Alcoholic beverages play an important revenue-generating role at roughly half of the Top 500 chain restaurants in this country.
In its most recent survey of the largest chains, food industry consultancy Technomic found that 236 of the Top 500 concepts, or 47 percent, sold wine, beer, and/or spirits. While casual dining operators dominate that list, it is interesting to note that nearly 40 of these alcohol-serving chains are limited-service and midscale restaurants.
On average, the largest casual dining chains collect 15 percent of their revenues from beverage alcohol. In contrast, the largest limited-service and midscale restaurants average just 3-4 percent of sales from alcohol--a much smaller number, but still surprisingly impressive for this group.
Collectively, the Top 500 chains sold nearly $7.5 billion worth of alcoholic beverages to their customers in 2005. The importance of alcohol sales doesn't stop with the largest operators. In fact, in a separate survey of smaller chain restaurants (under $80 million in annual systemwide sales), Technomic found that these players actually racked up more impressive results at the bar than their larger counterparts. "These up-and-comers derived 17 percent of their sales from alcohol, compared to 13 percent among all the largest operators," said David Henkes, Technomic Senior Principal. "Furthermore, 12 percent of these emerging chains are collecting better than 30 percent of their sales from alcohol, compared to just 5 percent of the alcohol-serving chains in the Top 500." Henkes credits these smaller players with being more attuned to their local customer preferences and able to nimbly test alcoholic beverage programs and promotions.
About Me
- Jeffrey Summers
- I am the expert you call when you need to learn how to increase top line sales, lower your operating costs, increase your profit margin, hire and train better managers and staff, evolve your operation into more and better ways of doing business, buy or sell a restaurant, improve your service, engineer (or re-engineer!) your menu, market your business better and less expensively, keep yourself from going nuts because you have no life anymore, open more and better restaurants, don't want to have to give up your first born child to pay a consultant and have more fun! My mission is to enhance the quality of life for my clients by providing the best products and services to help them achieve their personal and professional goals. I take great pride in my clients, my company, my commitment to service and the products I sell. I am a recognized expert in the hospitality industry with over 24 years of success at planning and executing strategies for delivering dramatic results, a former "GM of the Year" for 2 major, full-service, franchises, an Award winning Multi-Unit Executive with 2 of the largest restaurant chains in the U.S., published author, husband and father of two.