SheeFood

Kroger Links with the Dark Horse Among Ghost Kitchens

Kroger just surprised us again this year. First it set up a food hall within a store. Now it’s entered into the world of ghost-kitchen meal delivery. All it took was a linkup with a visionary who already had the infrastructure in place.

Long before the term ghost kitchen was born, Chris Baggott developed food-tech startup ClusterTruck in Indianapolis in 2015 with the idea that his remote kitchen and delivery operation would be a preparation and delivery resource for food trucks wanting to expand into delivery.

By and by, ClusterTruck’s world of menus, food/ordering and delivery took on bigger significance than food trucks, and ClusterTruck became its own “one-of-a-kind delivery restaurant” as it now operates in a few cities, including my hometown of Kansas City.

Ah, but a marketing best practice has emerged. Ghost kitchens are inherently invisible to the consumer. They are a blank screen in terms of branding. A ghost kitchen does not best operate as its own independent brand. There’s no emotional connection. Partnerships with established brands are the way to go. The Kroger partnership is quite strategic and perhaps a blueprint for ClusterTruck’s future endeavors.

Restaurants are already well on their way with ghost kitchens as the likes of delivery companies Grubhub and DoorDash expand their food delivery role to include food preparation for restaurants.

In its four-plus-year experience, ClusterTruck has the whole operational process down to an art and science, to the point that customers can have their meal within a half hour of placing their order. With the infrastructure, including a full menu, in place, ClusterTruck can court non-restaurants to present a complete plug-and-play meal-providing service that is going to take the restaurant industry by storm.

The already-crowded foodservice industry will only become more so as consumers get used to ordering food from these non-traditional locales. Imagine if ClusterTruck strikes a meal preparation, ordering and delivery partnership with Walmart, Target, Costco, Amazon, etc. … And customers get used to it? Who needs a restaurant?

My word of advice to ClusterTruck… You are a significant player. But as I said earlier: Ghost kitchens are inherently invisible to the consumer. They are a blank screen in terms of branding. A ghost kitchen does not best operate as its own independent brand. There’s no emotional connection. Do not seek to become a household word yourself. Be strategic with your marketing—letting your partner’s brand and marketing engine power the consumer connection. You have built the infrastructure. They have built a following.  Though you are in the meal-providing driver’s seat operationally, take a back seat in the customer’s eyes. If you will embrace that, I predict that with the right partnerships, you will disrupt the restaurant industry completely. And kudos to Kroger.

Tell me what you think.

Jody

Well, I Never Would Have Thought of That

I’m not quite ready to look forward to 2020. I’m still intrigued with some of the foodservice deftness I saw in 2019—just in the month of September.

While others were reading trend reports and closely following what everyone else is doing to determine their next foodservice move, others announced initiatives that caused me to spit out my coffee and choke, “You did what?!” The professional term for what my three examples did is disruption. (Was this September Foodservice Sweeps?) See what you think of these launches:

Cheez-It-like Pizza. How did this mashup happen between Pizza Hut pizza and Kellogg’s Cheez-Its? I love them both, and in September Pizza Hut announced its novel Stuffed Pizza Cheez-It LTO. The details are in the four jumbo Cheez-It-looking and tasting crispy squares filled with either cheese or pepperoni and cheese served with a side of marinara dipping sauce. I’m a Boomer who grew up on Pizza Hut and Cheez-Its. Love the idea, but they didn’t have my demographic in mind for this LTO. It was timed to coincide with college football season. Do college students like Cheez-Its? Let me at them.

Grocery Store Food Hall. In September Kroger unveiled a food hall in its newest Cincinnati store a block from Kroger HQ. Either this On the Rhine Eatery, as it is called, is an elevation of the grocerant movement, or it’s a cheapening of the chef-driven food hall wave. In true food hall fashion, the five eateries included are not chain restaurants. Menus cover tacos, Asian street fare and BBQ for starters. The idea of a food hall in a grocery store is a bit head scratching to me, but it’s in a swanky neighborhood, so a cool store-centric food hall might not be a stretch for that area.

Food Magazine Opens a Delivery-only Virtual Restaurant. You thought Bon Appetit was a magazine. But now it’s a restaurant too. Mind blowing. Ghost kitchens and delivery partnerships make this totally possible. Bon Appetit, Delivered is the name, and Chicago is the location. The virtual storefront is operated by Lettuce Entertain You Enterprises (LEYE) with Grubhub as the delivery partner. The concept features popular dishes from the magazine, website and Instagram feed.

I thought on this one for a long time. What is to stop any other food-related company from opening a virtual restaurant? Nothing. Is Oprah listening? Why not a Weight Watchers virtual restaurant? Health club and spa virtual restaurants, anyone? The Food Channel? A gas station? (I’m not crazy. What about Wawa?) Theme park neighborhoods could do it with fair food. Think Disneyland/Disney World. I’ll stop with that and let everyone else think of others. But this I would call restaurant disruption. And maybe therein lies a new spin on ghost kitchens, which is shaping up to be a huge trend for 2020 and beyond.

Tell me what you think.

Jody

How Far Can Impossible and Beyond Burgers Go?

I’m starting to think that the plant-based meat alternatives put out by Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat are the Scrub Daddys of the foodservice industry. Who would have thought they would catch on as quickly and as completely as they did? They are still in the introduction phase of their product lifecycle and already national chains are putting out press releases nearly daily with Impossible or Beyond menu launches.

It began with full-on burger sandwich offerings from early adopters White Castle and Fatburger followed by the likes of TGI Friday, Burger King, Hard Rock Café, Cheesecake Factory, Carl’s Jr. and Red Robin, to name a few. But it’s jumped from burger sandwiches to use as a plant-based meat replacement ingredient in tacos (Qdoba and Del Taco), as a pizza topping (Little Caesars, Oath Pizza) and flatbread (Courtyard by Marriott). And it’s also made the leap away from beef substitute to sausage substitute at Veggie Grill and at Tim Horton’s in Canada. Don’t blink or you’ll miss the big hop to chicken. KFC is testing and evaluating Beyond Fried Chicken.

Plant-based protein shipments from foodservice broadline distributors increased 18% in the past year—up from 17% the previous year, according to NPD Group.

In the beginning, I was positive the bottom would drop out of this flash movement. Nothing is that wildly successful overnight. OK, Scrub Daddy was with the help of Shark Tank investor Lori Greiner. Impossible Foods and Beyond Meat have also received heavy investment. So I’ve wondered if that’s what is behind their success.

But no, I’d say these products rose up at the perfect time, or else they created the perfect time to focus on plant-based proteins for environmental causes. Nearly half (49%) of GenZs (ages 12 to 24) are trying to add more plant-based foods into their diet compared to 33% of Baby Boomers, according to Mintel’s Plant-based Proteins—US, May 2019 report. Also, 45% of consumers believe that plant-based protein is healthier than animal protein.

But I’m still not ready to concede that these Impossible and Beyond products have staying power. Some factor could arise to change everything.

I remember a few decades ago when consumers suddenly started clamoring for organic produce. The national produce suppliers couldn’t change their fields fast enough to satisfy the cries. And in the twinkle of an eye, consumer sentiment jumped from organic to local. This came about so completely that without a thought, consumers would have answered “yes” to the question, “Is local produce healthier than produce shipped from far away?” This shifting consumer sentiment left national growers who were in the midst of changing out fields to organic standing with their jaws dropped.

Could an ethos arise that would change everything for these plant-based protein brands? When I read an article about how highly processed these products are, I held my breath. Could that become the game changer? Is some group or prominent publication or news magazine TV program going to discuss the myriad of ingredients in these things and compare that with whole foods? Whole foods (not the retailer), after all, is a movement itself. Are there artificial ingredients in these plant-based proteins? Because if so and someone jumps onto that, there are 33% of consumers who say the food claim free of artificial ingredients is important to them.

Amidst the shifting sands of consumer sentiment, we shall see how far these plant-based proteins go in their presently positive lifecycle.

Tell me what you think.

Jody

Is it Too Early to Make 2020 Menu Predictions?

Well, let me be the first to predict a menu shift we should have seen coming 15 years ago: lifestyle menus. We will see more operations that base their entire menu on lifestyle diets.

The embryo of this menu trend was first spotted in the early 2000’s when Ruby Tuesday stunned the industry when it boldly introduced a new separate menu featuring low-carb items. The setting for this was the low-carb craze that few of us industry old-timers will forget. It was a well-recognized national phenomenon that took the baking industry down for a time. Ruby Tuesday’s idea gave way to icons next to items that met the criteria of the moment. And to this day, icons for vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free are common menu inclusions.

What’s different now that changes everything is the emerging generation with their personalized nutrition expectations. Currently we see a small outbreak of menu items developed for lifestyles. Consider Chipotle’s Lifestyle Bowls launched in January (Paleo, Keto and Whole30). Blaze Pizza just launched a line of Life Mode pizzas (Keto, Protein, Vegan and Vegetarian).

But these are just baby steps toward where this is ultimately going. If we consider the functional-food oriented younger generation, we should look at what colleges and universities are doing to address the cause.

Earlier this year, Chartwells, the Compass Group contract management outfit that operates about 300 college and university dining facilities, launched its Fueling Your Unique Lifestyle program. It highlights foods with ingredients that make vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free and keto so yesterday. Rather, Chartwells picked eight areas in which they could develop dishes that would provide purposeful benefits. To name a few, Immunity Boost dishes have antioxidant-rich ingredients; Love Your Heart options contain omega-3-fat-rich items; Improved Clarity options zero in on brain focus (think caffeine, herbs, spices and elixirs); Clean Eats items have no preservatives or additives; and Recovery foods is my favorite category. It’s not hangover recovery, but muscle recovery after heavy workouts. Chartwells’ executive chef pointed out to me pickle juice as a good recovery go-to. So they have developed 40 kinds of pickles!

These health-benefit labels appear at the beginning of the dish name, so students know the benefit right away.

While restaurants could learn from this and incorporate something similar, I think this is going to lead to a new (probably crowd-funded) genre of restaurant…lifestyle restaurants—beyond smoothie shops. LYFE Kitchen (with three units) could be considered the embryo for this idea. It labels many of its dishes with the lifestyle benefit, as in the breakfast Anti-Burnout Bowl, Paleo Power Start, Balance Bowl, Keto Scramble and Protein Pancakes.

But can we call lifestyle restaurants a trend yet? No, but we are going to see them. Perhaps Jamba will evolve to this. It took a baby step in June when it announced it was taking Juice out of its name and adding the tagline Smoothies, Juices, Bowls. But we need to see some operations with intentionally functional full menus.

Tell me what you think.

Jody

Marketing That's Missing Something

I was recently in an airport killing time, so I stopped by a hair-care outlet. A curl-enhancing product caught my eye, so I asked the sales associate about it. She informed me it was made from all-natural ingredients, and the brand gives back and makes sure women workers in Africa are fairly treated and supported. Something boiled up inside me. How was it that she applied food marketing messages to a curl enhancer?

Obviously, I’m naive. That was apparent as I then sat on the plane and opened the inflight magazine to the 2019 Beauty, Health and Snack Must-Haves and saw these food-marketing terms freely bandied about for soap and deodorant. I did not know there’s such a thing as vegan, cruelty-free and palm oil-free soap. (Help. Is something wrong with palm oil?) For every product sold, one bar of soap and one month of clean water is donated to a child in need. I see. But tell me about the actual soap.

The list also featured a deodorant formulated by the daughter of a breast cancer survivor and is free from common unpronounceable ingredients. The company donates a portion of sales to breast cancer research and survivor support.

It’s official. Anymore, products aren’t sold by their personal beneficial qualities as much as by their contribution to society.

The description of a list of condiments highlighted on that magazine page sounded just like the soap and deodorant, if not slightly more condescending. It said, Condiments were bland products made with bland practices by bland companies. This inspired us to create the tastiest, award-winning condiments and dressings possible, using the finest non-GMO ingredients and ethical practices, such as certified humane free-range eggs.

I’m going to guess that this description was written by a magazine intern who filtered the product through his/her demographic (Millennial or GenZ) filter and freely concluded that bland equals any product or company that doesn’t do good—demonstratively.

And probably this intern is right. Restaurants have been waking up to this for several years, and there’s always news of brands taking it a step further. Today I read that Taco Bell is hoping to reduce antibiotics in beef by 25% over the next six years. It had already made a commitment to eliminate antibiotics in its chicken. All this is in response to customer demand.

We have to hand it to this generation that has always been known to speak up and only support products that operate in line with its ideals. I should not have been surprised to find that soap and deodorant are subject to the same ethical scrutiny. Every industry is under the microscope.

But I have a little request. In our food marketing, can we also say what’s in the product and how it tastes? Let’s talk about senses, spices, texture and flavor. Go back to terms that reflect balance, refreshment and deliciousness.

Tell me what you think.

Jody

Bowls Have Come a Long Way Baby

Ten years ago, bowl entrees only appeared about 150 times on restaurant menus. Now they show up more than 1,500 times. Just in the past three years, menu incidence of bowls has increased 65%, according Mintel Menu Insights. What has happened?

I can point to at least two things. The bowl has become a recognized carrier of themed ingredients and it’s one of few formats that unwieldy health-forward beans and grains easily fit into.

The bowls of yesterdecade were often rice or noodle bowls with Asian moorings. Breakfast bowls were also starting to appear and have done nothing but soar in the past three years, up 148%.  

But I like to ponder what it was that made restaurant menu developers start to think seriously about bowls, and I want to zone in on the “themed carriers” idea combined with the upscale concept of deconstructing that’s now in everybody’s playbook. Sandwiches/wraps and pizza are among the most common classic ingredient carriers, but if you tear them down and put the ingredients in a bowl, you have things like Olive Garden’s Meatball Pizza Bowl, but more. Because with a bowl, you can add extra flavorful ingredients. After all, bowls enclose. Pizza doesn’t.

More is better, especially if it is better. Power bowl is a common entrée name to convey that this isn’t just a hodgepodge of random ingredients, but a carrier for superfoods. Corner Bakery recently launched its Power Breakfast Egg Bowl, partly described as “our power greens blend of baby kale, arugula and spinach topped with fluffy scrambled eggs, farro and oven-roasted tomatoes.” Meanwhile, LYFE Kitchen just added its Acai Power Bowl: “housemade acai-blueberry compote, coconut milk, chia seeds and toasted pecan almond crunch.”

Notice the way menu developers are turning to bowls to make healthy more craveable. Chipotle, that until the new guard arrived, rarely added a new ingredient or dish, recently launched a line of Lifestyle Bowls, calling out keto, paleo, whole30 and double protein. Dunkin recently added an Eggwhite Bowl which smacks of healthy. Indeed, the company notes that the bowl contains vegetables, lean protein and no bread to appease the low/no-carb crowd. (Let it not be lost on anyone that many carriers are carb-laden, bringing on a nap attack.) And BFY brand Jamba Juice just dropped the word Juice from its name to expand its focus and added a tagline: Smoothies. Juices. Bowls.  

Bowls are also a palatable way to get more fish in front of guests. Menu incidence of fish bowls went from near zero to 65 in the past three years. Perhaps we have the emergence of Hawaiian cuisine and its iconic poke bowls to thank for that. For anyone embarrassed to admit they don’t know what poke is, it’s raw fish chunks (often tuna) ala sashimi, but mixed with mayo and a few other seasonings. For those who won’t eat sushi unless it’s a California roll, poke is an indulgent first stab at raw fish.

I think bowls are only in their infancy as a carrier for themed ingredients. We aren’t seeing many dessert bowls, beyond ice cream. But even that could take a twist. You’ve heard of freak shakes that include all kinds of decadent ingredients? Why not freak bowls?

The second reason I think we’re in for a lot more bowl action is the emergence of robots. Notice my last blog post The Salad Bar of the Future. Sally the salad robot by Chowbotics is also a bowl robot. After all, a salad is a bowl. The company is just now promoting it as also a bowl robot.

And finally, I have to give a nod to ingredient manufacturers/marketers as the third reason we will see more bowls. It’s the job of food/ingredient manufacturer corporate chefs to develop and pitch menu ideas to restaurant chains. There are grain (and bean) companies doing just that, and bowls are the dream trend for these folks. There will be more bowls on chain restaurant menus, or those companies will die trying.

Tell me what you think.

Jody

The Salad Bar of the Future

If you didn’t know that salad bars need a disruption, you’re about to find out. I predict that in 10 years, you won’t see a traditional salad bar. You will see robots disguised as vending machines. I discovered them while researching automated technology for an upcoming article.

Right now Chowbotics in Silicon Valley is leading the salad robot revolution, but others will no doubt enter the space. The first Chowbotics Sally salad robot entered the market a year ago, and already there are more than 50 of them out there. In summary, the refrigerated vending-machine-looking unit holds 22 plastic canisters that the operator fills with salad ingredients, including lettuce, proteins, toppings and dressings. From a built-in touchpad, customers select the ingredients they want or choose from a few pre-programmed salads. The canisters spin and drop the ingredients into a pulp container, and the guest pays with a credit card. With no human in sight, one might wonder if the ingredients will quickly run out, or conversely, if the less popular items will sit in there and rot. But smart technology addresses those problems. When an item is about to run out, operators are notified on their phone or computer. When they load ingredients, they fill in a freshness date. For example, three days for lettuce or two days for chicken. Once the fresh limit is reached, the machine locks out the ingredient so guests can’t get it, and the operator is notified.

I see five reasons how and why this will be a salad disruptor.  

1. Imagine a restaurant, and especially one known to have great salads, contracting with a local hospital, business or university to put one of these robots in its cafeteria with the restaurant logo on the machine. It allows for a satellite location, extending the brand and allowing for extra income. It’s already being done. The Salad Station in Hammond, Louisiana, just placed one in a local hospital.
2. Its small 3-foot by 3-foot footprint allows for a “salad bar” in a location that otherwise couldn’t handle a traditional salad bar. Think stadiums, business cafeterias, grocery stores and convenience stores.
3. Standing next to candy, chip and beverage vending machines, a salad robot, that looks a lot like a vending machine, brings the possibility of not only something healthy and fresh, but a full meal at that. The operator decides what ingredients go in the machine, so it can include proteins.
4. The food safety issues of a standard salad bar are negated. The machine is refrigerated, all the ingredients are encased and there are no utensils subject to dropping to the ground. Those who don’t “do” salad bars for the unattended, open-air nature of the beast would feel comfortable with the robot.
5. The cost of a salad from the machine can be less than the price of a packaged salad mix, and consumers these days could appreciate the lack of plastic packaging, lack of distribution carbon footprint and the use of local ingredients.
6. Bonus: Labor is not replaced with a robot. If there’s a salad robot in a non-traditional location that otherwise would not have a salad bar, it’s not replacing a worker. It’s giving a worker something to do… because somewhere, someone is prepping the ingredients that go into the machine.

Tell me I’m crazy, but I see this as a game changer. Just watch.

Tell me what you think.

Jody

Restaurant Rescue Missions

Remember the days when, for the sake of marketing, restaurants ponied up with promotions in which part of the proceeds for a day or a week went to a charity? For a while, that seemed brilliant. PR companies expertly advised their foodservice clients that they could count on bundles of free publicity because publications like that kind of news—especially if the beneficiaries are women, children or animals.

Then along came Millennials and their answers to survey questions revealing that they would support with their dining dollars operators who support causes they believe in. Better if the restaurant’s core DNA visibly stands for something respectable. Nobility became a proposition championed by then-emerging fast casuals—beginning with “Food With Integrity” (yes, Chipotle).

At first, besides charities, everyone was supporting organic, local farmers, fair trade, low carbon emissions and the like. Then all that became a given and less buzz-worthy.

Today we are watching an all-out do-good revival going on in foodservice. What’s different now is that new fast casuals aren’t the only ones building human and global welfare into their operations. Also, it’s not a function of the marketing department, but a C-level top-down directive that turns giving and doing into a core business proposition. So I’m saying, there’s been an awakening among chain restaurant executives to project meaning beyond feeding customers. Finding a global need and having a part in meeting that need is no longer left to the church. Let the Methodists say Hallelujah.

Saving oceans from plastic is Red Lobster’s new initiative, hot off the press. The chain announced a partnership with Ocean Conservancy, a nonprofit that seeks to protect and preserve the world’s oceans. It plans to focus on two things: The Global Ghost Gear Initiative (dealing with lost and abandoned fishing gear) and the Trash Free Seas Alliance. That effort seeks to keep plastic waste from entering oceans.

Just how could Red Lobster help with that? With its buying volume, it will educate suppliers, and don’t be surprised if it makes some kind of packaging requirement of them. It has put everyone on notice that it is taking plastic seriously. Per its press release, “Red Lobster, which was the first large casual dining restaurant company to make a commitment to eliminate plastic straws from its restaurants, will continue to evaluate the use of single use plastics and seek alternatives. Red Lobster will also help educate consumers about the impact single-use plastics can have on the oceans and marine life and encourage eco-friendly choices.”

While plastic is the cross-hairs at Red Lobster, Cracker Barrel’s ongoing cause is military families. While it long has made them promotion beneficiaries, most recently the chain has formed a strategic partnership with Operation Homefront, a nonprofit that helps military families with short-term financial needs, transitional and permanent housing and family support programs. Cracker Barrel is leveraging Operation Homefront’s knowledge of who and where the needs are when it comes to meals.

Those and other causes infused into the DNA of a restaurant are commendable. But please hope with me that in time, as more operators pick the things they would like to champion, they don’t turn to political activism and the hot-button issues that divide our country. After all, aren’t restaurants where we come together and forget the outside world? Let’s preserve that sanctity—please.

Tell me what you think.

Jody

Everyone is Going Coconuts

If there ever was an ingredient having its day in the sun, its coconuts. It’s obvious that flavor- and ingredient-watchers have had a keen eye on the tropical fruit, sending their R&D people to the kitchen with an assignment; start flavoring with coconuts. Because if the fame of coconut water is any indication of what can happen with the rest of the fruit, then get out there in front with it. Thus, the makers of M&Ms recently came out with limited-edition Thai Coconut Peanut M&Ms. In Canada, a company just launched coconut salt. And coconut chips just came on the market from Prairie Naturals under its Prairie Naturals Superfoods brand.

But not so fast with the superfood designation. At the moment, coconuts are where avocados used to be in the “is it healthy?” spectrum. The avocado industry fought for its nutrition integrity and came out beautifully. Coconuts and coconut oil are going through it now with leading dieticians evaluating all the particulars about the fat components and their effects on the body. One thing is for sure, coconut oil manufacturers and menu marketers have pushed pause on promoting the oil as healthy, especially after a lawsuit against Costco for promoting its Kirkland brand of coconut oil as healthy. (Coconut oil contains 12 g of saturated fat per tablespoon compared to 2 grams in vegetable oil.)

While avocados could be argued as the single ingredient to turn something into California cuisine, coconut takes food in tropical and Pacific Rim directions, which are trendy propositions right now. Coconut is supremely versatile with infinite life left to give in desserts as well as salads, entrees and in condiments, sauces and beverages in all day parts.

You’ll see coconut added in interesting ways in chef-driven operations all the way down to fast-food and fast-casual chains.

For breakfast, Peet’s Coffee and Tea recently updated its Simply Oatmeal to include seasonal toppings of toasted coconut, agave quinoa and chia. You’ll find coconut paired with superfoods while it vacillates in and out of that status itself. Starbucks recently came out with a Mango and Coconut Yogurt Bowl, and yes, it also includes chia seeds.

Snap Kitchen recently launched what it calls Cocoyo that it originally described as “So fluffy we can hardly believe it’s healthy. This yogurt made from raw coconut meat is full of healthy fat that totally satisfies. Paleo, vegan, milk free, whole 30 compliant, keto, gluten free.” Since its launch, the healthy fat comment has been dropped.

Upscale coconut renditions include Spago Beverly Hills with its Charred Octopus in a Coconut Bowl and a side dish at Café Boulud—Yogurt Roasted Cauliflower with coconut, cilantro-cashew chutney and tomato masala sauce. It’s a nod to Indian cooking.

Coconut has always had a place on the dessert menu. Its new comfortable home may be on the beverage menu paired with other tropical flavors. Will it defy nutrition scrutiny like it does in a few of the beverages at Nekter Juice Bar? Its Tropical Cooler is made with a puree of spinach, kale, pineapple, banana, coconut butter and coconut water. Its Turmeric Sunrise smoothie combines pineapple, mango, coconut butter and coconut water with a little lime and turmeric “for a light and refreshing smoothie that fights inflammation and boosts your immune system,” per the company menu.

Look for more coconut innovation and a future that won’t fade. The rediscovered fruit has already stood the test of time.

Tell me what you think.

Jody

How to Appeal to the Most Lucrative Foodservice Target Market

We’ve all read too much on foodservice efforts targeting Millennials—adjusting menus, ingredients, sourcing and marketing to attract them. But there is a more profitable demographic worth its own consideration that looks at operations, the menu and marketing through a different lens. I’m going to call this demographic the corporate class. Others might call it business diners, but I’m thinking beyond the fact that business travelers have to eat somewhere. There is amazing income to be had from those who entertain clients, sometimes large groups, where cost is not an issue.

Given the good-food-at-any-cost approach they take to dinner out, you might think that a frequent diners program would not be a go-to marketing strategy. But if done mindfully, it sure could. How can you leverage the rewards program to get executives and sales reps to pick your place above all others to take clients? Points for dollars spent is one traditional way.

That’s just part of the non-cookie-cutter rewards program employed by Del Frisco’s Double Eagle Steakhouse. Its website explains the program, but not completely. One of the perks is VIP Rewards and Offers. Could that be a veiled reference to its Double Eagle Silver Coins? Oh yes. Each location, at the GM’s discretion, can give a loyal diner a Double Eagle coin (.999 fine silver one troy ounce). That’s worth something alone. But the goal is to collect one from each city where it’s offered (the city is on the coin). The end game is to collect them all, after which the collector is invited to Dallas to receive a gold coin from the owners.

How to get the GM’s attention when you visit is fascinating to me. One of my husband’s business friends takes his stack of silver coins to dinner and spreads them out on the table in front of him, which gets the servers’ attention, and the GM is soon at the table schmoozing. This leads to a fine dance in which another silver coin can be added to the stack.

The steakhouse chain can afford this because in its non-traditional methods, it charges guests $25 to join the rewards program.

But there’s a menu consideration in a strategy that targets corporate diners. It’s the vegetarian factor. And maybe not just any vegetarian. Consider the demographics of your area, and if, for example, there is a large IT presence where a lot of folks from India work, for the sake of the executives, add some vegetarian cuisine that would appeal to Indians (do your research. Paneer cheese ideas anyone?) It is a fact that when executives/sales people entertain clients and there is even one Indian in the group—that changes everything. A steakhouse with no fish or vegetarian options is out, sadly. Negate that costly business veto vote with a few menu items suitable to non-beef eaters and vegetarians.

And finally, catering has to be part of your strategy if you are targeting corporate diners. Be the go-to “order lunch in” place and do your menu research on what would be most appealing. Ever how healthful you make it, include an outrageous to-die-for dessert option. Be the place companies talk about for their corporate lunch meals.

Tell me what you think.

Jody