Getting Back to Gusto! (LJS Food Research Institute)

In my other life, I’m a researcher, typically I guess you’d say “market research,” but that’s a little narrow in the sense that we do a lot of other kinds of research (like non-profits, political polling, mock juries, etc.) and we also do a fair bit of consulting and strategy work based on the research.

In any case, I was just preparing a proposal for a restaurant client, and as I was including some of our restaurant trend research, I thought it might be of some interest to people here. I’m putting this on the Pro Board to be safe, and avoid any appearance of impropriety, but I also thought about Other Culinary Chat, as I’m actually interested in the discussion that might ensue from these articles.

I’d love to know what y’all think.

Cheers,

Aaron

Unbundling: The Secret Ingredient to Restaurant Success

Gusto: The Lost Ingredient to Restaurant Success

Getting Back to Gusto! on YouTube

aaron,

i looked over the material as it's of some interest to me and can't help but agree. there seems to be one segment not included that supplies us w/mucho gusto though. ethnic. as in this forum's namesake or kahn, tac, katy's, shan, ed's, xni pec, tank, salam, sunshine et al... where you may eat phenomenal food w/great gusto @ a ridiculously affordable price. i know we all do that are reading this.

i believe gourmet is an very overused word these days bestowed upon the undeserved and therefore is losing it's value or effectiveness as a result. like "chef". it's one thing to really be it, another to just say it. in the wrong hands ie corp chain wannabes as mentioned in the research, it becomes a marketing tool and an illusion. there's nothing gourmet about subway or so many others that pervert the term and it's no wonder mediocrity reigns in the american diet. add to that a residual ingrained puritan ethic where pleasure is evil or worthy of guilt.

the unbundling i've experienced first hand w/some of my clients as well. it makes sense and you can suggest away or point out the obvious (@ least to a pro) but you can only lead a horse to water.

in the future, i'd love to be a part of any further research project and believe that my insights may be of some value.

Good point on the ethnic. One of the most frustrating things about working in this industry, is that I'd love to be able to find a way to profitably provide meaningful support to these sorts of places, of the kind that there corporate cousins can afford, but I haven't yet figured out a way to do it.

SCORE is mentioned in another thread...I wasn't familiar with that before, and I think it's a terrific idea. It's not really a practical way for me to contribute right now, though.

It would be interesting, with all the different kinds of expertise on this board in terms of marketing and business development, if we could figure out a profitable business model directed towards helping the kinds of small restaurants we'd love to see succeed.

Maybe that's another topic. Probably just a pipe dream.

Aaron,
I can't help but find that Unbundling article schizophrenic: in the first couple paragraphs, it praises the McDonald brothers' original unbundling by reducing the menu selection... then later says that Choice Choice Choice is the necessity.

Currently, I'm fascinated by some of the travel shows on satellite (esp Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations) where he keeps driving the point home about finding a place that specializes in one dish. One. Dish. That's the place you want to eat that dish, because they've been doing that for 60 years. Now that's unbundling.

That level of minimalism isn't going to work so well in a chain -- although I think Boston Market may have been more profitable when they just served rotisserie chicken, for instance. But specialization, narrower focus rather than broader, would seem to make sense. I rarely go to the chain family restaurants (Chili's, Applebee's, TGI Friday's, etc.) but I was stuck going to those sorts of restos when my son was in a Rockford hospital for a month -- needed a quick meal close to the facilities, didn't know anybody to show me "the good stuff". For the most part, those restaurants are indistinguishable. Some are more breakfast oriented (Denny's, Perkins), some more BBQ... but it all boils down to burgers 'n' beer, I think. Friday's may have a nice gimmick with their Jack Daniels Grill concept -- it almost overtakes their red-and-white-stripe theme in the menu.

Adjacent to the nearest Fridays to me is a failed chain restaurant site: it's had El Torito (which I liked better than the other midline mex chains), and a wood-fired pizza place whose name I've forgotten, both failed. I don't know why, because I'd much sooner hit places like that than Fridays. Specialization to me is the preference, or the choice between chains is indistinguishable.

Education of the staff, perhaps not to the level of knowing the heritage of their goat cheese and tomatoes, is another area which will help. When I was in a Chili's a couple years ago, and the server was pushing "chi-pot-ul" sauce, I laughed, I cried.

i've found score to be a good resource. as a matter of fact i'm involved w/them as we speak on a project that needs a bit of tweaking. sometimes, if the same info comes from a different source, it's heeded more readily. as most consultants would agree, there's an initial honeymoon period where everything you say is gold, and then as time goes by, less and less so. that's when i bring in score, to reinforce what i've been saying all along.

JoelF wrote:I can't help but find that Unbundling article schizophrenic: in the first couple paragraphs, it praises the McDonald brothers' original unbundling by reducing the menu selection... then later says that Choice Choice Choice is the necessity.

Thanks for the feedback, Joel. As for unbundling, more than paring down the menu (though that can certainly be a component), the idea is more about offering different combinations of the traditional restaurant experience.

So McDonald's big innovation wasn't so much focusing on burgers and fries alone, but allowing you to go to a restaurant and get a burger and fries without having to pay for the overhead of a formal restaurant, wait service, etc.

Trotter's-to-Go seems a great example of this to me...get Trotter's food without having to go to his restaurant.

The choice aspect isn't so much about the choices at one particular restaurant, but the choices in the marketplace and making certain experiences, or rather "unbundled" elements of experiences, accessible to more people.

JoelF wrote:Aaron,
Currently, I'm fascinated by some of the travel shows on satellite (esp Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations) where he keeps driving the point home about finding a place that specializes in one dish. One. Dish. That's the place you want to eat that dish, because they've been doing that for 60 years. Now that's unbundling.

That level of minimalism isn't going to work so well in a chain -- although I think Boston Market may have been more profitable when they just served rotisserie chicken, for instance.

A few points which may offend some people.

1) I question whether Boston Market was EVER really profitable as their years of "great profitability" coincided with their accounting scandal regarding their revenue recognition.

2) While I do not like AB, I will admit that he makes a good point. The real successful operators are those who FOCUS on one major item and DO IT WELL ***ALWAYS***. (emphasis intended).

Alton Brown appeared at Maid Rite in Iowa during a recent show on "Feasting on Asphault." The woman showing him how to make a "Maid Rite" insisted that he do it Maid Rite's way and made him redo it until it was right.

In this day and age when most of your kitchen help consists of immigrants and at a time when there is MASSIVE turnover in the industry, you have to keep it simple. Yet, I see all of these menus - chains and independents alike - that are requiring more and more complexity.

The chef inspired meu at Applebee's is a desaster because most of their cooks cannot execute the dishes that Tyler Florance has created for the chain.

My formerly favorite restaurant in Crystal Lake has been terrible recently. Same menu BUT ... so many of their experienced cooks have left to double their wages in non-food related fields and the new ones just are NOT cutting it. I am tired of getting half-cooked fish and twice cooked vegetables

3) Personally, a growing threat to restaurants is the wide variety of cooked entrees available at some of the supermarkets. I have cut back on my meals out when i can head to one of the local markets, pick up an entree and supplement it with fresh vegetables and a salad at home. This allows me to better control my portion size and to get home quicker each night.

Now my friends in the supermarket business see the opposite threat.

4) Be careful in accepting some of the marketing research. I have seen close to 100+ restaurant surveys in the past two years. Much of the research is well, geared less toward getting consumer opinion as much as it is to validate a new concept. That is, there are a lot of leading questions more focused on "how do you like this idea" rather than on "would you really buy this ?"

5) What is depressing to this consumer is that there is so little creativity in MOST food operations. Somebody comes up with an idea. Then everyone and their mother sees it and copies it.