#daypart | KRG Hospitality

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August 14, 2023by David Klemt David Klemt No Comments

Should You Offer Your Guests Brunch?

Should You Offer Your Guests Brunch?

by David Klemt

Is brunch on its way to becoming a lucrative daypart that can grow traffic, increase revenue, boost guest engagement, and promote loyalty?

If a report from Square is anything to go off, yes.

Owing in part to changes in consumer behavior from 2019 to now, brunch appears to be a solid traffic and revenue generator. The number of people working from home is impacting daypart spending, which makes sense. Traditional office workers will often pop into a QSR or cafe for coffee and breakfast on their way in to work. And when lunch rolls around, they tend to head out to restaurants nearby for their break.

Now, the data support the belief that more people are staying home on weekdays and unleashing pent-up demand for socializing and dining out on the weekends. And apparently that demand is rather voracious, because brunch appears to be on the rise.

In 2019, just over eight percent of all dining dollars were spent on Saturdays during traditional brunch hours. That has grown to just over ten percent this year.

In terms of engagement and bringing more brand awareness, the term itself is growing on social media platforms.

Along with revisiting hours of operation, it may be wise for operators to consider offering Saturday or Sunday brunch.

Bristory

Yes, that’s a brunch-style portmanteau of “brunch” and “history.” No, I’m not proud of myself but I’m leaving it in.

The portmanteau “brunch” is believed to have first been coined by a British writer named Guy Beringer in 1895. He included the word in an article he wrote for Hunter’s Weekly. Beringer was making the case for noontime meal that combined breakfast and lunch.

In arguing for what may be the world’s first hybrid meal, Beringer wrote that, “the arguments in favor of Brunch are incontestable. In the first place it renders early rising not only unnecessary but ridiculous. You get up when the world is warm, or at least, when it is not so cold. You are, therefore, able to prolong your Saturday nights…”

The word would appear a year later in a Pennsylvanian publication called the New Oxford. More than 30 years later, brunch was on its way to becoming “a thing” in the US.

Oh, and there are arguments that an American reporter, Frank Ward O’Malley, who should credit for the word “brunch.” Those who believe this is the case say O’Malley created the portmanteau some time between 1906 and 1919. As is the case with many classic cocktails, the origin of brunch is at least somewhat hazy.

By the 1970s, the stigma that once came with brunch—that drinking publicly during the day could harm one’s reputation—began to dissipate.

Brunch by the Numbers

According to Square, brunch is appealing for several reasons.

Let’s take a look at this infamous daypart by the numbers.

9.8 percent: Growth in the number of restaurants in the US offering breakfast and brunch in 2022 alone.
10 percent: Amount of overall spending in restaurants on Saturdays between the hours of 8:00 AM and 1:00 PM in 2023.
35 million: Number of #brunch Instagram posts, and the number is growing.
4.5 billion: Number of TikTok views of posts with #brunch.
71 percent: Number of Americans who wish restaurants in the US would serve breakfast items all day.

To me, the most striking statistic is that brunch spending now accounts for ten percent of all restaurant spending.

That spend is logical when we think about who tends to enjoy brunch: people with time and money to spend on a leisurely, all-day meal.

As professor Farha Ternikar, author of Brunch: A History, has said, “Brunch continues to grow anywhere there is disposable income or time.”

So, operators who are considering offering brunch for the time or investing more into brunch have some questions to answer: Who is my target audience? What’s the population density of my market? Who has disposable income and time? Should I offer brunch on Saturday, Sunday, or both days? Does brunch work for my concept? Which venues near me are already offering brunch?

Answer those questions and speak with your staff before jumping feet first into this potentially lucrative daypart.

Image: Helena Lopes on Pexels

June 7, 2023by David Klemt David Klemt No Comments

Time to Revisit Your Hours of Operation?

Time to Revisit Your Hours of Operation?

by David Klemt

Many operators, in response to the past few years, find themselves slashing dayparts—even entire days—from their hours of operation.

Obviously, this makes sense. Reducing the hours a restaurant or bar is open can control and reduce many costs.

However, the industry is now seeing an increase in demand from restaurants and bars. Today’s consumer craves a return to normalcy. While delivery, carryout and pickup are here to stay, people want to return to in-person dining.

Generally speaking, people like to socialize (at least with their friends). And, of course, restaurants and bars are spaces that fill the human desire to get social.

At KRG Hospitality we certainly understand how reducing hours and days of operation can be effective. In fact, depending on experience level, concept, and market, we sometimes recommend that clients limit their hours and days when first starting out.

However, as guest demand for in-person dining and drinking increases, it may be time to revisit this operational strategy.

Increase Visit Time, Increase Check Average

There’s a battle that takes place in restaurants and bars during each daypart. Operators are engaging an opponent they can’t defeat: time. The best one can hope for is to keep up with or otherwise mitigate the damage done every time the second hand on a clock ticks.

Therefore, most operators fall into two camps: Turn and Burn, and Keep ’em Spending. Hospitality and foodservice professionals are (or should be) familiar with both strategies.

Turn and Burn is about getting butts in seats, getting orders out, and getting those butts out of those seats as quickly as possible to get new butts back into them.

Keep ’em Spending focuses on increasing check sizes through keeping guests in the venue. The thought is that the longer a guest or party is on site, the more money they’ll spend.

Rich Shank, vice president of Research & Insights at Technomic, addresses the latter strategy in a recent Restaurant Business article.

“What is interesting about that is that our dining party often impacts the time we spend in a unit and the amount of money we spend while dining in,” writes Shank. “Even dining in at limited-service restaurants is heavily correlated with how much time we spend inside the restaurant—making time and money a perfect pairing in most restaurants.”

It’s not Just About Hours

In Shank’s Restaurant Business article, the Technomic VP points out that families with children tend to spend the most at restaurants. This has long been the case, and it’s logical. After all, families with children are purchasing more F&B items per visit, and they tend to spend more time per each visit as well.

However, it’s not just about the hours and days of operation, as Shank also says. It’s important that a given concept be attractive to occasion-driven guests. In other words, people gather in pairs and groups for life events.

These events can be as simple yet important as date night, to huge gatherings such as large family reunions or corporate gatherings. So, when operators are reviewing their hours of operation and the days and dayparts they’re open for business, the guest experience and their life events are important elements to consider.

“If you take the time and money relationship seriously, then the idea of throttling down on our dine-in strategies to preserve on costs or to narrow our focus to off-premises occasions only is causing us to miss the occasions that drive check-average,” writes Shank.

It’s also crucial to have a close relationship with data. Operators need to be obsessive with location and guest data. Unless they know their market, location, and guests incredibly well, operators are just guessing before making important operational changes. Guest feedback can be an effective method of knowing if it’s time to increase hours and add days of operation.

Only the operator can know if it’s time to, well, increase time. Yes, costs will go up if a venue is open longer. However, revenue can also soar. Maybe it’s time to finally be available for in-person dining for longer.

Image: Lucian Alexe on Unsplash

September 28, 2022by David Klemt David Klemt No Comments

Restaurants in Canada: Daypart Performance

Restaurants in Canada: Daypart Performance

by David Klemt

For both in-person dining and off-premise consumption, more Canadian consumers are ordering from restaurants across all dayparts.

As Restaurants Canada points out in their latest report, traffic and sales remain lower than pre-pandemic levels. However, there are reasons to be positive.

For one example, Restaurants Canada predicts 2022 sales to return to pre-pandemic levels by the end of the year. The foodservice research and advocacy organization’s 2022 Foodservice Facts report provides another positive outlook.

Just looking at Q1 of this year versus Q3, all dayparts are seeing increases in traffic.

To read more about the report and grab your own copy, follow this link.

Numbers Tell the Tale

Per Restaurants Canada, the breakfast daypart slid significantly in 2020. During that time, it fell 20 percent that year.

For the first half of this year, however, Restaurants Canada reports that breakfast traffic is just four percent lower in comparison to 2019.

On a positive note, the breakfast daypart has risen steadily from March of this year to July, or Q1 versus Q3. In fact, all dayparts have grown.

According to Restaurants Canada, 43 percent of Canadians ordered breakfast from restaurants in March 2022. That number grew to 50 percent by July of this year.

In terms of snack purchases, 55 percent of Canadian consumers made purchases from restaurants. By July, that percentage rose to 62 percent.

Continuing along, 64 percent of Canadians placed lunch orders in March. Four months later, that number had increased to 73 percent.

Per the 2022 Foodservice Facts report, a significant percentage of Canadians are placing lunch and snack orders. In fact, Restaurants Canada says that Canadians are making purchases from restaurants during those dayparts two to three times per month.

Of course, there’s one more daypart we need to discuss…

Dinner is King

By the numbers, the dinner daypart is outperforming all others in Canada.

In March of 2022, 85 percent of Canadians had placed dinner orders at restaurants. That number rose to 87 percent in April but dipped to 86 percent in May.

However, dinner saw growth again in June and July, rising to 88 and then 89 percent, respectively.

As the numbers show, dinner orders are outpacing lunch orders 14 percent. Snacks are being outpaced by dinner by nearly 30 percent. Of all dayparts, breakfast is the weakest.

In fact, dinner outperforms breakfast by nearly 40 points. This makes sense when we consider the work-from-home effect.

More people working from home means, in theory, many less people commuting to work. Restaurants that once saw great breakfast daypart traffic are seeing a significant dropoff. Less people commuting means less people popping into a restaurant for breakfast.

It appears that instead, people are clocking in, working until break time, and then going to get a snack. And when lunch rolls around, why not place an order for lunch?

Naturally, after working all day, people are tired or eager to meet up with friends and family to socialize and decompress. So, dinner ruling the daypart roost makes complete sense.

In other words, operators looking to streamline should consider this Restaurants Canada data. The dayparts that require the most labor currently are lunch and dinner, so operators should plan accordingly if that’s viable for their business.

Image: CHUTTERSNAP on Unsplash