The Restaurant Customer Migration Quagmire Can Be Fixed

Restaurant customer migration is the one constant the restaurant sector would like to displace.  Once again TDn2K data through The Restaurant Industry Snapshot reported that restaurant sector, same-store sales fell 0.8 percent in February, a 0.5-percentage-point decline from January and the weakest month since last September.  All the while the bigger problem was year over year customer traffic that fell 3.1% in February. 

According to Steven Johnson, Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions® this multi-year downturn in customer traffic is an indication that consumers path to purchase for meals and meal components is evolving faster than chain restaurants ability to adopt a new business model. Is your brand evolving as fast as consumers? 

 If your company looks more like Yesterday than Tomorrow you are moving to slow. 

Regular readers of this blog know that you can’t simply continue to raise prices of your menu items to show top line sales and bottom line profits. Simply put you need to put butts in seats, meals in stomachs, food on the table according to Johnson. 

Branded foodservice operators need to recreate customer relevance with a new electricity to drive top line sales and bottom line profits.   In the minds-eye of Johnson, there is one dominate element that will power success within retail and foodservice over the coming years and that is partnerships.

Johnson calls it the new electricity that is partnerships specifically strategic partnerships.   The new electricity must be very efficient for the supply and includes such things as fresh food, manufactures, packers, grocerant consultants, urban farming (Produce, Beef, Pork Chicken Seafood, etc.), non-traditional points of distribution, and technology including autonomous delivery, cashier-less retail, cash-less payments, digital hand held marketing.

Branded restaurants to survive the next generation of retail must embrace the artificial intelligence revolution while simultaneously embracing fresh food that is portable in some form.  That will require brands to embrace new fresh food partnerships more now than ever before according to Johnson.

Are your year over year customer counts up? Outside-eyes can drive inside results.  No one understands retail foodservice customer adoption like our Grocerant Guru®.  Are you looking for a partnership to drive sales of meals, meal components, and profits? What is your new electricity ,is it  a non-traditional location, incremental customer relevance?  The quagmire of customer counts can be turned around.

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.