Gen Z and Millennials are Welcome at Bennigan’s

 

The welcome invitations having been sent out, now the stage is set let’s see if the hard work, customer focused, and timing are right for Bennigan’s to make a formidable come back. According to Steven Johnson enough time has elapsed that Bennigan’s comeback could very well be under way.

While Bennigan's may hold some nostalgic charm for older generations, it's important to acknowledge that the restaurant chain has faced challenges in recent years, including filing for bankruptcy in 2018. This, along with its traditional entrée weighted menu and dining experience, may not necessarily resonate with younger demographics like GenZ and Millennials who often seek.  It’s been just about long enough for both Gen Z and millennials to find it an interesting unique, inviting experience-driven concept.

However, there are some potential ways Bennigan's could adapt to better suit the preferences of these younger demographics:

1.        Modernize the menu and ambiance: Introduce healthier options, plant-based dishes, and cater to dietary restrictions. Millennials, in particular, are known for their health-conscious tendencies. Update the décor and atmosphere to create a more contemporary and inviting space.

2.        Embrace technology: Offer online ordering, delivery, and loyalty programs through user-friendly apps.

3.        Highlight social responsibility: Partner with local farms and businesses, source sustainable ingredients, and implement eco-friendly practices. Both GenZ and Millennials are concerned about environmental and social issues.

4.        Create a unique dining experience: Offer interactive events, themed nights, or live music to cater to the experience-seeking nature of these demographics.

There is no guarantee that Bennigan's would be successful in attracting GenZ and Millennials even with these changes. The restaurant industry is highly competitive, and it is crucial for any business to stay up-to-date with evolving consumer preferences and adapt accordingly. Here is what they are doing and it is a very good start. Let’s look:

Back in the day, Guests who know how to celebrate St. Paddy’s Day head to Bennigan’s to find their pot of gold! When it’s time for every leprechaun’s favorite holiday, it’s time to bring back the ever-popular Blarney Blast™ menu with creative cocktails and drink specials. This year’s specials include both new creations and returning favorites:

Emerald Isle Party Punch (new): Jim Beam Apple Bourbon, DeKuyper Sour Apple Pucker, Midori Melon Liqueur, DeKuyper Blue Curacao, and Red Bull^®.

Irish Flag (new): Paddy’s Irish Whiskey, Stolichnaya Vodka, Midori Melon Liqueur, Dekuyper Blue Curacao, Finest Call Peach Purée, Finest Call Piña Colada Mix, and Finest Call Premium Lemon Sour

Blarney Stone Kiss (new): Ole Smoky Tennessee Peach Whiskey, Paddy’s Irish Whiskey, Finest Call Premium Lime Sour, Finest Call Peach Puree, Monin Stone Fruit syrup, and Red Bull^® Yellow edition.

Tableside Irish Coffee: Our classic signature cocktails! Warm and comforting, with a distinct whiskey flavor. Made with house-brewed coffee, Paddy’s Irish Whiskey and finished with fresh lightly whipped cream and a sugar rim. Sweetened to taste.

Samuel Adams^® Boston Lager: Bold, rich and complex. The unmistakable character of this brew has become an American original.

a.       Cupcake Chardonnay: Cupcake Chardonnay is crafted with grapes from California’s esteemed Monterey County. This barrel-fermented Chardonnay achieves a rich, creamy wine with flavors of apple, lemon, vanilla and a hint of toasted almond.

b.       Foodies wearing the green will find some of their favorite dishes along with new scratch-made, Irish-inspired choices, including:

c.       Guinness^® Glazed Pub Shrimp (new): Succulent shrimp hand-dipped in our secret tempura batter recipe, fried to golden brown and tossed in our made-from-scratch Guinness^® Served with celery sticks and extra Guinness^® Glaze for dipping.

d.       Reuben Burger (new): A juicy half-pound burger layered with chopped corned beef, sauerkraut, Swiss cheese, Thousand Island dressing and served on toasted Rye bread. Served with Homestyle French fries seasoned with sea salt.

e.       Finn’s Beer Battered Fish and Chips: Tender white fish fillets hand-crafted in a delicious beer batter. Lightly fried to crispy and golden brown. Served with Homestyle French Fries, kicked-up coleslaw and jalapeno tartar sauce.

f.         Irish Cream Cheesecake: A chocolate lover’s dream! Bennigan’s famous New York Style Cheesecake, covered with house made Bailey’s Irish Cream ganache and topped with shamrock candy sprinkles.

Bennigan’s Chairman & CEO Paul Mangiamele, stated, “Our signature Blarney Blast™ menu shows our love for St. Paddy’s Day, and we love how our guests have found such a strong connection with it and our brand,” …. “With our Legendary atmosphere, chef-driven Irish food and specialty cocktails, Bennigan’s fans can celebrate the good health, fun and fortune with the ones they love at the restaurant they love!”

As always, each Bennigan’s location will feature green beer, Corned Beef and Cabbage and Beer Cheese Soup during the week of St. Patrick’s Day while supplies last. These are limited-time offers run from March 5 through April 2. Both beverage and food item prices vary by location.

Foodservice Solutions® specializes in outsourced business development. We can help you identify, quantify and qualify additional food retail segment opportunities or a new menu product segment and brand and menu integration strategy.  Foodservice Solutions® of Tacoma WA is the global leader in the Grocerant niche visit us on our social media sites by clicking one of the following links: Facebook,  LinkedIn, or Twitter

Does Alcohol Make Adults Act Like Kids

 

It just might be the case that Gen Z and Millennials are not as different as their parents.  Take of instance the new trend in adult beverage flavors. Much like their parents both Gen Z and Millennials are looking back to their childhood favorite flavors and rekindling them in alcohol and nonalcoholic beverages.

Steven Johnson Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions® stated, “My job is simply fun. Reading, learning, and sharing information on consumers food twist and turns runs the gamut from unbelievable to the most logical twist and or evolution within a retail channel or branded product line.”     

Today our team is sharing some new research and analysis from Datassential; who found that Sunny D, Lucky Charms and chocolate Easter bunnies are all providing inspiration for adult beverages in the 2023 spring and summer seasons. Oh yeah this is some of the fun.  

Now according to Datassential's recent webinar, "2023 Adult Beverage Trends."  Beverage retailers are looking to tap into millennial and older Gen Z nostalgia, beverage companies are seeking to provide a familiar experience reminiscent of childhood but suitable for adult tastes. Here is a report of the webinar:

“Hosts Colleen McClellan, vice president of customer experience; Kyle Chamberlin, associate director of customer experience; and Kelly Dykhuizen, senior director of customer experience, covered a wide range of alcoholic beverages and cocktails with a focus on recapturing the feel of childhood experiences with something appropriate for a grown-up palate. 

Simultaneously, an uptick on nonalcoholic offerings shows how the changing patterns in drinking behavior, especially among the youngest legal cohort, is causing traditional brewers and winemakers to expand their offerings to nondrinkers.

Both trends can be seen in home sales and restaurant offerings. For instance, the Chocolate Club in London introduced a booze-filled chocolate bunny for Easter while The City Tap in Boston created a Lucky Charms martini, a pistachio-based drink garnished with the breakfast cereal staple. For the at-home market, Sunny D entered into the hard seltzer space with a vodka-infused 12-ounce can.

Adult Nonalcoholic Options

In the meantime, according to Chamberlin, the nonalcoholic beer space has seen an uptick in activity after years of flat or even declining growth. But changes in drinking preferences after the pandemic seem to have sparked a resurgence.

"Consumers are … seeing high ABV as an efficient way to drink," Chamberlin said. "If they're going to spend up for craft, they want it to get the bang for their buck out of the ABV. And I think increasingly, we're seeing a kind of bifurcation where people are going for no alcohol at all … or they're going all the way up to the eight, nine [or] 10 percent imperial IPAs."

McClellan pointed out that while brewing companies have long worked in the nonalcoholic space, it's only more recently that wines and spirits have started to more actively produce low or no-ABV offerings at capacity. This includes some surprisingly traditional brands and companies, such as Veuve du Verne from France and Starla.

In the meantime, companies like Mixoloshe offer nonalcoholic cocktail options, like blueberry gin and tonics, or nonalcoholic mixers and bases, such as the no-ABV limoncello from Paulini.

Wine & Cocktails

Which isn't to say that the adult beverage industry has decided to teetotal for the entire spring and summer seasons. Fruit-based and botanical offerings are being or have been launched for customers interested in lighter flavors in warmer weather. Chamberlin pointed to brands like Seagram's Escapes, which brought in flavors like leche to tap into a younger market while also elevating what malt beverages can offer.

To add to that trend, McClellan noted that many wines have returned to marketing themselves with terms like "fruity" or "crisp." She attributes these product trends to consumers themselves becoming more adventurous in their palates or simply not having the same negative connotations with certain types of drinks.

"Seventy-two percent of consumers are interested in a fruit wine, like blackberry wine," she said. "Our drinkers today are young enough and new enough to the category that they don't have [a] preconceived notion of what wine needs to be or the romance of bottle opening."

Are you looking for a new partnership to drive sales? Are you ready for some fresh ideations? Do your food marketing tactics look more like yesterday than tomorrow?  Visit GrocerantGuru.com for more information or contact: Steve@FoodserviceSolutions.us Remember success does leave clues and we just may have the clue you need to propel your continued success.

Grocerant Guru Restaurant Discontinuity Driven by Grocerant Growth

 

Once again, Foodservice Solutions® Grocerant Guru® Steven Johnson predicts that 2022 will be a record year of chain restaurant discontinuity.  Specifically, with more chain restaurant closing stores and fewer total chain restaurants open entering 2023.

Regular readers of this blog know that back in the day (2005) the team at Foodservice Solutions® released a White Paper Restaurant Consumer Discontinuity; we noted consumer migration from the restaurant sector.  Consumers moved as their preference for meals eaten in restaurants waned and they migrated too fresh prepared meals bought and eaten at home.  The undercurrents of consumer migration from Eating-Out to Eating-In (at home) is even strong today according to Johnson.   

The main driver of this change is consumers desire to Mix and Match meal components into a perfect family meal.  This has been going on for a long time now.  In fact, consumers purchased 8 billion fast food combo meals in the year ended January 2012, down more than 12 percent from the 9 billion sold in the same period five years earlier, and that trend is continuing.  Consumers are dynamic not static.  Digital ordering and delivery has grown 300% faster than dine-in traffic since 2014.  Let’s see just what other preferences they have adopted:

In a Battle for Share of Stomach

1.       Recent Grocerant ScoreCards found 82.3% of consumers don’t know what’s for dinner at Noon, and 61.1 don’t know what’ s for dinner at 4PM %.

2.       Roughly 66% of consumers purchase prepared food items from a retail location at least three times a month.

3.       83.1% all dinners have at least 1 grocerant niche Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat meal component and 68.4% have two meal components.

4.       When asked if they wanted to cook dinner from scratch or assemble dinner from fresh meal components 90.4 % of Gen Z chose assemble from Fresh Prepared Meal Components and Millennials 82.7% chose meal components.

5.       Seventy-three percent of retail prepared food purchases are taken to go

6.       Prepared food purchases are frequently a planned purchase among 59% of shoppers, while 41% of shoppers said they buy prepared foods on impulse. Dinner has the highest amount of prepared food buys with 79% of respondents making purchases for that meal, while lunch comes in at 77% and breakfast at 62%.

7.       55% of consumers would like to try autonomous EV delivery

 

Regular readers of this blog know we regularly documented that, consumers like to mix and match meal components. Mix and match meal bundling is a benchmark for success within the grocerant niche.

Recently we documented how grocery stores are now doing a great job at offering ‘better-for-you’ side dishes empowering consumers to buy fresh prepared sides from the ‘service deli’ rather than at a restaurant.  The intended consequence consumers are buying more entrees as well.  Consumers are dynamic not static is your branded food solutions static or dynamic?

Meal time is now becoming a time of convenient meal participation, with differentiation and individualization for the entire family.  The ability of the retailer to empower consumer choice within a bundled offering creates an additional platform for success. Do you want to understand how to empower that choice? Are you willing to empower customer migration back you your brand?

Foodservice Solutions® specializes in outsourced business development. We can help you identify, quantify and qualify additional food retail segment opportunities.  Foodservice Solutions® of Tacoma WA is the global leader in the Grocerant niche visit Facebook.com/Steven Johnson, Linkedin.com/in/grocerant or twitter.com/grocerant