Managing brand growth and the guest experience

9th February 2017

BigHospitality recently published an article on the difficulties operators can face retaining brand personality as they grow their business. Growing too large, too fast proves the downfall of many ambitious restaurants. As the number of sites grows, it becomes harder to successfully translate the brand essence to each one. As a result, the consistency and quality of the guest experience is at risk of deteriorating.

BigHospitality's article had several good suggestions on how restaurants can retain personality as they grow. But what can you do to ensure that your business is offering the same quality of guest experience in each site?

Using the Guest Experience Management framework, you can ensure new sites are delivering in 4 key areas:

People

You can’t be at all sites at once, so you need staff members to act as brand ambassadors. All team members need to be trained to the same operational standards, but it’s important that they can also exhibit brand behaviours and infuse these into the service they provide.

Product

Reliability is one of the most important factors for guest loyalty, but as you scale, it’s easy for standards to slip. Guests should feel certain that whichever branch they walk in to, the quality of the food and drink offering will be familiar and consistent.

Process

Your brand essence should be evident at every stage of your service process, Turtle Bay is a great example of this. From the greeting at the door to their feedback card at the end of the visit (complete with request for guests to draw their best turtle). The guest experience is measured & managed in each site to ensure consistency and to keep their brand promise at the heart of what they do.

Perception

In an interview with MCA last year, Boston Tea Party said they were aiming to become not a chain, but a necklace. It’s a good thought to keep in mind as you expand your business. Even if you have a tried & tested template in place for every new site roll-out, you still need to be collecting feedback from your guests and measure their perceptions, rather than relying on habits and history to inform actions.