
Both are online-only ventures that the chains quickly set up in hundreds of their kitchens—fresh takes on a business that the industry likes to call digital restaurants. The push into this model was tepid for years, but the pandemic created an urgent scramble to find new customers and put idle kitchen staffs back to work in a bid revive a sector among the hardest hit by months of social-distancing and rolling lockdowns.