We’re seeing another mid-year downgrade on industry forecasts for the year.
That this is happening for the second year in a row is unprecedented.
We’ve never had to go enthusiastically into two straight years and then look in the mirror as an industry mid-year and say, “It’s not happening the way we expected.”
The Veteran Perspective
At the Texas Restaurant Show last month, I spoke on the subject of how to grow now in a flat market.
Toward the end of my talk, a hand went up in the standing-room-only crowd. “You keep saying the market looks flat,” pointed out the restaurateur. He looked youngish, but maybe he was just more new to the industry than young. “When has the market not been flat?”
I smiled and told him, “Just about my whole career, the market grew, except for periodic downturns – and now.”
I realized that some restaurant owners who have joined us in the past few years have not had to make the shift the rest of us have.
For so much of veterans’ careers, the restaurant business involved harnessing growth in the best way possible, knowing the market did some of your work for you. Your job used to be providing a guest experience and place to work that appealed to enough people to make a profit and justify your investment.
Not anymore. In the past few years, all of our gains as an industry have come through menu price increases – not through serving more guests.
We have all had to adapt to doing the work the market used to do for us, and that adaptation will serve us for the rest of our careers.
How You Win Now
What I tell my clients and my Restaurant Owners Success Club members: Even in a flat market, someone wins, and it may as well be you.
Focus on guest experience: what makes your restaurants special and keeps you relevant. Give people compelling reasons to choose your restaurant, and give your people compelling reasons to work there.
And don’t be afraid to go big.
I see too many restaurant owners scared to test major improvements to their restaurants, the kind of improvements that can be game changers for them.
Chili’s – where same-store sales this year are clocking in 23.7% higher than last year – credits investment in upgrading food, operations, facilities, and marketing for the transformation of their brand. Kevin Hochman, President and CEO of Chili’s parent Brinker International, says, “Marketing brings them in; operations keep them coming back.”
Now I know you may be laughing to yourself, saying, “Whoa, I am not Chili’s, and I don’t want to be Chili’s’” But whatever you think of Chili’s, don’t let that opinion trample all over the lesson they teach all of us in a flat market.
