Fast Company has an interesting post about Why American’s are addicted to Olive Garden….
It speaks to their success that the employee is as much a part of it as the customer experience. The “waiter, interacting with customers, shaping their dining experience, and getting rewarded for it” is integral to the dining experience at OG and it’s not far off from the reality of quality Fortune 500 companies. The Olive Garden brand is built around the notion that guests are treated like family, but Pickens knows that isn’t likely to happen unless employees feel like family too.
Customer feedback and market intelligence is another key to their brand strength They’re constantly polling their customers to get a touch for how the market changes and leveraging technology at every point in their operation to get real time visibility into sales, growth and inventory numbers to keep their operations business running at optimum.
Over the past two years, Darden has reduced unplanned hours by more than 40% and trimmed excess food costs by 10%. “We don’t want zero waste,” says White, “because we don’t want to run out of anything on the menu.” The goal is no more than 9% waste, and the system tells each restaurant how it’s doing.
Noted in this piece is that, today, the average American has 79 sit-down meals in restaurants per year, 16% fewer than 15 years ago, according to analyst Harry Balzer of market-research firm NPD Group. Meanwhile, the number of casual-dining restaurants has grown at roughly twice the rate of population. This is about 1.5 per week, and I just recently learned that San Francisco has the highest numbers of restaurant patrons of any city in the US. I’m sure NY is not far behind.
There was a minimal focus within the article about the food, except for the last statement “Red Lobster may be serving more grilled salmon and less fried flounder. But no one is messing with the cheese biscuits.” Sure those biscuits are great, but still not enough over take m desire for fresh pasta and Italian food or seafood from my favorite local spots over this chain.