Groupon is the penalty price restaurant marketers pay when the brand becomes boring.



Restaurant chains have been unwittingly capitulating market share to grocery stores Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat fresh and prepared food for years. Convenience stores studied consumer trends, focused on the consumer, entered the Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat grocerant niche with fresh and prepared quality food capturing additional market share as well. Currently the C-store sector has posted positive same store sales numbers longer than any other retail food sector.

The restaurant industry has become know as the home of copy-cat marketing. An industry loaded with unremarkable new food products, innovative in only the length of time it takes to copy a competitor’s product, pricing or marketing campaign. Groupon has been the life line for chains simply trying to hang on.

If success leave clues Copy-Cat marketing is simply put unremarkable. Several restaurant chains now are developing bigger burgers. I think both Burger King and Carl’s Jr. did that, are they simply headed to Groupon.

Marketing KID EAT FREE has been around for years yet when sales are slow it’s at times much easer to take a step back than invest in research and move forward. Companies must look out side the current mode of employee mind set of following someone else, doing what they did three, four or five years ago and focus on the consumer. Deep discounting is the price chain restaurants pay for lack of innovative positioning of both food product and messaging. Foodservice Solutions® 5P’s of food marketing might be a place too start if moving forward with consumer is your goal.

Since 1991 retail food consultancy Foodservice Solutions® of Tacoma, WA has been the global leader in the Grocerant niche for more on Steven A. Johnson and Foodservice Solutions® visit http://www.linkedin.com/in/grocerant, twitter.com/grocerant or Facebook Steven Johnson