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With Spring in full flow, and the prospect of longer (if not warmer) days ahead, it's a good time to think about whether your family dining offering is hitting the mark.
During the recent Easter break many establishments will have had the opportunity to welcome families for meals; it's a lucrative market to be capitalised on but family dining can be more complicated than dinosaur shaped chicken.
Families look for different things from a pub or restaurant ; these can include things like good staff interaction, children's version of adult menus, play areas, 'kids favourites' meals and good family dining areas.
One thing's for sure, it's impossible to be all things to all people, so it's important to identify how your brand wants to engage with families. Think about the key things you want your brand to reflect and then make sure you, your staff, your venue and your menu are on target.
If your brand wants to be known as 'family friendly', ensure that staff talk to the children as well as the parents when serving. If you want to maintain a reputation for good food whilst encouraging children, think about smaller portions of your main menu for children rather than resorting to easy options like pizza or sausage and chips.
You may also want to consider options to occupy children whilst they wait for their food; the recent wagamama wishing tree is a great example.
As always, they key to knowing whether these ideas are working is monitoring and measuring. Make sure you have a working method of assessment to see whether your ideas are a hit with kids (and more importantly parents) or whether they're as outdated as a tamogotchi.
This is the course of action we would recommend over the coming weeks to help ensure you can cash in on a summer of family dining:
View our mystery guest programmes.
