Are Chain Restaurants Relevant is Repositioning Required

Back in the day (1970–1980) restaurants were a mainstay of social activity where people met share information from around town, talked politics, dated, heck everyone knew you name, there was even a TV show about it called Cheers. That was 40 years ago; simply put that was then this is now.  The team at Foodservice Solutions® asked “have restaurants lost customer relevance do they need to reposition?

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Most chain restaurants are run today my baby boomer CEO’s that are quite frankly trying to run restaurants today like they did 40 years ago.  How is that working for them? Each year since 2008, Chain Restaurant year over year customer counts have been flat or down. According to the NPD Group the answer is not to well.  Let’s take a look 2016 numbers:

1.       Quick Service Restaurants (QSR’s) today account for 80% of all restaurant visits

2.       QSR’s realized no traffic growth in 2016

3.       Total Restaurant Foodservice growth dipped slightly

4.       Full Service Restaurants accounting for 20% of industry traffic declined

Foodservice Solutions® team identified, quantified, and qualified evolving customer migration back in October 2012 in a white paper titled The 65 Inch HDTV Syndrome.  Millennials are driving the evolving food landscape and it might be wise for foodservice operators to look for solutions from CEO’s that went to school more recently, that are younger, and who’s viewpoints are more open and inclusive to new ideations to edify brand relevance.

Foodservice Solutions® Grocerant Guru® Steven Johnson stated “our platform Foodservice Inside-Out is but one example of industry leadership driven by Millennials minds.  Boomer CEO’s seemingly rely on metrics of a bygone era whose relevance was on-target during the 1980’s but simply put misses the mark in 2017.” The NPD Groups numbers alone edify a lack of chain restaurant customer relevance, enough said.

Invite Foodservice Solutions® to complete a Grocerant Program Assessment, Grocerant ScoreCard, or for product positioning or placement assistance, or call our Grocerant Guru®.  Since 1991 www.FoodserviceSolutions.us  of Tacoma, WA has been the global leader in the Grocerant niche. Contact: Steve@FoodserviceSolutions.us or 253-759-7869