Restaurant And Hospitality News – October 17, 2016
By Christine Kern, contributing writer
In news this week, Famous Brands is focusing on growth goals; and a new survey examines diners’ attitudes towards restaurant technology.
Famous Brands CEO Sets Growth Goals For Chain
Dustin Lyman, CEO of Famous Brands, is concentrating on growth for TCBY and Mrs. Fields, according to the Nation’s Restaurant News. Famous Brands International, parent company to the two chains, has been on the market for more than a year with no interested buyers, leaving Lyman to retool the company to help attract attention. Lyman is reportedly working on upgrades to both brands that will better position the company for sale.
“My focus is on growing this business,” Lyman told Nation’s Restaurant News. “We believe that continuing on our path to growth and being successful with the operating plan will go hand-in-hand with anyone buying the business down the road. There’s no timeline for that. We’re just focused on being successful.”
Lyman is working to get more frozen yogurt into the hands of customers at TCBY, explaining, “What we find in our research is the biggest inhibitor to TCBY purchase is accessibility to the point of purchase. There are just not enough locations that are convenient to our customers.” To remedy that, Lyman says the chain has been testing self-service yogurt formats in the form of kiosks or set in convenience stores or airports. Five of the vending machines are currently being rotated through various settings to determine their best fit.
At Mrs. Fields, Lyman said, the chain is looking to expand beyond their traditional retail mall setting to reach more customers. “the reality is mall traffic has been down for some time now,” Lyman said, leading Mrs. Fields to build its online e-commerce platform. They have also experimented with co-branded Mrs. Fields/TCBY units, opening the first dual-brand location recently at a Colorado Walmart store as a beta test.
The chain is also working to offer shelf-stable cookies and refrigerated cookie dough in grocery stores to bring the product to more customers. Lyman explained, “We want to make sure we remind customers that our excellent products are available to them, and there are locations that can be easy and accessible, especially during the upcoming holiday gifting season.”
The two brands combined operate 700 locations worldwide, including 320 domestic and 100 overseas TCBY locations and 200 U.S. and 130 international Mrs. Fields locations.
New Survey Finds Diners Think Technology Improves Restaurant Experience
A new survey from Toast has found that 79 percent of diners say technology improves their restaurant experience, and that taking a photo of your meal and posting it to Instagram improves the flavor. The survey polled 1,115 diners between July 27 and August 26. Of course, the results demonstrated that the role of technology varied by type of experience: a mere 8 percent reported that it improved a fine-dining experience.
As the report noted, “Restaurant technology is impacting the front of house as much as the back of house, so much so that restaurant diners are starting to notice their experience change. They can see their food coming out faster, they’re able to order online seamlessly, and in some cases, they can even pay using kiosks or mobile tablets.” The report wanted to determine which pieces of tech diners like best, liked worst, and which they wanted to see more of.
Diners also reported that the two most important technology bits are online reservations (36 percent) and Wi-Fi. The survey also found that 60 percent of diners still say the most important part of the overall restaurant experience is the food, with 21 percent citing service, and 4 percent saying ambiance matters most. Perhaps surprisingly, loyalty programs only ranked as “somewhat important” for most diners, while touch screen ordering kiosks and mobile payments were “not very important.”
The report found that 57 percent of guests order from a restaurant’s website online daily, weekly, or monthly, with 43 percent saying they “rarely” or “never” order. And 58 percent of restaurants guests have never used mobile payments like Apple Pay, LevelUp, or Samsung Pay. When it comes to getting receipts, 42 percent prefer email, 29 percent want print receipts, and 18 percent don’t want any receipt at all.
And while technology can enhance the overall dining experience, participants agreed that the closer the ordering technology gets to the guest, the worse the dining experience becomes. One respondent explained, “I think that restaurant technology, and technology in particular, really takes away from the human experience. A good part of the experience at restaurants is the social interaction with the workers, the waiter/waitress, and that is being taken away more and more with technology.”
Not all respondents agreed, however; one respondent said, “We need more tablets as menus – it’s becoming a bigger thing, and I think it really helps the experience of ordering, photo quality of the food, etc.”