Chain Restaurants it’s Time to Up-date your Brand Promise

Why is it that so many chain restaurant brand managers continue to tout the value of their brand promise and when you read their brand promise it is the same brand promise that they had 5 years ago, 10 years ago and in some cases 15 years ago?  Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions® Grocerant Guru® Steven Johnson believes that the consumer is dynamic not static and when the customer moves retailers must move with them.  

Regular readers of this blog know that restaurants have’ become fully woven’ into the fabric of our daily lives and retailers want their brands increase in value with the consumer over time as well.  Restaurant brand protectionism is dead according to the team at www.FoodserviceSolutions.us.  

Restaurants need to speed up innovation, because what’s innovative now will be an expectation not too far down the line. Even Tim Ryan, president of the Culinary Institute of America recently when speaking about the restaurant sector stated “You’re not going fast enough… In what area will restaurants need to hit the gas next? The customer experience, Ryan predicts. The challenge, he said, will be finding ways to surprise and delight when diners today have so many options.”

Gail Seanor, senior director of marketing technology for TGI Fridays  understands that customer relevant data points can help retailers keep up with consumers.  Restaurants must evolve with innovative insights utilizing outside customer focused data points at times to find where undercurrents of customer migration are pointing too.  In shot retailers need to find a way to tease what Seanor calls the “next best option,” not what they’ve already purchased.

Seanor has a great example: “If someone buys a sleeping bag, they shouldn’t be shown more ads on sleeping bags, but instead should be shown a tent. Right now, even the more advanced brands are still trying to resell the sleeping bag.

Steven Johnson the Grocerant Guru® at Foodservice Solutions® repeatedly pontificates that consumers don’t think in silo’s when they think about dinner, lunch, or breakfast.  In fact consumers today buy meal components from multiple channels for one meal.  NPD found that 40% of consumers now buy grocerant niche Ready-2-Eat or Heat-N-Eat fresh prepared meals from grocery stores. 

Ready-2-Eat fresh prepared food was once the mainstay of the chain restaurant business and it still is.  However other retailers have found a way to garner that business and increasingly finding a better way to fill the customer need set of a fresh fast meal than many restaurants have.  Thus customers are migrating to new and evolving avenues of distribution.  Are you still trying to resell that sleeping bag? 

Are you trapped doing what you have always done and doing it the same way?  Interested in learning how www.FoodserviceSolutions.us can edify your retail food brand while creating a platform for consumer convenient meal participation, differentiation and individualization?  Email us at: Steve@FoodserviceSolutions.us or visit:  www.FoodserviceSolutions.us for more information.