For Zippy's Restaurants, the commitment to supporting local goes beyond the food it serves, extending all the way into how it cooks up new technology — new tech developments are creating jobs at the company for kama‘āina looking to return to the Islands.
"Our founders, Francis and Charlie Higa, really believed that the root of their success was grounded in community, and they knew that they wouldn't be able to grow without the support of the Hawai‘i community," Jessica Yamamoto, communications and social media manager for Zippy's, told Aloha State Daily this week. It was in the early 2000s that the company decided that "supporting local was most important."
Not only did Zippy's decide to make a more conscious effort to buy local foods and produce as much as and whenever it can, she says, but with the recent launch of refreshed digital ordering platforms, "we can truly say that as much as possible, we are trying to source local, even including the roles and jobs to support that idea that we want to support local as much as possible."
The revamped digital platforms, which the company says streamlines the ordering process for both customers and team members, builds on technology and hardware changes the restaurant has implemented in recent years. The new platform integrates web, mobile app and in-store ordering, the company said in a recent announcement.
Yamamoto says that the company has been working on the project for more than a year, aiming to "really redefine what the user's experience will look like when they come," whether they order from the Zippy's website or the mobile app.
"When most people come to zippys.com or interact with us via our mobile app, it should be that same service that people have been using since we launched in 2022," she said. "Our guests may not see that a lot of things have changed — they can still order from their favorite store, their favorite foods. They may not notice what has changed because a lot of what we have changed is actually on the back-end."
According to Yamamoto, Zippy's previously was using a "cookie cutter" digital app, but is now using more features designed in-house.
"For the past year and a half that we've been working on this project, we've worked with an outside agency to kind of help us build our own app, essentially, and now, in addition to our outside agency, we are working and looking to hire more kama‘āina to help us build that app in-house."
‘Iolani School graduate Kylie Tamashiro, who attended college on the East Coast and worked in the tech industries of Atlanta and Las Vegas, is now working as a user experience designer for Zippy's, the recent announcement noted.
“Hawaiʻi is, and will always be home for me,” Tamashiro said in a statement. “I knew that returning home to Hawaiʻi was always a goal of mine but working as a user experience designer in Hawaiʻi sometimes seemed like it would always be just a dream given the few tech opportunities in the Islands. Most young working professionals, like me, don’t always think of Hawaiʻi as being the first place to host a tech-friendly workforce; I’m grateful that a company like Zippy’s sees the value in diversifying Hawaiʻi’s workforce by creating opportunities for locals to return home and to contribute to expanding Hawaiʻi’s tech industry.”
In addition to the support of an outside agency, Zippy's has also partnered with Pi‘iku Co., a local nonprofit it says gives college students, recent college grads and young professionals the chance to work on real-life tech projects.
Yamamoto said the nonprofit is helping on a specific area of the Zippy's digital experience — custom cake ordering within its bakeries and the restaurant's holiday meal package program.
"As much as possible, we are really trying to make more of a conscious effort to hire local talent that is focused on the tech industry," Yamamoto said. "... We're just very fortunate and very lucky that people love and continue to support Zippy's. This launch is first of hopefully many exciting new tech features and rollouts that we hope to introduce to Hawai‘i."
New technology isn't meant to replace Zippy's team members, Yamamoto says, but the hope is that it "helps to aid in making our team members' lives easier and making the customer's experience all that much better."
Kevin Yim, vice president of communications and marketing for FCH Enterprises, Inc., shared similar sentiments.
"Zippy’s uses technology to support our team members in ensuring that we can provide service that is exactly that," he told ASD in an email. "Take for instance our food lockers. Our food lockers are installed in almost all of our stores, and were installed as a response to our team members expressing a need for a system that reduces the time spent handing out/organizing or searching through orders during peak hours when they could be focusing on other tasks like food prep, as well as a response to our guests expressing a desire for a pick up process that is convenient and quick."
He said that Zippy's refreshed digital experience, "is a commitment to our guests that we see them and hear them."
"Our team has worked hard to ensure that our guests have the best experience possible in a way that is exactly what they want and expect from us."
Zippy’s also plans to introduce new ways to order in the future, including in-store ordering kiosks, "and will invest in making the online ordering experience more robust and easier to use," the announcement noted.
Zippy's got its start in 1966, when the Higa brothers opened their first restaurant on King Street. There are now 24 locations on O‘ahu, Maui, Hawai‘i Island and in Las Vegas.
Fun fact: Zippy's sells more than 100 tons of its chili every month!
Stephanie Salmons can be reached at stephanie@alohastatedaily.com.
