WordWrite has opined frequently about the three inviolable rules of great storytelling: Authenticity, a telling of that story by those fluent with it and a constant (and accurate) reading of the audience. This is a fundamental premise on which most of my WordWrite work is built. It is always in my mental space and directs many of the professional tasks I attend to on a daily basis. It is also a common way that I evaluate macro marketing and business performance when needed to assess a prospect, client or even industry sector.
That’s why this approach has lead me to a point of fascinating awe in observing the absolute headlong cratering of certain sectors in the restaurant industry and the desperate marcom approaches some are pursuing as a way to stop the bleeding. I’ve been paying special attention to the “family-dining” concept. You know that category with all its Red Lobsters, Olive Gardens, Chili’s, Fridays and the like. A staple in drawing restaurant traffic, the family dining concept is essentially the same as it has been for decades. Sit-down, full table service eating at modest prices in spaces that might best be called dining “rooms.” The food is generally passable, the beer is cold, kids color and there are few menu names to create self-conscious speech stumbles.
But the entire concept in all its mediocre food, ambience and vibe demanded something that is
and has been fundamentally changing: that people must come sit at a conventional table facing one another, be waited on and, essentially, be forced to talk. As heretical as this might sound family diners are not so much interested in that anymore (especially the under 40 set). The reasons for this shift are abundant and relatively easy to track: a shift in food tastes, traffic still stalled at below pre-recession levels, wage stagnation within the target market segment and perhaps most remarkable of all, the influence of personal communication devices in reshaping our style of social and family interaction—even in restaurants.
But all of these factors have been well-documented. So how it is then this business sector has cratered? Who was asleep at the switch as this was happening? Well in a phrase, the family dining sector has largely violated the third rule of Story—it has not effectively read the audience. So now as “family” diners shift to fresher food, different eating vibes and the clubbier atmosphere of say Chipotle or Panera, conventional competitors are scratching their heads and pursuing advertising approaches that announce, not hide, their desperation. Consider the following: “All you can eat” appetizers for one price (Fridays); one-time fee passes allowing you to endlessly eat certain menu items for multiple months (Olive Garden); deep fried green beans (Fridays again)! My God will they ever put down the shovel and stop digging the hole?
Meanwhile nary a nod has come from most of these same brands about creating a more informal dining vibe, a change in how patrons encounter and move within the space of units or even how diners are invited to integrate the use of their “devices” into their eating and drinking time. If the new competitors in the sector knew this was important how did the established players miss it?
They just broke rule number three—while attending to the endless business pressures of price, cost, value, suppliers, wages and the like—they ignored their lifeblood—their diners and what they were trying to tell them all along. Now there is hell to pay, the conventional family dining story is dormant, the competitive product weak and few innovations have appeared to-date suggesting this plunge can stop.
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John Durante is marketing services director for WordWrite Communications.
