Reinventing fast food

[fresco]

McDonald's, Burger King, KFC and even Wendy's are all getting a bit long in the tooth. If you were to launch a fast food franchise today, unfettered by history, but with a realistic prospect of making a profit and with broad enough appeal to eventually attract customers in several countries, what are the considerations that would guide your choices? What would the menu look like?

[Carlovski]

OK.

My venture into Fast food millionairedom is based on the premise that the USA is no longer seen as the land of the Free, and something to aspire to. So therefore, steer clear of American Food.

A good fast food chain must offer the following

• Consistency. People expect the same in every restaurant.
  
• Something for everyone. Must cater for Veggies and vaguelly healthy people
  
• Must be fast (No-brainer!)
  
• Need good profit margins, but still be fairly cheap.
  
• Must be non threatening. No Offal (Damn!)
  
• Must be internationally tailorable - No Beef for India, no Pork for Jewish countries etc
  
• Must be able to be prepared by low/no skilled teenagers.
  
• Gimmicks are good. Think 'interesting' breads, new cooking techniques etc.
  

I quite liked the idea of Omelettes, but they would have to be freshly cooked, and require a modicum of skill. So I reckon the time is due for the first international kebab chain.

A range of kebabs, both sliced of the spit, and skewers. They can be tailored to the countries meat of choice, lots of veggie options, adding new ranges is easy - Think Chicken tikka kebabs, Cajun style etc. You could offer a choice of different breads and sauces.

Most people like kebabs, but they have a bad image of cleanliness, and 'Mystery Meat'. A super slick, shiny fast food style presentation could remove that image.

All the meat could come from a central supplier, it offers simple portion control, it's spicy so people will want drinks (Good profit on those). I think I am going to make a fortune!

The only thing that's going through may head is that Simpsons episode where Marge makes Pretzels, with the rival members of her investment club getting a 'Fleet-a-Pitta' franchise.

I refuse to call Pitta 'Pocket Bread' and Falafels 'Crunch Patties'!

[aliwaks]

I love your idea...meat on a stick... add to that a juice bar ...perfect healthy. I can get myself into near hysterics when faced with an option of eating from the only available fast food places...have nearly cried when forced to eat 3 oz of rubber chicken w. scary faded lettuce like stuff'casue it was the most nutritous and least likely to make me ill ( actually love love the taste of big macs etc but my stomach does not take kindly to all the chemicals & saturated fat) item available.

it seems though that everyone just wants burgers & fries (ho humm...) all the other franchises have failed when was the last time you saw an Arthur Treachers Fish & Chips? Or a few years ago when there were wrap places EVERYWHERE..they are not so much anymore such a shame would love to go to Carlovski's to grab a chicken tikka kabob & maybe some fresh juice while on the highway.

[Jinmyo]

Soba-go-go.

[slkinsey]

How about: "Offal King"? Or perhaps simply "The Fifth Quarter"?

I can see it now... fried lamb sweetbread nuggets, tripa alla parmigiana heros...

[fresco]

"How about: "Offal King"? Or perhaps simply "The Fifth Quarter"?

I can see it now... fried lamb sweetbread nuggets, tripa alla parmigiana heros..."

McDonalds is borrowing your concept for a boutique burger chain called The Organ Grinder.

[Jinmyo]

"Get them guts into yer guts. Fries with that?"

[fresco]

Sung to the tune of "Fry Me a Liver."

[Holly Moore]

49 cent hamburgers. fresh cut fries, sodas, shakes and maybe a fish sandwich. No salads. No chicken nuggets or broiled chicken breasts. Nothing but McD's menu in 1968.

The Wheel of Retailing. The elder fast food chains have embellished, embellished and emblished some more. They are at maturity. Bogged down. Evolved into family restaurants. Left a gaping void at the bottom of the wheel for a no-nonsense hamburger stand, low prices, and quality, service and cleanliness.

[fresco]

Makes a lot of sense, actually. When do you open?

[Holly Moore]

Soon

[Jason Perlow]

49 cent hamburgers. fresh cut fries, sodas, shakes and maybe a fish sandwich.  No salads.  No chicken  nuggets or broiled chicken breasts.  Nothing but McD's menu in 1968.

The Wheel of Retailing.  The elder fast food chains have embellished, embellished and emblished some more.  They are at maturity.  Bogged down.  Evolved into family restaurants.  Left a gaping void at the bottom of the wheel for a no-nensense hamburger stand, low prices, and quality, service and cleanliness.

Yes. Retrodonalds. With fries cooked in beef tallow, and shakes made with real ice cream, as I mentioned on a previous thread.

[bilrus]

But what about the Toys and the Maple Flavored "Griddle Cakes"?

[Holly Moore]

Not even a friggin' clown.

[fifi]

First you shoot the clown...

Remember when they blew up the Jack-in-the-Box? But then he came back, as an executive. Some of those ads were funny.

But I do miss the chihuahua.

Why not play into the current paranoia and make it healthy and advertise it. This is a golden opportunity. Just imagine the guilt of over-scheduled soccer mom's you could feed on. There are a few things out there that aren't too bad. Does JinB still make the chicken fajita pita? I remember when they came out a few years ago they actually bragged about the calories (not too bad) and fat content (not too bad either) and I believe it was a good seller. A Taco Bell Chicken Baja gordita is 320 calories. They have a pretty good nutrition calculator on their web site. Looking at it, a really smart food engineer could probably tweak it and make it better using some of the same tricks we all use to lower fat and sodium but adding flavor.

Oh yeah... And keep it simple. Don't get too cute.

[fresco]

"Not even a friggin' clown."

I'm ok with a friggin' clown; not so ok with that scary neuter Ronald McDonald.

[Jason Perlow]

Screw healthy. In fact I would make a point of advertising that I wasn't, that everyhing was done the bad old fashioned way. Fried in grease and loving it.

[Fat Guy]

My venture into Fast food millionairedom is based on the premise that the USA is no longer seen as the land of the Free, and something to aspire to.

Congratulations, you just guaranteed the failure of your business. Every piece of information I know of points to the fact that America sells. Even in cultures where hating America is en vogue, American products and culture sell big-time.

Success at the single-establishment level may have a lot to do with food quality and value. It's possible for White Manna to sit across the street from McDonald's in Hackensack and prosper, because White Manna is the best of its kind and the McDonald's is just a cookie-cutter franchise. But I'd like to see White Manna try to expand to 10 stores. It's not going to happen. The griddle cook there is far too skilled for a franchise concept to be viable based on that model. You'd need four griddle cooks of a McDonald's level of competence to compare, and then you probably couldn't be profitable.

Success at the chain level is only somewhat about the food concept. Just as a serious haute-cuisine French restaurant like Daniel could easily prepare you almost any dish from the universe of haute-cuisine, a well-designed chain restaurant system could easily be repurposed to serve any kind of food at its kitchen's level of competence. But for a chain to prosper it needs to offer food that will have widespread appeal across many markets, and it needs to offer selection and repeatability. McDonald's maxed out the burgers-and-fries formula long ago. People wouldn't eat enough of them often enough to allow the chain to grow. So they had to expand into different sandwiches, breakfasts, etc. True, this leaves a hole in the market to make a few million selling just burgers and fries, and that's plenty for a single-restaurant operator (White Manna) or regional chain (In-N-Out Burger) to be happy with. But it's probably not a formula for global chain success.

[fresco]

"Screw healthy"

Great condom ad

[Fat Guy]

Why not play into the current paranoia and make it healthy and advertise it.

Congratulations, you also just wrote a destined-for-disaster business plan. People don't want to eat healthy food. They only say they want to. They beg for it, and then they don't buy it.

[Holly Moore]

But I'd like to see White Manna try to expand to 10 stores. It's not going to happen. The griddle cook there is far too skilled for a franchise concept to be viable based on that model. You'd need four griddle cooks of a McDonald's level of competence to compare, and then you probably couldn't be profitable.

You'd be amazed at what a high school kid can do with a 6 foot grill and a couple of spatulas. He most likely wouldn't have the charm of the White Manna grill guy, but he could easily keep up with him. That's one of my strongest memories of the 1968 vintage McDonald's - the kids running the grill. They were the hero's of McD's back then and took pride in earning the coveted positon of grillman.

McDonald's maxed out the burgers-and-fries formula long ago. People wouldn't eat enough of them often enough to allow the chain to grow. So they had to expand into different sandwiches, breakfasts, etc.

Growth was part of it. McDonald's has two sales goals. Increasing per unit sales. Increasing overall chain sales. The easiest way was to increase overall chain sales was to open more stores. But there are only so many gullets and so much acreage. After 2000 stores, the opening of a new store often canabalized one or more existing store's sales. Good for McDonald's because two stores yielded more franchise fees than one store. Bad for the franchisee because his individual stores became less profitable and there was often no territorial guarantee that the existing franchisee would own the new store that was taking sales from his existing store. Also bad for McDonald's because the stock market looks at both total sales and average store sales.

A good way to balance canabalization was through introducing new products. A good new product could increase a store's sales by ten percent or more. New products induced existing customers to spend more per visit and to come back more often. They also attacted new customers.

The problem with the vast array of menu items now offered by the fast food giants is that the operation becomes more complicated. More things have to be ordered, inventoried, cooked and kept fresh once cooked. Something has to give and what has given is the freshness of the food - the quality of McDonald's "Quality, Service and Cleanliness" motto. Food gets held longer. Food is precooked. Food quality is compromised.

Service and Cleanliness also suffer. Service because the bigger the menu the slower moving the lines and the greater the chance that an order item will be temporarily out. Cleanliness because McDonald's stores have to run at a set labor cost and if more time is spent serving and cooking, less time is available for cleaning.

True, this leaves a hole in the market to make a few million selling just burgers and fries, and that's plenty for a single-restaurant operator (White Manna) or regional chain (In-N-Out Burger) to be happy with. But it's probably not a formula for global chain success.

You're probably right. But In/Out Burger (it's been a while so I'm not sure how limited there menu is nowadays) is extremely successful in the LA market. The demand is there despite the high concentration of competition. If they can make it there, can they make it anywhere? They've proven they have the structure to run a reasonably large regional chain? With strong management can they expand that structure to other markets, and then to other markets beyond that?

But such expansion will eventually bring the same canabalization problems faced by the big chains. And probably the same solutions. Hence the Wheel of Retailing and the always recurring opportunity to break into a mature market with a simple, no frills execution.

[fresco]

You could probably go "international" and still stay in business and within the formula by adopting the Harry's Bar approach--a famous joint in a few widely spaced cities.

Holly's--it has a ring to it.

[FoodZealot]

Just to supplement a reference to it, In-N-Out Burger still has the same menu as it has always had.

unframed In-N-Out menu

But customers' special order tweaks have standardized over time. Here's an unofficial legend:

genex's In-N-Out Burger Secret menu

It's a reliably good, drive-in style cheeseburger. I respect the vision and commitment it tapes to keep everything perfectly simple, even though that sounds like you're doing nothing. In this case, it's not messing up something that people like. Other megachains have turned to chasing trends and novelties, but these guys just do their own thing. Seems like they have a good growth strategy, too. Supposedly, they only open in free standing locations where they can own the property.

Off topic-> Personally, I prefer Fatburger, which is more like a backyard type burger. No relish, though. Now owned by Magic Johnson.

~Tad

[Carlovski]

Perhaps us Brits just get the American Burger Bar concept wrong every time we try it. Ever been in a Wimpy?

[fresco]

"Ever been in a Wimpy?"

Yes. And immediately concluded that the hamburger is best enjoyed in the New World.