Profit from Portable Lunches
October 2014
You can meet the demand for convenience and speed of service during the lunch hour by making the ordering process easy and offering more grab-and-go options. These insights can help streamline your operation during the lunch daypart:
- Make it snappy. Most lunch patrons have one hour or less to purchase their food and return to work. The majority of consumers agree that fast service influences where they buy lunch during the week. Ensure your employees are being efficient in the kitchen and keep all storage/work areas organized and well stocked. Remember, the key is to increase speed of service without sacrificing quality.
- Pre-pack it. Nearly 50% of consumers polled say they purchase pre-packaged, grab-and-go sandwiches that are located in refrigerated cases. Pre-packaged sandwiches save time because they don’t require patrons to wait for their food to be prepared. They’re also conveniently wrapped, so diners can eat them while they’re walking back to work, in the car, at their desk or anywhere else.
- Refresh your carry-out program. While refrigerated, pre-packaged sandwiches are popular, the lunch crowd also craves freshly prepared meals—fast. Call-ahead carry-out options are a great way to reduce your patrons’ waiting time, but you also have to make sure your carry-out containers are up to par. Your to-go boxes should be easy to carry, and they should be able to maintain foods’ quality and temperature until consumers reach their destinations.
Increasing speed of service, offering more pre-packaged options and optimizing your carry-out containers are all effective ways to attract more repeat traffic during the week. If patrons receive the to-go food they crave with time to spare, your operation will soon become their go-to lunchtime destination. Find perfectly portable lunch recipes in our Culinary Center, and browse our E-Z Menu Ideas for more mid-day meal inspiration.
SOURCES
Sandwich Consumer Trend Report, Technomic, 2014
Lunch Consumer Trend Report, Technomic, 2014
