State of the UK Restaurant Market (2017)
This has been based on the excellent piece on PwC about the restaurant sector at the end of 2017, with additional commentary from me based on developments in 2018 and my view of the market from the inside. Food for thought PwC: The restaurant sector has performed well in recent years with market growth underpinned by long-term demographic and consumer trends. But market conditions have become more competitive, consumers are facing pressure on their real incomes from rising inflation and cost pressures are increasing. A more cautious outlook on the sector is justified. Me: Recent high-profile chain closures and restructuring including Toys R Us, Prezzo, Barbecoa, Jamies Italian, Strada, Byron and…
The Restaurant Delivery Market 2016Q3
Since my last post on restaurant delivery services in London (2016Q1), uberEATS have launched. There are still a plethora of players in the market (including Quiqup and Henchman clones like Bring It), but it’s really becoming a three-horse race now. uberEATS The 800-pound gorilla just entered the room. Deliveroo has long been fearful of UBER launching the UK and now they have. Although they are not as ubiquitous as Deliveroo (yet) they offer a very efficient iPad-based ordering system and free delivery on new orders which they are funding. One missing piece of the puzzle at the moment is a kitchen printer which is “coming soon.” This will make the…
Does SONOS Fail its Commercial Use Case?
Why can’t providers share explicit filters? I have been looking at SONOS as a tool to stream music in my restaurants. It’s a great system with the option to play different music in different rooms, and you can even convert an existing wired system into a SONOS streaming system with a single additional box. The salesman I spoke to told me about hotels that connect up to 42 different speakers so they can offer streaming in different rooms. The promise is the access to “all the music in the world” which also means you can switch out the stale playlists you have been using for too long (and give your…
Improving Delivery Partner Supply Chain Loyalty
(Some Customers think it’s OK to Jump the Queue) There are lots of delivery partners in London – Deliveroo, Henchman, Jinn, Quiqup, Bring It, Take Eat Easy, Caterwings, etc – and each charges a sizeable percentage to the restaurant as commission for handling orders and providing marketing through their platform. More on that here (Q4 2015) and here (Q1 2016). As the customer orders from the delivery partner, all their information is held by said partner. Since data has value, the delivery partner passes very little of it to the restaurant. There is an opportunity here for the delivery partner to provide some data (for example loyalty-related) to the restaurant…
The TripAdvisor Generation
Is our moral compass as a species broken, or being rapidly redesigned? It’s difficult to point a finger and identify any singular incident. Many have suggested that changes in the family group or changes in the way parents assume schools will teach the children values that should be learned at home. Many say that it is the rise of on-screen violence and reality television feeding the viewers a glut of skewed imagery and behaviour patterns which are then seen as normal and copied. Others identify the Internet for what it allows us to do, to say and to contribute to. This post isn’t a debate about the failings of society…
MISADVENTURES IN THE RESTAURANT TRADE
