John Neuapuer contributes these insights from a “state of the economy” discussion string at our partner Foodservice.com to help marketers position their products to address operator concerns in tough economic times.

Operators are nervous and many are considering cutting their prices to keep customers coming back. This is a fabulous idea if operators want to get into a new line of business. The recommendations made in the discussion include:

  • Do more and better marketing
  • Try to cut costs, but not at the expense of food quality and service, don’t cheapen your product
  • Upsell your menu – charge the same or slightly higher price but sell perceived value (ex: raise the price of an entree and include a free dessert)
  • Redesign your menu – move higher profit items to better locations, change combination meals and descriptions, eliminate low profit items
  • If you don’t want to increase prices then reduce portion size

    • Bottom line – customers will pay for high quality, tasty food; cheap, crappy food attracts cheap, crappy customers ; cheap, crappy food leads to cheap, crappy tips and chases away good servers leading the restaurant to hire cheap, crappy servers.

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