What is top of mind for restaurant executives and operators these days? I just came back from the NRA Show and I learned so much!

Let me share the three main lessons I got from my visit:

1) Digital and Loyalty are becoming mission-critical

This topic deserves a post of its own but to give you the gist of it: if you own a restaurant, whether single-location or multi-unit, and don’t have a digital sales platform and a loyalty program, you are likely losing.

Loyalty programs today are much more than simple “spend money, earn points, get rewards” mechanisms. They become an integral part of the customer journey with the brand, provide high-quality data on guest behavior, and help drive customer lifetime value without diluting the brand with endless LTOs.

2) The lines between retail and foodservice are getting blurred

Two words I heard a lot during presentations and my discussions with fellow attendees: guest experience. It’s not just about the food itself anymore, it’s about the entire experience with your brand, in and out of the restaurant itself. And in order to enhance the guest experience, restaurants tend to add a retail component to it.

The combination or retail and foodservice can take many forms: some brands develop retail products based on their menu items and recipes (my personal favorite: Nando’s Peri Peri sauce, which makes your chicken sing even if you aren’t a particularly gifted cook). Other restaurant brands tap into external partnerships, like the one between Burger King and WalMart. We even start seeing retail brands getting into foodservice, such as the L’Occitane Café.

Either way, thinking of how to best serve guests beyond your menu can drive profitable sales and help grow your brand.

3) Pricing and profitability, where art thou?

Funny anecdote: the conference had a dedicated area for their educational presentations, and they had put a handful of whiteboards in the hallway where everyone could come and write their thoughts. Each whiteboard had a specific topic. The picture below shows you how the whiteboard about margin management looked like when I left. Yep, nothing.

I guess we can look at it in two ways: either the industry is doing great and doesn’t have a profitability problem at all…or operators don’t even know they could be more profitable with the right pricing strategy in place.

So, I will preach for my own church one more time: pricing can help you become more profitable without losing guest count nor your competitive position. If you don’t know where to start, you can read my whitepaper (link below, at the bottom of the post) on how to optimize your pricing.

To conclude, I would like to thank the NRA and its hundreds (thousands?) of anonymous staff for putting together such a great event. The organization was absolutely flawless, the content was the right balance of educative and entertaining and the overall atmosphere was very pleasant. Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to hit the gym to burn the 3lbs I gained from all the delicious food I ate!