Sunday, January 6, 2013

An Overview Of Restaurant Market Research




While restaurant market research is often done before opening a high end dining facility, if you have a location or business that has been operating for many years, you might not realize that a benefit can be found by doing some research into your local market. This is a task that you can do yourself, but you might get more benefit from the results if you hire a qualified professional individual or firm to do the job. Here are factors that you should consider.

The demographics of the area your dining facility is serving is important. Demographics includes the gender, race, careers, education level, age and other similar factors of the people who will patronize your restaurant. An eating place that serves young families out for a dinner should be set up differently than a place that basically offers food for office workers in the area.

When doing the research, you should look for other dining establishments in the area. You can determine what is working well and also what is missing in the choices that diners have. Before deciding on a seafood restaurant in the desert, just because there isn't one available locally, your research should indicate that this is a food which will be accepted and acclaimed by the locals.

You will need to determine what foods are available on a regular basis from suppliers. In most instances, fresh food is preferred over frozen food. This is true regardless of the theme of the menu and setting. There are some areas where the fresh food choices are less available. Still, people often eat out in order to have choices that they can't get at home or at another facility.

Your research should review the overall economy of an area. When you are considering opening a restaurant where people can forget about economic woes for a while, you will need to know what the market will bear in terms of cost. People choose to go to a particular eating establishment for many reasons. Defining and addressing those reasons in a proactive way will help assure the success of your restaurant.

Whether you are starting a new restaurant or enhancing the effectiveness of an existing facility, understanding your customer pool is crucial. Getting the facts about demographics, preferences, availability of produce, and what types of establishments are already in the area is helpful. You can learn much of the information by doing the research yourself, or by arranging for a professional to provide you with the necessary information.