The Power of the Restaurant Voucher: Good and Evil?

Excellent post from Marcel Cowan about the careful use of vouchers as a marketing tool for restaurateurs here.  It has become almost mandatory for restaurants to offer vouchers, and in the current economic climate it’s a sensible strategy.  But longer term what will this do to your brand?  Will people expect to always get a bargain when they walk through your door?

There is clearly a danger of eroding brand value, but we can see that the restaurant chains are moving in herds.  Once the economy starts to pick up again we will see fewer vouchers available until customers will have no choice but to pay full price for going out to their favourite local.

We recognised this eventuality at AfterWorkDeals so we have built a yield-management feature into our voucher system where restaurateurs can restrict their discounts to their off-peak periods, and remove the vouchers from circulation during peak periods.  This means they can fill empty tables when they still have fixed overheads to pay, whilst protecting brand value when they’re overflowing with customers.

I fear that Marcel’s sound advice may fall on deaf ears as I have found that the approach to marketing in the fast-moving casual dining sector is more reactionary than strategic.  This is why more and more restaurants are offering vouchers – they’re seeing the success that other chains are having.  I recently presented a client (also one of Marcel’s clients, coincidentally) with a detailed analysis of a recent offer they were running showing how if they made some minor changes they could increase takings by 15-20%.  I was surprised at the response: “We’re really not interested in getting so analytical.  As long as our marketing mix helps us hit our sales targets we’re happy.”  Quite an eye opener!