New Study Shows Dining Out is Back and Better than Ever

The restaurant industry has been in something of an upheaval for a while since the financial crisis hit a few years ago. There has been an increased interest (or at least it was perceived that way) by Americans to stay home and save a few bucks on the cost of their restaurant bills. However, according to a new study from Market Force Information, that perception is dead wrong.

Americans Plan to Eat Out More or At Least Maintain Levels

The study asked 4600 participants whether they planned to eat out more or less at restaurants over the next three months than they did over the previous three months. 25 percent of the respondents said that was their plan, an increase from just 5 percent when the same question was asked back in December 2009.

Even more telling, when asked whether they planned to eat out less in restaurants over the next three months, just 8 percent of those questioned responded in the affirmative. This compares very favorably with a whopping 52 percent who answered yes to the same question back in December 2009.

All of this in spite of the fact that the economy is still quite anemic and shows few signs of the recovery everyone keeps hoping for.

How You Can Cash In

The same report indicates that there is a growing interest amongst Americans in eating out for breakfast. Replacing the coffee and donut on the go, more Americans are choosing to eat a full meal at places like Burger King and McDonald’s. This has, however, been fueled by these restaurants offering special value menus for the still price conscious consumer.

New Methods of Reaching Customers

The way restaurants reach out to customers has also changed, with more restaurants than ever offering discounts and advertising in social media outlets such as Facebook or Twitter. These methods of reaching out to customers have proven particularly effective with the younger, hip 20 and 30 something crowd who has the most money to spend at restaurants and who are most likely to eat out.

Is Texting in Your Future?

For the younger crowd, texting is as natural as breathing. Children in junior high school and high school over the past few years have tended to send more texts than they have made phone calls. Some of those children are now entering the real world of business. If you’ve got some of them on your staff, it may be time to consider using texting to keep in touch with them. Not to mention that it’s a great way to be in touch with your customers as well.

Texting to Customers

The most common use most restaurants make of texting is to send out notes to their regular customers informing them of the day’s specials or offering them some kind of a special discount in order to entice them to come by and have a meal. If you aren’t doing this yet, there are several websites available that will let you sent text bursts to multiple numbers all at one time, thus allowing you to have a valuable and low cost method of advertising.

Texting to Staff

The newest thing with texting is to send out mass notices to your staff. If most of your wait staff is of the 20 something crowd, then your best bet for making sure they’re all aware of the day’s specials and when there are staff meetings and the like is to simply send them all a text. The same services that you can use to send texts to your customers can just as easily be used to send texts to your staff.

Should You Allow Texting at Work?

The question of course is whether or not it’s a smart idea to allow your staff to use cell phones on the job at all. After all, if they’re getting texts from the boss, they may think it’s okay to be texting on the job. In these cases, it may be best to send out texts before work and make it clear that cell phone may not be used while working and especially not in front of customers.