Getting it right for a Restaurant Chain

I was working with a fast food restaurant chain in the USA who was witnessing increasing competition and lower sales. They wanted to optimize the menu, so as to drive higher footfalls. They also wanted it to be quick!

We started by identifying key pillars their new menu options could focus on. One was their own heritage of quality barbeque options. The others were sustainability (vegan, eggetarian), healthy (calorific value, protein), child-friendly to name a few. This is 6 years ago - health was a big thing, but vegan was still small and new, as unfortunately it still is.

100 menu ideas arrived. Research objective was to identify options that will drive additional visits by existing customers, and drive trials by new customers. We tested them on taste connotation (foundational metric when working with foods), uniqueness and ability to drive additional/new footfalls. Idea was to use few but relevant metrics. That made sure that even if it was a simple screening exercise, it gave powerful output to my clients.

They could reduce from 100 to a single digit number of ideas, which they could now develop into more detailed concepts and test to get more insights on expectations, ordering frequency etc.