Business Building Tips - October 2009

Take Advantage of Take Out

Challenged by competition from retail supermarket prepared foods, Take Out menus need to offer consumers a different experience while delivering on quality, convenience and value.

With the restaurant industry down nearly 3% in food sales, takeout and delivery options have become a high growth opportunity in foodservice. Delivery.com, a food delivery website featuring more than 10,000 restaurants in 65 cities across the country, has seen double digit growth both in cost per check and in volume of orders. In the greater New York market, the average bill per order grew 17% from $18 to $21 just in the 2nd quarter. Likewise, volume of orders for the same period rose 20% with customers ordering more frequently on weekdays, not just weekends.

Higher take out check average + increase in order volume = big opportunity for restaurants looking for ways to grow sales

What most operators may not realize is that if they aren’t taking full advantage of the growing demand for delivery or take out then they are losing sales. In this down economy, no one can afford a missed opportunity to capture market demand.

Consumers are looking for a true restaurant experience – at home

Take out is no longer just about pizza or Chinese. Every segment of the market from quick serve to casual dining even right on up to white table cloth establishments are benefiting from this expanding market of consumers looking for ways to order in a ‘dining experience.’

Consumers are cutting back and looking for ways to save money. Unfortunately for foodservice, this means eating out less and spending less when they do eat out. However, consumers are still too time-strapped to forgo the convenience of prepared food. Restaurants offering take out or delivery provide consumers with the much needed convenience of meals ready to eat, but they also offer variety and selection that consumers can’t get at the supermarket.

Responding to this demand, restaurants are promoting their take out menus more visibly and enhancing their take out ‘presentation’ with sturdier containers. Ensuring that the food arrives hot and appetizing is critical to any operator’s success with a takeout program. Maintaining the dining room integrity of takeout meals can be a challenge as perceived quality can be diminished when some dishes lose intended texture or visual appeal after the extended hold times and potential shifting and shaking that can take place door to door.

Save time, labor and waste and ensure patron satisfaction with on-trend single serve menu enhancements that are shelf stable and easy to toss in to any take out bag

Single serve portions of popular menu enhancing products provide operators with a simple, cost-effective means of ensuring consumers get the expected dining experience at home. No more soggy croutons in your salad or unidentifiable tortilla strips in your tortilla soup.