4. Disney by the Numbers
A look at the foodservice operation powering Walt Disney Parks and Resorts
• 365 quick-service restaurants
• More than 18,455 different food items available
• 81 million meals served annually, including 57 million quick-service meals
• 20,000 food and beverage cast members
Source: Walt Disney Parks and Resorts
5. An operation that would be the
35th largest
restaurant company in the
world by sales
7. Like the restaurant industry,
Disney is racing to keep up with
consumers’ evolving food
demands and expectations for
healthier and more premium
menu items
8. Guests treat a
meal as a dining
experiencethat is as much
a part of their vacation
fantasy
9. Disney employs
290 chefs who are
responsible for researching,
designing, testing, and ultimately
rolling out
new menu items
10. Chefs visit international cities for
inspiration, and hold consumer
insight groups to develop new menu
items—the same trends that are
forcing quick-service operators to
reevaluate their
own menus
11. Disney, is looking at ways to
incorporate
customization
into its own concepts
12. Disney’s food operations
is a great case study on
menu items, quality standards
and
preparation time for the Quick
Service Restaurants
13. The Disney parks are investing in
upgrades to service structure and
storytelling engagement to create an
experience that children and their
families won’t soon forget
14. Disney is blurring
the lines between quick service, fast
casual, and table service to create
more opportunities for families to
dine where they want to dine and
when they want to dine
15. Be Our Guest
is an example of Disney’s extensive
work to balance restaurant-industry
trends with the magical sort of
storytelling that Disney is
famous for
16. Story of a
restaurant is about the
ambience, the structure, and the
storyline that comes with
the service
17. Meals are ordered via
touchscreen kiosks in a lobby area
and guests are given a “rose” with
the NextGen technology that is
tapped at the kiosk and then carried
to the table. Servers deliver your
food by finding your rose
18. Recent $1 billion, Disney-wide
development,
MyMagicPlus, takes
dining at the parks to a whole new
level
Guests who sign up receive a
MagicBand ahead of their trip, a
bracelet that connects via radio to
sensors all over the park, delivering
information on the guest’s purchases
and preferences
20. Mickey Check, an icon
that signals on menuboards which
food items meet Disney’s
nutritional guidelines
21. Disney chefs
have successfully found ways to
incorporate
stealth health, making many items
that are both healthy and
seemingly indulgent
22. Disney’s allergen-friendly menu
gives more selections to visitors. It
has expanded to 117 of the total
restaurants. It’s an impressive
feat of innovation for an
amusement park
23. Disney’s food operation
is much more
immersive and entwined
with the storytelling.
Quick Service Restaurants can learn
a lot from Disney.
Nearly five years in development, Be Our Guest opened in Disney World’s Fantasyland in 2012 at the base of Beast’s Castle, a Beauty and the Beast–themed restaurant with 550 seats, three dining areas, and a hybrid service model that is fast casual by day and full service by night (breakfast was later added to accommodate guests who couldn’t manage to score a reservation months in advance). The restaurant dishes up meals like the tuna Niçoise salad and turkey baguette for lunch, while the dinner menu features things like a charcuterie plate and pan-seared chicken breast.
Take Be Our Guest as an example again. The restaurant’s menu includes the Mickey Meatloaf, a turkey meatloaf served with carrot ketchup made with fresh carrot juice. The natural sugar of the carrots gives the ketchup some sweetness without being unhealthy, and Jones says the pulp left over after the chef juices the carrots is cooked back into the meatloaf to fortify it with nutrients.