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March 2010
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INDUSTRY NEWS
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Vancouver Restaurants Scored Big During Olympics
February 2010
While countries around the world racked up medals, Vancouver-area restaurants tallied huge sales gains during the two weeks of the Winter Olympics, reported the British Columbia Restaurant & Foodservices Association.
"Restaurants in the downtown area, in what we call the Olympic Zone, did extraordinarily well," Ian Tostenson,
President of the Association, said. "We saw increases ranging from 100 to 300 percent, throughout the duration of the games."
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The End of the Heinz Blister Pack
February 2010
After two years of hosting focus groups and interviewing quick-serve customers, Heinz finally has the answer to changing consumer ketchup demands.
The new Heinz Dip & Squeeze design "was really a package pulled together by the needs and insights of our consumers today," says D.Sykes, brand manager for Heinz Ketchup.
The company's research revealed that two-thirds of consumers prefer dipping to squeezing.
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Restaurant Earnings: Mixed Results for Q4/2009
February 2010
Nation's Restaurant News reports that top-line growth continued to be a struggle for most restaurant companies in the fourth quarter, while corporate profits benefited from cost-cutting initiatives and favorable comparisons to year-ago results.
The remainder of 2010 appears to promise more of the same for the restaurant industry, as respondents reported "continuing uncertainties with regard to the overall economy and consumer spending."
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Salt Ban Bill Leaves Sour Taste In Big Apple March 2010
A bill proposing a ban on the use of salt in New York is leaving a sour taste with chefs and restaurant owners.
The proposals could see restaurants fined $1,000 for each offense.But the Big Apple's food industry is mobilizing against the bill.
Website "My Food My Choice", representing a coalition of chefs, restaurant owners, and consumers, has denounced the proposed law as "absurd".
Site visitors are invited to sign a petition to "...save New York City's incredible and diverse cuisine and protect your right to make your own food choices."
The Bill, introduced last Friday, says, "No owner or operator of a restaurant in this state shall use salt in any form in the preparation of any food for consumption by
customers of such restaurant, including food prepared to be consumed on the premises of such restaurant or off the premises."
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| WHAT INTERESTS YOU? |
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Like Our Ideas or Want To Share Some of Yours?
The Z Report is looking for comments, ideas and suggestions about how we can help our customers better utilize technology.
Write us and comment as often as you would like:
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Greetings!
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Welcome to our latest edition of The Z Report.
In this issue, we cover a range of topics that share a common
theme: revenues, the overwhelmingly dominant concern in our industry right now. Even though, as one of our sidebar articles reports, the industry's long-term expectations are somewhat improved, restaurant visits are down across all segments, according to foodservice market research from The NPD Group.
The biggest challenge operators face is that optimizing the bottom line requires attention at all levels of the business, from supercharging marketing with state-of-the-art social networking technologies to the mundane task of making sure that cash and inventory don't go out the door when staffers complete their shifts.
And then, of course, there's the never-ending process of tuning your menu and promotions to be where the demand is. So we've included some articles on trends that favor catering to families (with kid-friendly menus and service) while offering the right kinds of drive-by choices for overworked breadwinners who have no time to cook.
With those concerns in mind, we have put this issue together to show you ways to achieve your business goals.
As always, our goal is to provide ideas that you can implement today using the technology you have. We're here to ensure that you get the best use and greatest returns from your POS and other systems, and we hope these articles will suggest new ways that our consulting technology experts can help you achieve those goals.
Call us today. Our team is ready to help.
Sincerely,
Jason
Jason Cowan
President
Cowan's Retail Systems
801-486-2151
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Become a Cowan's Retail Systems
Facebook Fan!
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Click on this image....
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Facebook in Your Marketing Toolkit
A fan page provides another way to connect
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While Twitter is still growing as a social-media network, the more established Facebook has an estimated 400 million users, of which an estimated 120 million log on every day.
Recently, the social networking site surged past Yahoo as the number two most popular site in the U.S., drawing nearly 134 million unique visitors in January, 2010. (In February, 2008, Google overtook Yahoo as #1.)
It should come as no surprise, then, that operators looking at their social media options (Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, Foursquare, Google Buzz) often choose Facebook as the right place to start.
For an ahead-of-the-curve retailer with a comprehensive online marketing strategy, consider Berkeley, California's Peet's Coffee and Teas, a coffee roaster and retail chain that maintains a loyal following in the Bay Area and beyond. The company's online presence includes two websites, a well-maintained blog, and a Facebook "fan page", where customers can share coffee comments and reviews.
As of the latest count, Peet's Coffee & Tea had 37,263 Facebook "fans". The chain uses its Facebook pages not only to provide a customer meeting ground, but also to promote new product offerings, advertise its social-policy activism, to announce events, and to host a gallery of customer-posted photos.
For an overview of some of the major social media services and sites, see the widely-read " Web Strategy" blog.
Be sure to let us know if we can help you with your social networking program.
Amanda Maudsley
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Buzzword Face-Off: Value vs. Convenience
For over 30% of customers, convenience is "worth it".
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Research by both Mintel and The NPD Group, leading market researchers, has delivered results that some may find surprising: a sizeable minority of American foodservice customers say that they are willing to bear the costs of restaurant dining or pick-up in exchange for the convenience they experience.
NPD's research revealed that nearly one in three adults are "Convenience Consumers," those who indicate that "convenience is worth the higher costs". They tend to fall into one or more of the following groups: younger adults, males, singles who have never been married, single-member households, working parents, parents with a young child (age 5 or younger) or lower-income households.
At a time when value has been the reigning buzzword for cash-strapped consumers, these new findings indicate that convenience may be even more important for some. One-third of adults surveyed ranked convenience as most important in their food choices.
The Mintel survey indicated that consumers overall are spending less on takeout and delivery. But one in six 18- to 34-year-olds said they spent more on convenience items and services in 2009 compared with the previous year. Over the fourth quarter of 2009, for example, 30% of respondents in that age group said they had picked up food from a restaurant, compared with 20% among all age groups surveyed.
Amanda Maudsley
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3 Reasons to Target Consumers Who Have Kids
1. They are more likely to have purchased meals from restaurants in the past year: 94% have done so, compared with 84.5% of consumers without kids.
2. They dine out more often, patronizing restaurants 2.8 times a week compared with 2.45 times a week for their child-free counterparts.
3. Breakfast, lunch and dinner aren't the only opportunities to boost sales to parents. Not only do parents patronize restaurants more often, they also purchase prepared food away from home significantly more frequently than nonparents do, 2.65 times a week compared with 1.7.
The bottom line: parents are significantly more likely to pick up food from restaurants because it is more convenient than cooking at home.
According to R&I's New American Diner Study, consumers with kids name traditional fast-food operations as their primary restaurant destination (a plurality of 42% do); casual dining ranks #2. They are also more likely to choose chains (58.6%) than independent restaurants (41.4%) for weekend meals.
Contact us to learn more about ways to build family-targeted promotions that work!
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Simple Steps to Prevent Employee Theft
Having a POS theft deterrence system in place is Step 1
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No matter how well you think you know your employees, there is always a possibility of theft. Employee theft in restaurants takes many forms, including giving away free food and drinks to customers without authorization, stealing customer's credit card information, and stealing food or alcohol for themselves.
Experts report that a major deterrent is employees' awareness that you have a system in place to trace theft.
Here are some of the basics:
1. Track food inventory.
2. Keep all alcohol under lock and key.
3. Review your credit and debit card handling.
4. Install security cameras in your restaurant.
5. Limit access to cash drawers and the safe.
In addition, POS-integrated surveillance cameras can produce a recording of specific time slots, giving you a visual record that can be reviewed to support (or dispel) concerns you may have.
Contact us to learn more about how to use your MICROS technology to monitor your operation and to prevent revenues or assets from leaving when it's closing time. We can show you how your MICROS system can help alert you to suspicious patterns of behavior.
Jason Cowan
801-486-2151
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Jumpstart Your Marketing With Your POS!
Build volume with the power of your marketing toolkit
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 You're the expert when it comes to running an operation that turns out great results in the kitchen. But are you doing everything you can to make sure that people know just how good you and your team are?
It's time to do another kind of COOKING - cooking up excitement about your restaurant!
You'll need the right ingredients, the right tools, and the right information about what your customers want. Fortunately, your MICROS system gives you everything you need to follow this recipe for marketing success.
Of course, there are the basics: the information you've gathered that tells you who your customers are and how to reach them. But, beyond that, your system can show you how often they've visited your restaurant, when they last visited, and even how much they spent.
One powerful way to use this database is to generate an email announcement of new offerings and promotions and special events. (You'll want to get customers' permission to send them email: the only Spam you serve -- if any -- should be coming from the kitchen!)
Email is perfect for letting people know about special offers and promotions. Your customers will welcome information that gives them an incentive to come into your restaurant or that reminds them of an upcoming anniversary and provides an easy way to make a reservation.
And if email doesn't work for your customer demographics, your MICROS database can help you put together a direct mail campaign, too.
Contact us to discuss these ideas and how we can help you implement them and track results. | |
