Earlier this year Applebee's began expanding a lunchtime platform where customers can order and pre-pay for their meals at a counter. Runners then deliver the food to their table. For now, the Express Lunch option is only available at roughly two dozen locations in the company's home turf of Kansas City. Other chains are trying to buy their optical fiber cables way out. Ruby Tuesday acquired Lime Fresh, a small Chipotle-esque concept with a wider menu, last year.
Casual dining giants are also reaching higher up the food chain, snapping up more upscale concepts that haven't suffered from the defection to fast casual. After all, someone hankering for a foodie hotspot or a fancy chophouse isn't going to trade down to a carnitas burrito at Chipotle. Darden is one of the operators going higher end, snapping up the fast-growing Yardhouse brewpub chain and expanding its own Seasons 52 concept.
Your local casual dining operator doesn't have much of a choice. The trend isn't its friend these days, and chains that fail to adapt will have to change their approach to lunch if it doesn't want nimbler competition to eat it first alcohol wipes.