2009 was clearly a year of defense for the restaurant business. Aim One was to survive. Most operations were ecstatic if they just held steady or didn’t have to cede too much. When else have single-digit sales declines been disclosed with high fives and boasts of out-performing the pack? Few indeed were those brands that actually managed to increase the top line.
But while that retrenchment was squarely in foreground view, a few acts of audacious innovation could be spotted farther back, in the off-stage areas where a few of us poke around the sandbags and pulleys of the business, reporter’s notebook in hand. For us, the play’s the thing—the processes for supporting a restaurant business, not the art on the plate. And for we business journalists who scribble about food costs and new grills, menu strategies and better hiring, LTOs and menu items with stupid names, 2009 was a year of notable breakthroughs.
Below are my picks of the standouts. The list is admittedly biased toward the communications aspect of the business, since that’s the machinery most plainly in my view. And it’s no coincidence that virtually every honoree proved a master of social media, undoubtedly the industry’s Rookie of the Year for 2009.
The whoot-worthy of the year:
Dunkin' Dave: Dunkin’ Donuts’ parent company went through some significant personnel changes in the last year or so, including key departures from its communications staff. Fortunately, they didn’t deter Dunkin’ Dave from demonstrating how a consumer brand could use Twitter to carry on a new sort of conversation with customers, current or would-be. Tweeting from what he calls the “DD mothership,” Dunkin’ Dave, a.k.a. Dave Puner, kept up a steady patter with the public, highlighting new products, promoting special deals, relaying compliments from brand loyalists, even publicly defusing the occasional complaint. Random suggestions that a Dunkin’ coffee would hit the spot sent me scurrying to my local outlet more than once. And Dave does it with a humor and a dose of personality that perfectly fit the medium.
If you want to know why there’s so much hubbub in the business about Twitter’s potential, join the 40,000 DunkinDonuts followers who hear from Dunkin’ Dave throughout the day.
Honorable mention: The designated tweeters for Carl’s Jr. and Kimpton Hotels; schnitzeltruck; RickshawTruck.
Ellen Malloy: If you don’t know the name, you probably never write about restaurants. If you’re a food or restaurant writer and still don’t know it, shame on you.
Malloy, a chef-turned-publicist, has hit on a way to provide the information we journalists appreciate and actually use, a sainthood-worthy departure from the usual approach of burying writers in hyperbole and flowery bullshit about clients. Church choirs would no doubt sing of her if they had to wade through clunky releases studded with words like “brilliant,” “trend-setting,” “world-renowned,” or—brace yourselves, writers—“exciting.” And that might be for a shrimp de-veiner.
Instead, through her virtual Restaurant Intelligence Agency, Malloy offers journalists the capability of receiving short, precise e-mailings containing actual news about her clients, on topics we’ve specified—menu changes, say, or business issues and trends, or green initiatives. They often provide surprising nuggets that are filed away for future round-ups or trend pieces.
I can’t say I look at each e-mail that hits my inbox, but the volume is reasonable enough to usually merit a scan. And seldom do I write a story that’s menu or trend-related without searching RestaurantIntelligenceAgency.com for examples embodied by the agency’s clients.
Best of all, I can do it all myself, without having to call a publicist, wait for a response, then wait to see if an interview can be scheduled, then go back and forth about the logistics. Everytime I’m on that hamster wheel, I visual the old movie scenes where pages fly off a wall calendar. With RIA, info is provided to contact the restaurateur or chef directly, and I’ve done it a bunch of times now. They’ve figured into a number of my stories, and I’ve even used the site to line up a speaker for a panel.
Honorable mention: Lauren Barash for Moe’s Newsroom, the Wordpress site she set up to provide a quick, easy-to-digest overview of developments within the Moe’s Southwest Grill chain. It works.
People Report Best Practices Conference: Those of us who’ve had the waterboarding joy of trying to find replacement dollars for lost ad revenues know meetings are usually high on the list of possible sources. And for awhile, the opportunities were indeed sweet. If you could come up with a compelling reason for people to get together, chances were high that you could draw paying participants, then line up sponsors. Ka-ching!
Then came the gold rush, when any meeting idea that worked was copied two or three times by media, associations or seemingly anyone who could print a name badge. There were too many meetings chasing attendees who all but staggered from conference fatigue. And the brain food served up at many of those purported intellectual buffets was of the overcooked-pasta variety: Decidedly unsatisfying mush. Half the restaurant industry’s meetings could disappear without anyone but the producers caring.
All of a sudden, from a part of Dallas you’d hardly call a destination, came a blizzard of tweets and other bloggings from attendees of Best Practices, a human resources conference presented by Joni Doolin’s People Report restaurant research consortium. From the very first event, a field trip to prepare free meals for the disadvantaged, participants proclaimed the conference a life-changing event, and I’m not exaggerating when I say that. Clearly the content spoke to them, professionally and personally. The postings made the conference sound like a cross between a religious retreat and Allen & Co.’s famous Sun Valley Conference.
Following the tweets from afar, I felt as if I was sitting home while the rest of the industry was at Woodstock.
I won’t make that mistake again.
Honorable mention: The Culinary Institute of America, for have the chili peppers to hold a foodie fest on street fare (Frontiers of Flavor, held at its Greystone campus in Napa). Remember, this is the CIA, the industry’s version of Harvard, an institution with a mission of preserving culinary classicism. Convening the nation’s food intelligentsia for an immersion in peasant food is like scheduling Green Day instead of a Mozart tribute.
U.S. Foodservice, for having the cabbages to try a radically different form of marketing to restaurant operators.
There isn’t a supplier or service provider in the business that isn’t fretfully watching the boom in new media and wondering how to wield it. “Oh, yeah, we know we have to use Twitter, Facebook or YouTube—but we’re not sure how.”
U.S. Foodservice took the plunge of backing the Clockless series, a videotaped and hyper-tweeted 24-hour blitz of a city’s restaurant scene (first Las Vegas, then Los Angeles). The look at little-known gems and cult favorites, including places even the most daring sports diner might’ve missed, was aimed at consumers rather than restaurateurs. But by trying to inject pizzazz into customer restaurants’ home markets, the distributor was presumably fostering relations with its own clientele.
For those of us who are frustrated by the reluctance of suppliers to shift more of their marketing to new media, USF’s efforts provided a ray of encouragement.
Showing posts with label Dunkin' Brands. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Dunkin' Brands. Show all posts
Friday, January 1, 2010
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Dunkin' to give table service a try?
Press coverage of a zoning board meeting is usually a viable alternative to Ambien. If you're not in REM sleep by paragraph four, it's time to cut back on the Red Bull.
But a recent report from Middlebury, Conn., would make a fast-food executive snap upright with the alertness typically reserved for a letter from the IRS. The news article recounted the efforts of a local Dunkin' Donuts franchisee to secure the go-ahead for a new store inside an existing building there.
That per se has all the excitement of a supermarket special on canned okra. But the story by Voices, a local newspaper, revealed that the proposed donut outlet would sport 58 seats, or far more than is typical for a 1,100-square-foot donut shop. As a lawyer for the franchisee was quoted as telling the Planning and Zoning Commission, "Fifty-eight seats are not normally expected in a take-out restaurant."
That's because the unit plans to add table service, Voices quoted attorney Michael McVerry as saying.
Baskin-Robbins, Dunkin' Donuts' sister chain, has experimented with the sort of modified service that's become routine in the fast-casual restaurant market. At the Baskin-Robbins Cafe that opened in the summer of 2008, guests place their ice cream or coffee orders and take a seat. A staff member bring them their orders.
McVerry didn't reveal whether that's what Dunkin' has in mind for the new Middlebury store. But he did note that the concept has been drifting upmarket through changes like the addition of sandwiches and bagels.
Might the chain be thinking about adding table service?
We'll see, because the Dunkin' development was approved.
But a recent report from Middlebury, Conn., would make a fast-food executive snap upright with the alertness typically reserved for a letter from the IRS. The news article recounted the efforts of a local Dunkin' Donuts franchisee to secure the go-ahead for a new store inside an existing building there.
That per se has all the excitement of a supermarket special on canned okra. But the story by Voices, a local newspaper, revealed that the proposed donut outlet would sport 58 seats, or far more than is typical for a 1,100-square-foot donut shop. As a lawyer for the franchisee was quoted as telling the Planning and Zoning Commission, "Fifty-eight seats are not normally expected in a take-out restaurant."
That's because the unit plans to add table service, Voices quoted attorney Michael McVerry as saying.
Baskin-Robbins, Dunkin' Donuts' sister chain, has experimented with the sort of modified service that's become routine in the fast-casual restaurant market. At the Baskin-Robbins Cafe that opened in the summer of 2008, guests place their ice cream or coffee orders and take a seat. A staff member bring them their orders.
McVerry didn't reveal whether that's what Dunkin' has in mind for the new Middlebury store. But he did note that the concept has been drifting upmarket through changes like the addition of sandwiches and bagels.
Might the chain be thinking about adding table service?
We'll see, because the Dunkin' development was approved.
Thursday, November 19, 2009
Raiding retailers for restaurants' new stars
If recent executive changes are a telltale sign, the restaurant industry is losing faith in its ability to revive sales. Companies determined to crack the formula have looked past the trade’s own talent bench in recent weeks to fill vacancies with code breakers from the world of retailing.
The new CEO of Outback and Carrabba’s parent company was previously focused on selling perfumes, cosmetics and holiday ornaments. Liz Smith, formerly president of Avon Products, seems an unlikely candidate to head OSI Restaurant Partners, a company long led by men who’d worked their way up from restaurant-level jobs. But OSI noted that Smith had experience in running a highly efficient company. They didn’t have to explain that Avon, almost purely a sales company, is light on payroll and structure, heavy on incentive-based performance.
Officials also mentioned that Smith had to keep Avon in touch with customer preferences if its product line was to stay relevant, a skill some say has languished inside OSI’s headquarters in recent years.
A talent for embellishing a brand was similarly one of the characteristics cited by Dunkin’ Brands in explaining why it’d reached outside the industry for its new “chief global customer and marketing officer.” John Costello, a veteran of Home Depot and Sears, “is one of the most talented marketers and brand builders in the retail industry in America," crowed Nigel Travis, CEO of the Dunkin’ Donuts and Baskin-Robbins parent. Indeed, Costello is a member of the Retail Advertising Hall of Fame.
The selection underscores that Dunkin’ is less a restaurant than a to-go bakery with extensive food and beverage options. It’s more of a retail storefront than a place where you’d go for dinner, or at least at present.
Even less of a disconnect is the promotion of supermarket vet Susan Shields to chief marketing officer of Jamba Juice, the smoothie chain. A key component of Jamba’s comeback plan is putting its name on more retail products through licensing deals. Those Jamba-branded items already range from a toy blender to a new line of trail mix that’s about to hit stores. Who better to blaze that new revenue channel than someone who worked at the Safeway grocer chain?
At the same time, dollars are dollars and finance is finance. So why not go outside the industry for your next chief financial officer, as McCormick & Schmick’s did in hiring Michelle Lantow? But it’s no coincidence, the upscale seafood chain said, that she came from a retail apparel manufacturer, Lucy Activewear.
Lantow was instrumental in revamping Lucy’s e-commerce operations and plotting its move into brick-and-mortar retail locations, the company noted in announcing her appointment. CEO Bill Freeman observed that those qualifications should serve M&S well as “we continue to focus on greater connectivity with our guests.”
One of those efforts, apparently, was the chain’s development of a group-sales program aimed at companies that are embarking on a road show to hawk their goods and services. M&S is pitching its banquet service as a one-stop shop that spares those road warriors the hassle of having to scout out a function room and banquet facilities at each stop of their dog-and-pony tours.
There’s no word yet if a retailing veteran was tapped to head it up. But if you hear someone greeting the guests with a “Welcome to McCormick & Schmick’s,” shoot me an e-mail, okay?
The new CEO of Outback and Carrabba’s parent company was previously focused on selling perfumes, cosmetics and holiday ornaments. Liz Smith, formerly president of Avon Products, seems an unlikely candidate to head OSI Restaurant Partners, a company long led by men who’d worked their way up from restaurant-level jobs. But OSI noted that Smith had experience in running a highly efficient company. They didn’t have to explain that Avon, almost purely a sales company, is light on payroll and structure, heavy on incentive-based performance.
Officials also mentioned that Smith had to keep Avon in touch with customer preferences if its product line was to stay relevant, a skill some say has languished inside OSI’s headquarters in recent years.
A talent for embellishing a brand was similarly one of the characteristics cited by Dunkin’ Brands in explaining why it’d reached outside the industry for its new “chief global customer and marketing officer.” John Costello, a veteran of Home Depot and Sears, “is one of the most talented marketers and brand builders in the retail industry in America," crowed Nigel Travis, CEO of the Dunkin’ Donuts and Baskin-Robbins parent. Indeed, Costello is a member of the Retail Advertising Hall of Fame.
The selection underscores that Dunkin’ is less a restaurant than a to-go bakery with extensive food and beverage options. It’s more of a retail storefront than a place where you’d go for dinner, or at least at present.
Even less of a disconnect is the promotion of supermarket vet Susan Shields to chief marketing officer of Jamba Juice, the smoothie chain. A key component of Jamba’s comeback plan is putting its name on more retail products through licensing deals. Those Jamba-branded items already range from a toy blender to a new line of trail mix that’s about to hit stores. Who better to blaze that new revenue channel than someone who worked at the Safeway grocer chain?
At the same time, dollars are dollars and finance is finance. So why not go outside the industry for your next chief financial officer, as McCormick & Schmick’s did in hiring Michelle Lantow? But it’s no coincidence, the upscale seafood chain said, that she came from a retail apparel manufacturer, Lucy Activewear.
Lantow was instrumental in revamping Lucy’s e-commerce operations and plotting its move into brick-and-mortar retail locations, the company noted in announcing her appointment. CEO Bill Freeman observed that those qualifications should serve M&S well as “we continue to focus on greater connectivity with our guests.”
One of those efforts, apparently, was the chain’s development of a group-sales program aimed at companies that are embarking on a road show to hawk their goods and services. M&S is pitching its banquet service as a one-stop shop that spares those road warriors the hassle of having to scout out a function room and banquet facilities at each stop of their dog-and-pony tours.
There’s no word yet if a retailing veteran was tapped to head it up. But if you hear someone greeting the guests with a “Welcome to McCormick & Schmick’s,” shoot me an e-mail, okay?
Monday, July 20, 2009
MIA: Something new
Send out an A.P.B. and snap on the Bat Signal. Some scoundrel has run off with the restaurant industry’s love of innovation. And it looks as if it might be an inside job.
The authorities have their suspicions about the culprits. They’re looking for glassy-eyed numbers fiends who wield machete and scalpel with equal zeal, slashing costs the way hopped-up jungle guides would blaze a trail.
But the real scourges are the accomplices—the CEOs, marketers and ops specialists who know better than to stifle new ideas. Instead of nurturing green shoots, they’re standing by while the bean counters prune anything with an expense. It’d be like a dairy farmer trying to offset a dip in production by feeding the cows less silage.
You can only hope the cut-and-kill mindset will be arrested. Here’re the questions that should be put to the innovation throttlers during the interrogation:
Where are the new concepts? Except for a few upscale riffs on established brands—think The Whopper Bar, Baja Fresh’s new dinner-focused prototype, or Baskin-Robbins’ new cafes—we’ve seen virtually nothing in the way of new restaurant ideas from the chains. That’s an historic shift, especially for casual dining, where the big brands were always scouting the hinterlands for The Next Big Thing.
Everyone agrees that this is an unprecedented time that could forever change the business. Isn’t it foolhardy to think that yesterday’s concepts are going to meet tomorrow’s tastes?
Ironically, we did see a new entrant in the market in early July. Unfortunately, it’s something called Crazy Girls Café, a strip club that also serves food. There’s a novel notion.
Where are the aha! moments? Consider this obvious one: Craft condiments. Soft drinks, a staple of the business, are being reconsidered as the public shifts to options promising more uniqueness, character and quality. Smaller, highly crafted brands are gaining favor.
The same dynamic holds true in the beer business. Would any new restaurant not offer a craft brew today, if not a beer that can only be purchased there?
So why not ketchups and mustards? Why aren’t we seeing the proliferation of high-craft selections with different flavors and consistencies? There’s a burger boom underway. Why not a ketchup craze?
For a glimpse of what might have been, look at the barbecue-sauce and marinade sections of your local grocery. There are more options than what you’ll find in the salad dressing aisle.
The exception that underscores the non-trend is Ketchup, the multi-outlet concept of The Dolce Group in California. The restaurant features five house-made ketchups to accompany its heavily local menu of comfort foods with contemporary twists.
Where’s the urgency in casual dining to come up with something new? The innovations of the last two years could be summed up as sliders, $9.95 filets, micro-brews, mini-desserts and better full-sized burgers. Whoa.
Why isn’t the sector at least staying current with the trends? For instance, other than Seasons 52, is any concept addressing the fresh and local trend? Organics? Or even green? Name one chain that’s as active as the fast-feeders are in greening their facilities.
Clearly the economic climate is taking its toll, stifling creativity that could distinguish an operation. But the real lost opportunity may not be evident until conditions improve. By that time, many established brands are going to regret that they weren’t trying yesterday to come up with what’ll fly tomorrow.
The authorities have their suspicions about the culprits. They’re looking for glassy-eyed numbers fiends who wield machete and scalpel with equal zeal, slashing costs the way hopped-up jungle guides would blaze a trail.
But the real scourges are the accomplices—the CEOs, marketers and ops specialists who know better than to stifle new ideas. Instead of nurturing green shoots, they’re standing by while the bean counters prune anything with an expense. It’d be like a dairy farmer trying to offset a dip in production by feeding the cows less silage.
You can only hope the cut-and-kill mindset will be arrested. Here’re the questions that should be put to the innovation throttlers during the interrogation:
Where are the new concepts? Except for a few upscale riffs on established brands—think The Whopper Bar, Baja Fresh’s new dinner-focused prototype, or Baskin-Robbins’ new cafes—we’ve seen virtually nothing in the way of new restaurant ideas from the chains. That’s an historic shift, especially for casual dining, where the big brands were always scouting the hinterlands for The Next Big Thing.
Everyone agrees that this is an unprecedented time that could forever change the business. Isn’t it foolhardy to think that yesterday’s concepts are going to meet tomorrow’s tastes?
Ironically, we did see a new entrant in the market in early July. Unfortunately, it’s something called Crazy Girls Café, a strip club that also serves food. There’s a novel notion.
Where are the aha! moments? Consider this obvious one: Craft condiments. Soft drinks, a staple of the business, are being reconsidered as the public shifts to options promising more uniqueness, character and quality. Smaller, highly crafted brands are gaining favor.
The same dynamic holds true in the beer business. Would any new restaurant not offer a craft brew today, if not a beer that can only be purchased there?
So why not ketchups and mustards? Why aren’t we seeing the proliferation of high-craft selections with different flavors and consistencies? There’s a burger boom underway. Why not a ketchup craze?
For a glimpse of what might have been, look at the barbecue-sauce and marinade sections of your local grocery. There are more options than what you’ll find in the salad dressing aisle.
The exception that underscores the non-trend is Ketchup, the multi-outlet concept of The Dolce Group in California. The restaurant features five house-made ketchups to accompany its heavily local menu of comfort foods with contemporary twists.
Where’s the urgency in casual dining to come up with something new? The innovations of the last two years could be summed up as sliders, $9.95 filets, micro-brews, mini-desserts and better full-sized burgers. Whoa.
Why isn’t the sector at least staying current with the trends? For instance, other than Seasons 52, is any concept addressing the fresh and local trend? Organics? Or even green? Name one chain that’s as active as the fast-feeders are in greening their facilities.
Clearly the economic climate is taking its toll, stifling creativity that could distinguish an operation. But the real lost opportunity may not be evident until conditions improve. By that time, many established brands are going to regret that they weren’t trying yesterday to come up with what’ll fly tomorrow.
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