Aaron Allen & Associates
by Aaron D. Allen, Aaron Allen & Associates
The very worst place to be in the restaurant business today is a full-service casual dining restaurant with a check average below $20. The lunacy we’re witnessing with the TGI Fridays $10 bottomless appetizers promotion is one of many flagrant indicators that casual dining chains are desperate and disillusioned regarding market dynamics.
Casual dining chains are collectively losing hundreds of millions in system-wide sales to fast casual chains like Chipotle, Panera Bread, Starbucks, Five Guys and dozens more emerging players that are rocketing up the chain restaurant sales rankings at their expense. For the last decade, the restaurant industry’s tectonic plates have been shifting at a very rapid place, putting multi-billion dollar restaurant chains on the brink of disaster. Many once beloved brands – like Chili’s, Applebee’s, Red Lobster and several other such chains – are set to expire and will disappear in the not too distant future.
