For some terrible hospitality marketing advice, read consultant Mike Brady’s comments in QSR magazine. In Jill Watral’s column, he gives design advice to a fast food restaurant owner who’s considering opening a second location:
… If you go into each of them, they’re frantic and they’re doing well. But the Five Guys is probably going to falter some because it’s doing too much exactly alike. As soon as they get a whole bunch of them, customers will say, “Well, I’ve already been there a bunch of times.”
Each location needs to be unique and special. People are really into the neighborhood thing, and in this economy people aren’t moving around as much, so their neighborhood becomes more important to them. They’re not traveling as far to go out to eat. They’ve scaled back, so again, it’s, “This is my place. I want this comfort level. If I’m out on the road and I see the same name, I don’t want to go to that place because I have it at home. I want to go to something different.” So if you don’t change it, you’re hurting yourself.
People go to a fast food restaurant for consistent food, not for a unique experience every time. I enjoy going to local, non-chain restaurants because the experience is a little quirky. I go to Five Guys because I like their burgers and fries — not because each location is unique. I don’t claim fast food is healthy, but that’s not the point of quick service restaurant (QSR) locations. To take it the extreme, Americans sometimes eat at McDonald’s in Europe because it’s a comfortable experience, so I don’t get Brady’s “I don’t want to go to that place because I have it at home” comment.
I grew up near one of Five Guys’ original pre-franchise locations outside D.C., in Springfield, Virginia. I’ve been happy to see that their franchisees elsewhere in the country make the food exactly the same way as the original stores. To read other people’s comments in “The Five Guys Mistake” article, I’m not the only one who’s confused by Brady’s advice. Hat-tip to Janet Kennedy for finding the original article!
What do you think — should chain restaurants be consistent or unique?
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{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
It’s not design that makes each location unique, it’s the neighborhood and community surrounding the restaurant that gives a place its non-food flavor.
The Five Guys near Chinatown in DC has a vastly different feel than the one at North Hills in Raleigh.
I’m not sure how different the author of the article wants Five Guys to be. Starbucks certainly has different designs in different locations, but it’s recognizable upon entry because enough continuity exists.
But ultimately design is not what keeps me returning to Five Guys – the awesome burgers are!
I think I would hate it if I went to a fast food restaurant that I had at home while I was on a trip and discovered that it was different. Isn’t the point of it having the same name and the same logo, that it’s going to have the same food and atmosphere? Does he suggest that other types of businesses do this too? Old Navy? Verizon? The Apple store?
I really agree that people want consistency. This article from The New York Times covers the topic quite well: http://www.nytimes.com/2004/10/17/magazine/17WESTVIR.html
@Nathania: Good point about how it’s the surrounding community, not the restaurant itself. I suspect restaurant designer Mike Brady have an issue with cookie-cutter designs…because the restaurant operator doesn’t to hire a designer. To be fair, the article was focusing on advice for someone opening a second location, not a 200th location.
@Stacey: You’re right, the point of any chain business is to provide a similar experience every time. I can’t tell if Mike Brady was quoted out of context, or if he was just trying to get publicity by attacking common sense.
@Meghan: Thanks for sharing the NYT article! I like how they summarize full-service family-style dining (Bob Evans, Cracker Barrel, Friendly’s) as having “a serious emphasis on all-day breakfast.”
Upon reading the advice I immediately think of three restaurants, all with the same name, and a vastly different experience (well two versus one) in the RDU area of NC. Time Out, known as a great college hangout in downtown Chapel Hill also has two other locations, one free standing and one attached to a hotel. The great, albeit unhealthy, food of the college hangout is vastly different from the sports bar atmosphere of the other two locations.
I think it is important that if there are ssignificant differences that the business name be different, little concept called product differentiation, the process of introducing a different product into the same market that competes with other products by the same company, as well as other products from competitors. Sure everyone knows the restaurant name, and you will get more initial traffic by reusing it, but customers get cranky when they think they are going to a place they know and it isn’t the same place. Though you can get away with a lot on a different design with the same substance (food), don’t touch the menu.
@Joseph: I’ve been to the Franklin Street location by UNC’s campus…I had no idea they had other locations! I can see why they’d want to make them different.
Empire Eats does a great job of branding its downtown Raleigh restaurant as separate properties with unique personalities: Raleigh Times, Morning Times, The Pit, Duck & Dumpling, Sitti, and Gravy. If they didn’t reference it on their cross-sell materials, you’d never guess that they were owned by the same local company.
@Karl Sakas That is how it really should be with Time Out, except all three restaurants are Time Out. The one by UNC focusing on great homestyle comfort foods, the one on Fordham Rd & Ephesus Church Rd in Chapel Hill attached to Holiday Inn which is a sports bar with an entirely different menu, and the location on Miami Blvd in Durham near the exit 281 I40 interchange which I hear is the same as the Holiday Inn location.
To me my first experience with the chain is the UNC location so I expect them to all be the same, and was really disappointed with the Fordham location, enough so to never set foot in the Miami location.
I think others are right, we associate a business name with a certain experience or series of experiences. And that name comes to us when we have certain feeling or cravings. Dropping a consumer in a restaurant with the same name and a different menu is a great way to ensure a failure with consumers that have expectations based on a different location, as in I have been to the Fordham location of Time Out once and haven’t gone back. I have a built in association and I can’t break that to give the different location a chance.
@Joseph: There’s also the issue of making places unambiguous and easy to find. For instance, people tend to refer to meeting at “Cafe Carolina,” without specifying which location. People tend to refer to the Cary location, but it could also be Raleigh or Chapel Hill. That adds an extra layer of confusion.
Worse, they can be on the same street in the same town, like Caribou Coffee’s two locations in Chapel Hill. They’re both on Franklin Street — one downtown on West Franklin Street, and the other out in the more suburban section on East Franklin Street. Makes it hard to say “meet me at Caribou in Chapel Hill.” My bank in New Jersey was the same: both TD Bank branches in Clifton NJ were on Clifton Avenue, two miles apart. Not the smartest business move for a multi-site retail business…