Brinker’s digital guest offerings evolved to meet guest expectations, but its legacy technology couldn’t keep pace. The process to update website code took hours, required downtime, and didn’t guarantee a consistent configuration. “We wanted the flexibility to deploy code quickly, with minimal downtime, and on a continuous basis, instead of having to deploy, roll back, then deploy again,” said Pankaj Patra, senior director of IT enterprise solutions at Brinker. Brinker needed to unify its digital platforms in a new e-commerce environment to provide a more consistent guest experience and increase adoption of its digital offerings.

To incorporate the necessary innovation and flexibility, Brinker decided to use open source technology. It chose Red Hat’s platform as the foundation of its new e-commerce environment, which also hosts Chili’s new digital curbside service. Brinker incorporated Red Hat solutions for storage, management, and data analytics. “We’ve been a closed platform shop for 40 years,” said Patra. “But for this project, we didn’t want to get too tied to one technology, so we started looking at open source. There’s so much innovative development happening in open source communities.”

Brinker’s new e-commerce environment helps develop, test, and deploy new features and services faster. "When we had to put a fix in place on a Friday at dinnertime, one of our busiest online ordering times, we completed deployment with no downtime," said Nathan Huber, enterprise architect at Brinker. "It worked flawlessly."The new solution also reduces the time to build new development environments from months to minutes and allows Brinker to create and scale innovative apps to meet guest demand—and build loyalty. Also, new security features protect guests’ personal and payment information. “The innovation in open source is amazing,” said Huber. “When you have many minds working together, you can build a product that you can’t get from a proprietary offering.”