All articles by Steve Gotham – Page 2
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Analysis & InsightAnd the 2019 consumer award winners are…
While we are in the midst of the entertainment awards season it would be most neglectful not to extend this to the worlds of foodservice and hospitality.
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NewsIs the premium pub market ripe for additional consolidation?
I must admit I enjoyed a very decent lunch last Sunday. It was at The Parrot pub at Forest Green, just south of Leith Hill (the highest point in the South East for those uninitiated) with four of us spending the best part of £40 per head. Nothing necessarily remarkable in that you might say, though this was my second visit in four weeks (and it is by no means a local pub), and I should add this is now a pub within the Brunning & Price stable, following its acquisition in late 2018. This got me interested in looking at the performance (and impressive growth) of Brunning & Price in a bit more detail, but also, to more closely scrutinise the premium pub segment.
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NewsGotham’s Christmas-ish Quiz!
It’s the week before Christmas and I hope many thresholds are being crossed, multiple tipples downed and that tills are ringing out! For my part, I have been thinking about what sort of Christmas present to get lucky readers – I have been racking my mind and the best I can do is the joy of a quiz!
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NewsA case for and against Foodservice delivery cannibalisation
While some operators might have some misgivings, in terms of key consumer metrics, the Foodservice Delivery market is firing on all cylinders. But aside from understanding more about market growth, the most common question we receive is about where the trade is coming from? Calling on insights from MCA’s latest Foodservice Delivery report, I went in search of some answers.
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NewsGunwharf Quays – Restaurant and retail therapy a plenty!
With more than 30 bars, cafés and restaurants (as well as over 90 shops) Gunwharf Quays offers an abundance of opportunities for plenty of remedial treatment. Supported by its impressive waterfront location, attractive design and assorted leisure-related reasons to visit, Gunwharf Quays is one of the UK’s finest outlet shopping centres. So amongst some Christmas shopping, I was keen to see how it is using its extensive assortment of Food & Beverage purveyors to both restore weary shoppers as well as to act as a footfall driver in its own right. But also, and more critically, I was keener to see some something new and surprising.
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NewsThe Highs and Lows of Promotions
In recent weeks I have looked into various elements of economising behaviour by consumers, including targeting low prices and more spending at weekends as opposed to weekdays, today’s focus is on the widely prevalent, yet potentially damaging, practice of promotional activity. Key questions asked include whether its usage is rising, who’s buying into the offers the most and what are the most popular promotion types. The core focus area is the key dinner day-part within the chain restaurant sector and the source of answers is MCA’s consumer tracking service, the Eating Out Panel.
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NewsA successful restaurant story – Nando’s
How about this for a straightforward, five point recipe for scalable restaurant success? Step 1, target the highest eating out frequency demographic with a highly affordable offering. Step 2, develop a distinctive proposition that avoids imitating any direct competitor. Step 3, keep the product offer tight to support consistent product quality. Step 4, develop a format strategy that works across multiple locations while not overpaying for sites. Step 5, work hard on building loyalty and repeat custom.
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Analysis & InsightFocus on: French casual dining chains
For a country associated with such a long established and fine cuisine tradition, it might be considered a little surprising that French food does not have a stronger restaurant chain presence in the UK, but perhaps the two elements of individual flair and multi-site brand consistency are indeed, polemically opposed.
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Analysis & InsightWill we eat out more than ever in the future?
I was struck by the recent MCA interview with Azzurri Group CEO Steve Holmes, and particularly his concluding comment: “I think if you wind the clock forward, people will eat out more than ever.”
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NewsLow price champions
Given the prevailing weak outlook for consumer confidence, it seems inevitable that more risk averse and belt-tightening behaviours will come to the fore.
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NewsTo curate – a word for 2019 and beyond
Apparently, the likes of ‘climate strike’, ‘prorogue’ and ‘woke’ are leading contenders among the list of key words of 2019. This set me thinking about what would be among the nominations within foodservice and hospitality? For sure any short-list would have to include labelling, restructure, sustainability and veganism, but I am going to make a case for a potentially left-field candidate, that is the verb to ‘curate’.
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NewsAll I want for Christmas is … more consumer confidence?!
“The end of consumers’ resilience?” was the rather sobering question raised by Deloitte with their recent Q3 2019 Consumer Tracker. Deloitte concluded that weakening confidence was now finally impacting consumer spending. This article reviews the Deloitte tracker in a little more detail, compares the key trends with the other leading consumer confidence tracking provided by GfK, and draws upon MCA’s Eating Out Panel research to capture more segmental insights and share prospects for the UK Eating Out market next year.
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NewsPizza Express has reasons to be cheerful - and remain vigilant
Back of house, the management of Pizza Express clearly still has much on their plate as they seek to stabilise the finances. But, to their credit, the front of house execution is not being undermined. In fact, MCA’s latest quarterly consumer research finds the business has several reasons to be cheerful.
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NewsTough times as spending shifts to the weekend
I was struck by a couple of recent comments from Mark Derry, the chief executive and chairman of Brasserie Bar Co., when he said that while spend was holding up, the business had noticed a definite shift in visits towards the weekend, as the early week visits are the first to go when times are tough. This prompted me to have a look at MCA’s Eating Out Panel (EOP) data on daily spending behaviour trends and see what insights were apparent.
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NewsGetting a taste for New Product Development
Regardless of their industry, innovation is widely recognised as the lifeblood of organisations. If we focus on new product development (NPD), then MCA’s Menu Tracker analysis for Spring/Summer 2019 shows that it is getting ever more prevalent. Looking at over 8,000 dishes across over 110 operators in the London region, over 600 were flagged as ‘new’ on menus. This equates to 8%, significantly higher than the 4% and 6% seen in previous years.
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NewsWhat does it take for a restaurant to prosper in 2019?
”Diner forced to wait in restaurant shock!” Okay, I exaggerate to make a point, but in these continuing times of negative news feeds – Brexit shenanigans, slowing economic growth, weakening consumer confidence, restaurant CVAs, falling profits, chronic indebtedness, etc. – you could be forgiven for thinking we are locked into a vicious circle of decline. And yet, literally over the past two weeks, I have had three eating out experiences where all the tables were taken and the tills were thumping. What does this tell us and what insights can be gleaned?
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NewsA culinary postcard from Jordan
One of the greatest attributes of the UK casual dining scene is its sheer diversity and multi-cultural richness. It has been supported by a long history of international migration and more recently, by assorted entrepreneurs looking to bring a taste of their childhood to their relocated adulthood (for example, Tony Kitous at Comptoir Libanais and Nisha Katona at Mowgli) and by inspired travellers looking to replicate assorted food and beverage delights on their return home (not least Mark Lilley at Abokado and Stephen and Juliette Wall at Pho).
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NewsIs Comptoir Libanais waiting for a tipping point?
The Comptoir Libanais in Chelsea is located within Duke of York Square, a relatively upmarket mixed retail and foodservice scheme, just off Sloane Square.
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NewsWhy is alcohol down and soft drink up?
There are plenty of caustic comments in existence about the merits of statistics. One of my personal favourites is: “He uses statistics as a drunken man uses lamp posts, for support rather than for illumination”. For this reason, I am wary of noting that consumer research findings for the first ...
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NewsBranded restaurant market – green shoots of recovery?
Turning tables is a long-established practice in the restaurant market, albeit perhaps one more commonly associated with times of more buoyant trading than those currently prevailing. Highlighting just how fast the fortune tables can turn in this market, I was fascinated by some recent MCA analysis looking at physical growth by branded restaurant chains across different portfolio sizes. This year, the estate bracket sub-category that is anticipated to add the most net new sites will be ‘small’ operators.
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