Restaurant market research gives you insights for improving nearly every aspect of your business, whether a single location, small group, or large chain. Whether you are starting a new restaurant, expanding to new locations, developing new menu items, forming a franchise, or facing declining sales, you can make better decisions when you understand customer wants, expectations, perceptions, and reactions. You can also better understand customer experiences, your competitors, and trends that bring both risks and opportunities.

Restaurant research needs differ by type

The restaurant industry includes various business models and types. Each has unique research needs.

Michelin-Star restaurants

At the high end of the market, you are serving a luxury customer and a providing a complete experience. Think New York’s Le Bernardin or Kanda in Tokyo. Every detail matters, from food and wine to service, décor and atmosphere, the reservations process, pacing, and presentation. Research at this level might examine the expectations and the experience rather than simply asking whether a customer liked the food.

High-end restaurants

Thinking beyond the stars are high-end restaurants that offer fine dining and are destinations for special occasions. Examples include Ossiano in Dubai and Don Julio in Buenos Aires. Your research can explore customer and potential customer expectations, menu preferences, price, service, atmosphere, and competitive choices.

Hotel restaurants

Hotel restaurants serve several types of customers. These include hotel guests, business travelers, and conference attendees. Some also attract local residents and people celebrating special occasions. Your research plan will need to segment these groups to discover what drives demand, why they might choose the restaurant, and more. You may also want to explore how the restaurant strengthens the overall hotel experience.

Food chains

Chains can be on the high end like Ruth’s Chris, mid-market like Olive Garden, or mass market like Denny’s. Research may cover the brand in general or look into execution by individual locations. Even with an overall standard for a chain like Nobu, customers and their expectations may differ significantly in Marrakech, Manila, and Monte Carlo. Research can examine menu choices, pricing, service, promotions, restaurant atmosphere, and customer loyalty.

Quick-service restaurants

Quick-service restaurants face their own set of challenges. Customer expectations around speed, accuracy, convenience, price, food quality, ordering, delivery, and drive-thru service can all affect the brand. The scale and margins in this segment mean that even small decisions can have a significant impact. Research can uncover issues and opportunities at every step of the dining journey. Mystery shopping can uncover issues in specific locations, as well as systemic challenges. Surveys can measure satisfaction. Customer interviews can explain why problems occur.

Restaurant market research methods

Restaurants face multidimensional challenges. Their opportunities are similarly complex. Most restaurant research programs include several research methods. Here are some of the most used methods of market research for restaurants:

  • Mystery shopping and customer exit interviews: Evaluate the customer experience firsthand through a trained researcher who can assess the greeting, ordering process, wait time, food, cleanliness, service, accuracy, and payment at your restaurants and those of your competitors. Together, these methods can show you both what happened and how customers felt about it.
  • In-depth interviews: Explore the reasons behind customer behavior by interviewing regular customers, occasional customers, former customers, competitors’ customers, or people who have never visited. Interviews can uncover issues that a survey may miss. A customer may say that service matters. An interview can show you what good service means to that customer.
  • Quantitative surveys: Large-scale chains and sizable restaurants that nned statistically valid findings on satisfaction, visit frequency, menu preferences, price expectations, brand awareness, and likelihood to return may benefit from surveys with larger sample sizes.

Restaurant market research in action

North America: Starbucks Uses Customer Feedback to Improve Its Offerings

This coffee chain was struggling to keep up with changing tastes and wanted to better understand what customers wanted from its products and experience. Starbucks tracked cultural trends related to its business. It also used social media and in-store menu item testing. It formalized customer feedback through the My Starbucks Idea online platform for submitting ideas. Customer feedback gave Starbucks a direct way to identify ideas and preferences that might otherwise be missed. The platform gave Starbucks a direct source of customer ideas and preferences that could inform new offerings and improvements to the customer experience.

Asia Pacific: MK Restaurant Group needed insight to expand

MK Restaurant is a chain serving Thai-style, sukiyaki, roasted, and dim sum dishes. It operates over 700 restaurants under a variety of brand names in five countries. To introduce new concepts, it starts with in-depth interviews and focus groups that explore dining habits, occasions, food preferences, pricing, convenience, delivery, and perceptions of other international restaurant brands. It uses the results to understand which part of any restaurant concept can remain consistent and which may need to change for each market. This methodology is behind the expansion of some of its concepts into Europe and Japan.

European Union: Localizing McDonald’s

While the chain has been operating across European markets for decades, marketers knew changing tastes and eating habits created a potential growth area. Using focus groups and taste tests, McDonald’s tested menu items and eating occasions by country and by regions within countries to develop localized concepts to sell alongside global favorites.

Middle East: Cheesecake Factory meeting varying customer expectations

Alshaya Group owns a portfolio of chain restaurants that they operate in countries across the Middle East. Their Cheesecake Factory operations were earning mixed reviews. Alshaya Group used a variety of methodologies, including mystery shoppers, direct customer feedback, and quantitative surveys to learn more about what drove customer satisfaction. They investigated which location customers visited, the service they received, what they liked and didn’t like, and what they wanted to see improved. Alshaya used the findings to improve food quality reliability, speed of service, staff quality, value for money, and even update the website.

Latin America: Subway adapts to local tastes

As Subway accelerated its expansion across Latin America, it needed to adapt its global concept to various countries and cultures. Using surveys, focus groups, and ethnographic studies, Subway developed a clear understanding of consumer behavior and brand choice drivers, country by country. The company adjusted everything from menu options to marketing campaigns to appeal locally and build over 4,000 restaurants across 30 countries.

Turning restaurant market research into better decisions

The restaurant industry is a high-stakes, high-risk business. Restaurant market research gives you a clearer view of what your customers want and what they experience. It can answer important business questions with evidence and insight. When you know what customers think, want, and do, you can make more informed decisions about how to improve the experience and grow your business.

Frequently asked questions

What is restaurant market research?

Restaurant market research helps you understand your customers, competitors, market, and business opportunities. You can use it to make better decisions about location, menus, pricing, service, and expansion.

Why should restaurants conduct market research?

Market research helps you understand what customers want and where your restaurant can improve. It can also help you evaluate new locations, test menu ideas, measure customer satisfaction, and identify changes in the market.

What are the most effective restaurant market research methods?

Common methods include mystery shopping, customer exit interviews, in-depth interviews, and quantitative surveys. You can combine methods to understand both what customers do and why they do it.

How can market research improve the customer experience at a restaurant?

Research can identify problems with food, service, pricing, atmosphere, ordering, or other parts of the dining experience. You can then use those findings to make targeted improvements based on what customers actually say and do.