By 2017 rapid expansion with 22 restaurants in California, New York, Illinois, Nevada, and Japan, additional locations planned around the world (and recent closure of New York locations) they were challenged by operating at a loss. We were hired to help them immediately revive their luster, by guiding positioning and determining optimal offerings via quantitative attitude and usage research, concept response, conjoint analysis, price elasticity, statistical analysis, cultural insights, and brand strategy. The goals were to identify consumer trends that would influence their business, differentiate within the highly fragmented dining category to regain momentum, overhaul their menu to optimize pricing and menu offerings that would drive traffic and yield profits, and redesign the dining experience/restaurants.

After 12 months of partnership the results helped inform an inspired management team to incredible success; redesigning high volume locations to align with the successful unique future dining concept, optimized pricing for leading meal combinations, altering patty size nominally altered to save direct product costs without sacrificing revenue growth, and introduced newer offerings inclusive for those with dietary restrictions and added vegetarian and vegan menu items that became best-selling at a premium price. Combined these broadened their customer base and our client announced in early 2019 plans to expand with 5 more New York City locations, 40 sites in Mexico, 20 in Japan and several in the Middle East. That’s a 300% expansion!