Abt SRBI Market Insights Division

Restaurant and Food Service Overview

Abt SRBI understands the restaurant and food service industries. The competitive landscape changes at a brisk pace. Customer expectations shift and evolve. Customer retention and visit frequency are keys to ongoing success. Staff is scarce. Turnover is extensive. Employee acquisition, training and retention costs are high. If you are a restaurant owner or a food service provider, you need to insure that customers receive the same standard of service across your network.

A Team of Experts
Abt SRBI's Restaurant and Food Service practice group consists of research veterans who have served some of the country's largest restaurant chains. Our team and approach have been customized to meet the unique research needs of restaurant clients. We offer clients a global "one-stop shop", starting with a strategic review of issues and opportunities, delivered via a proven suite of products and services, and supported by high-end analytics and extensive in-house data collection resources. This combination allows us to deliver the rapid turnaround; flawless execution, flexible methods, and accountability for findings you need to capture opportunity and to drive your business. Our experience spans every category: Quick Service, Casual Dining, Fine Dining, Specialty restaurants, and multiple Food Service outlets.

Research and Consulting Expertise
Abt SRBI excels at uncovering the fundamental drivers of customer behavior that are most critical to business success. The insights we uncover help paint a clear picture of customer expectations and brand performance which allows us to determine brand strengths and opportunities in the following areas:

• Advertising and promotion development and evaluation
• Market and demand profiling
• Buyer reaction studies
• Brand equity and positioning
• Product and concept development
• Menu evaluation and optimization
• Marketing effectiveness
• Service experience/expectations

• Advertising impact and claims substantiation - A client needed nationally representative feedback on a new advertising campaign. Leveraging our MallConnect^SM network, we were able to place the study and deliver results to the client within 72 hours of study approval.
• Analysis of underperforming stores, including trade area overlap, customer potential and cannibalization within the brand, competitive buying behaviors, advertising support and product and service performance.
• Customer gain-loss and frequency of use analysis, through re-contact one year later of heavy, moderate, light, lapsed and non-users of the chain.
• Importance of product quality, service delivery, and in-store features including competitive benchmarking.
• Customer satisfaction among restaurant patrons, with real-time online reporting and service recovery systems for dissatisfied customers.
• Evaluation of featured product promotions, including trial, repurchase and evaluation.
• Central location taste testing of a new sandwich.
• Buyer reaction studies for new product offerings.
• Store manager satisfaction with distributors.
• Competitive brand and advertising awareness, image, attitude and usage tracking.
• Empirical analysis of actual repurchase behavior thirty days after response to a "next 30 day" purchase intent question.
• Analysis of customer satisfaction data as drivers of business performance.
• Store feedback of action steps to correct different performance deficiencies.
• New location site analysis for a franchise placement
• Menu optimization analysis, examining reach, appeal, purchase intent and frequency estimates of purchase for menu options to determine which items should be included in each category to optimize the reach potential of the menu. The result is an optimized menu and an understanding of the key variables/segments. Abt SRBI can also provide a database and a simulation tool in order to evaluate various scenarios.