Restaurant and Food Service Blog

So many restaurant chains at the end of 2008 were offering low price point promotions in hopes to help boost sales. From $1 dollar menu items at the QSR chains to $99 dinners for two at steakhouse such as Morton’s, everyone was feeling the pinch from the mortgage crisis. In order to help stave off slumping sales, everyone was doing their best to attract a dwindling customer base.

Even during the post Christmas sales, you could find huge sales of nearly 75% off on retail products.  But I think that Guy Kawasaki made a great point in his recent blog posting when he noticed a lot of sales at the Stanford Shopping Center. Click here to see the pictures from blog posting.

In almost all the stores at the shopping center, huge discounts were being offered. All but one store. At that one store, there were a ton of people looking and buying. That one store was Apple Computer!

Seth Godin goes farther with his recent blog post – Change Your Price. The first line of the post is very poignant. “When a restaurant goes from a la carte to either a buffet or a prix fixe meal, it is able to find a new class of customers.” What I think the industry has in store for 2009 is something of great significance.

Although this is a very bad economy, in it is a lot of opportunity. Remember the last down economy that we saw in 2001? During that time we also saw a huge amount of innovation – the introduction of the iPod and Microsoft’s Xbox. The great restaurant leaders are going to see beyond this economic mess and turn lemons into lemonade.