Restaurant Trade Area Research

This is a copy and paste from my blog at http://streetlevelviews.blogspot.com — Check it out.

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Restaurant Top Of Mind Fast Food Awareness - Atlanta July 4th, 2009

Hello, and welcome back to Street Level Views. As you may be aware, on July 4th I spoke with a number of random people in Piedmont Park in Atlanta. Each of them were asked to name restaurants off the top of their heads and ultimately were also asked to name Fast Food Brands in a top of mind fashion. And, the seven folks in the demonstration taping were a mix of races, ages, and represented both sexes about equally.

Which makes the results even more interesting as they were anything but random. Indeed, 4 of 7 respondents named Chick-fil-A FIRST when mentioning Fast Food brands - with 5 out of seven naming them unaidedly. The other FIRST mentions were Moe’s, Subway and Burger King.

Only four FF restaurants had more than one mention unaidedly McDonald’s (3), Wendy’s (2), Subway (2), and Burger King (2). Other FF brands mentioned unaidedly included 5 Guys Burgers, Taco Bell, Jayson’s Deli, Moe’s, Quizno’s, Checkers, KFC, and Publix Subs.

Commenting on the top of mind mentions —— It is striking that Chick-fil-A `won’ in such a hands down manner (even with such a small sampling). Even more striking is the best `top of mind stories’ told by the respondents involved Chick-fil-A too. One story was told by a under 35 year old woman of she and her friends talking about how they would love to be on the `ad account’ - and - another woman, the heaviest fast food user of the seven - went into GREAT lengths to `show what she appreciates’ about Chick-fil-A. Obviously, the cows, humor and service seem to set Chick-fil-A apart from the everyday FF crowd.

The question is - will that awareness hold up in the first (beta) sample to be gathered citywide over the next month or so - bookmark and return for more information.

And, see the sample interview here http://streetlevelviews.blogspot.com/2009/07/street-level-views-about-restaurants.html and links to the other six interviews on YouTube.

Here’s some recent on the street interviewing I did about restaurants:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtVziTDuZOY

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bj8ZsJ5JeAg

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-v9QqZ9QeCc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zTRO81RR7DA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJlZ-cOFbqg

Find out more here - http://streetlevelviews.blogspot.com

The above research `featured’ Arby’s, Chick-fil-A and Subway.

Hello, welcome to Restaurant Trade Area Research (RTAR) - today’s topic is the `light’ user. NO, I’m not talking about the infrequent user this time - I’m talking about the customer who purchases `just’ one item. This typically will be the `sandwich and water’ purchaser, the `drink only’ purchaser or the `dessert only’ purchaser. And, in this economic environment - many are forced to `price down’ to even go to FF restaurants.

So, what are you to do as a FF operator to `bump up’ these folks? Actually, this is a real easy group to directly market. After all, you already know their order - so, let’s say that you have your typical inside customer who is a `sandwich and water’ person: to that person goes a bounceback 49 cent drink offer with sandwich purchase. And, for the drink only purchaser - yep - 1.50 off their next combo or similar offer (1.00 off order over 4.00). The dessert purchaser - a buy one dessert get one at half off. You get the idea.

So, simple marketing 101 - directly work with your actual customer base - and - directly target segments to produce higher ticket totals. Also, having that coupon burning in their pocket may even make that next visit sooner.

Other links:

Customers given too many choices are 10x less likely to buy

http://sivers.org/jam Very insightful research into purchase patterns.

http://www.idsgn.org/posts/pizza-the-hut/ Pizza Hut — The Hut - does a re-design of image.