Menu, marketing moves elevate Family DiningMenu, marketing moves elevate Family Dining

Regional Family-Dining chains that broke away from the something-for-everyone diner fare found success in the Second 100 during the Latest Year. 

Menu and marketing innovations such as juice bars, seasonal limited-time offers and call-outs of local products have boosted sales, particularly at smaller chains.

First Watch, which serves breakfast, brunch and lunch, broke into the Second 100 this year at No. 198, with a 19.7-percent increase in systemwide sales. 

“Our strategy for improving our performance on the top line and the bottom line has come to fruition,” First Watch president Chris Tomasso said.

That included remodeling 30 restaurants with its new Urban Farm prototype, as well as running seasonal limited-time offers. First Watch introduces five to six seasonal menus each year, for five to six weeks each. Menu items include seasonal juices that are part of the chain’s fresh juice platform, which rolled out in January 2015. 

Tomasso said culinary innovation around the limited-time offers “has really increased interest in our menus, and we believe traffic in our restaurants.”

First Watch traffic also benefited from the integration of the Nowait app, which lets customers join restaurant waiting lists by smartphone. 

Data collected from Nowait allowed First Watch to undertake a “table optimization” effort — looking at the average party size by restaurant and daypart and allowing restaurants to update their table configurations accordingly during remodeling. 

First Watch also worked to improve speed of service by conducting time and motion studies in the back-of-the-house to help make food preparation more efficient, Tomasso said.

Black Bear Diner also grew rapidly, with Latest-Year systemwide sales up 18 percent, aided by a 10.5-percent growth in number of units. The chain had the highest estimated sales per unit among Family Dining chains, at $2.6 million, marking ESPU growth of just over 7.1 percent.

The chain, which features a bear theme, places itself at the higher end of Family Dining, with an average check of around $13 as of 2014, augmented by beer and wine sales.

Shari’s Café & Pies had a good year, too, with domestic systemwide sales rising 4.8 percent in the Latest Year. The chain didn’t open any new restaurants in the Latest Year, but it did remodel 10 of its 96 locations. Senior vice president Kevin Bechtel said those units are tracking a sustained 20-percent year-over-year sales lift.

The chain added new pies to the mix, including those that feature local, seasonal berries, such as Fresh Strawberry Chocolate Ganache pie and Blueberry Sour Cream Lemon pie. Another local specialty, hazelnuts, is featured in the Oregon Hazelnut Cream pie.

Shari’s also used local blueberries, blackberries and strawberries, along with avocado, in a Strawberry Superfood Salad. And it did a call-out to both Alaska and another Oregon specialty, craft beer, with its Alaska Amber Beer Battered Cod, served with a grilled lemon and herbed fries tossed in chimichurri.

Huddle House saw systemwide sales growth of 3.8 percent in the Latest Year. The chain also closed 20 underperforming units and opened 22 new locations, returning to unit growth after shrinking in the Preceding Year. Huddle House remodeled 35 of its 370 locations in the Latest Year. CEO Michael Abt said the chain also benefited from new training materials and successful menu promotions, such as its Bacon Time and Beyond the Biscuit promotions, as well as the annual stuffed hash brown promotion. 

Unit growth remains a problem for many larger Family-Dining chains in the Second 100. 

Overall, the segment had 22 fewer units at the end of 2015 than it did when the year began, due to shrinkage at Eat’n Park, Big Boy, Shoney’s, Sonny’s Real Pit Bar-B-Q, and especially Friendly’s, which closed a net 21 locations and ended the Latest Year at 259 units.

Contact Bret Thorn at [email protected]
Follow him on Twitter: @foodwriterdiary