Preparing to open a restaurant, how should the restaurant's product line be planned? Is it to take the route of a large and comprehensive product, or to implement a single product strategy? The same is the implementation of single product strategy, why the fish live better, while the Lucky Caesar's customer base has obvious signs of decline? What can be done to better meet the needs of consumers?

A brand's product line determines its ability to attract customers. Therefore product line planning is very important. Product line is too long and too wide, it will lead to increased difficulty in supply chain management, low efficiency in the back kitchen, but also affects the procurement of equipment and the kitchen line; most importantly, to do more is generally more wrong, do everything is not good at anything - the product does not specialize in, the customer does not have the recognition.

But, the product line is too short and too narrow, the customer's needs can not be met - some of the old customers complained that "often come, think nothing good to eat", there are also customers will say: "you here noodle is good, but no side dishes to eat together, feel very monotonous."

So the question arises:

How is the width of the product line planned, and what is the basis for decision-making? What is the length and depth of the product line to be? Should we give enough choices so that consumers can eat a variety of food, or should we go for an extreme single product strategy, like Taiji doing just one pickled fish?

1?What does the width of a product line depend on?

The width of the product line refers to the number of product lines owned. For example, Hi-Tea had only one big product line - tea drinks - at the beginning of its business. And Nai Xue's tea in the beginning of the venture, the planning of two product lines - tea drinks, soft European package; drinks is a product line, soft European package is also a product line. Take the author has operated the brand Pretty Phoenix, a restaurant product line width is five - a rice noodles, two rice, three snacks, four desserts, five drinks.

For a startup brand, what does the product line width depend on?

The width of the core product line depends on consumers' dining habits, matching needs and the company's product competitiveness. To put it simply, the width of the product line depends on demand and competition? .

So, what do you mean by consumers' dining habits?

Eating congee at the same time, must be accompanied by eating some dry food; eating spicy at the same time, must come to some cool relief spicy dessert / drink.

Taking the brand of congee, Qianfu congee point as a brand from Dongguan started to focus on casserole congee, the store also sells some traditional Cantonese refreshments - such as shrimp dumplings, phoenix claw, doughnuts, turnip cake. In the dining habits of customers in southern China, congee alone is not considered a meal, but rather a meal with some dry food, which is the definition of "how to eat" in a cultural system.

This is the consumer's dining habits with demand. So it doesn't make sense to have a separate product line just for congee, and congee + refreshments is a natural combination.

Take the example of Pretty Phoenix again, Pretty Phoenix, as the number one brand of beef noodle in South China, when doing the design of the product line, it is to take beef noodle as the core, and beef noodle (main meal) + snacks (side meal) + drinks / desserts (enjoyment) as the core of the idea, the simulation is the customer's dining scenario.

Cheap for fast - a bowl of beef noodle; eating just right - a bowl of beef noodle + a snack; social enjoyment - a bowl of beef noodle + a snack + a dessert/drink.

So the width of the product line must be based on insights into the consumption habits of the target customers? . The three product lines of Pretty Phoenix take into account the consumption habits of three groups of consumers. Interestingly, if you look at the competitiveness of the products, the only two product lines that can really drive consumer decision-making are the beef noodle + desserts.

The reason for this is that in terms of product competitiveness of beef noodle and dessert, Pretty Phoenix is superior, and these two product lines are absolutely differentiated from their rivals. Snacks, although the click-through rate is very high, but the homogenization is more serious, so it still belongs to a necessary supplement based on consumers' dining habits, rather than a strategic factor to drive consumers to choose you.

In principle, a strategic product line that can drive customer consumption, one main and one side is already enough to use? , for startups, it is almost impossible to have the resources to control more than two product lines that can really influence consumer decisions.

2?Length and Depth of Product Lines

The number of product categories within each product line is known as the length of the line. The depth of a product line, on the other hand, refers to the flavor profiles and pairings of the products. Overall, the length and depth of a product line can be viewed collectively as one metric, the number of SKUs.

1 Fewer brands to choose from, easier to close the deal

When it comes to the length of the product line, Lecesa's Chen Ning once mentioned a very classic assertion - Customers don't need a lot of choices, so keep the SKUs minimal.

He also cited a scientific experiment to back up his claim - the famous Jam Choice Experiment, led by Stanford researcher Sheena Iyengar, which used a local grocery store as an experimental site to try to understand how people make choices.

For the experiment, Iyengar's research assistant pretended to be a jam supplier and set up two sampling booths in the food store.

The first tasting stand had six flavors to choose from: peach, black cherry, redcurrant, orange, kiwi and lemon cheese. And the other stall had 24 flavors to choose from - in addition to the six just mentioned, there were another 18. At both sampling booths, customers were given coupons to buy a bottle of jam at a discounted price after tasting.

The findings showed that the booth with 24 flavors attracted more customers, but fewer people ended up buying the jam? . Customers flocked to the stalls to try the flavors, but most were so overwhelmed by the number of flavors that they simply ended up not buying a bottle. Only 3% of the customers who tried the 24 flavors at the booth? bought the jam, while those who tried the six flavors were better able to decide which flavor was right for them, with about 30% of them buying the jam. ended up buying jam.

The science behind the extreme segmentation that Le Caesar's believes in comes from here - too many choices paralyzes customer decision-making? . The human brain capacity can only process up to 5~7 information options at the same time, more than 7 generally no way to make side-by-side comparisons at the same time, and the most comfortable number of information blocks is 4.

This reasoning is not wrong in itself, the basic principle that Trout and Rees talk about in "Positioning" is that - the mind hates confusion. This is exactly what the restaurant industry has been calling for in the past two years, "segmentation" and "single product strategy".

It seems that there is an answer, product line width according to the customer with demand and competitiveness, a main and a pair of as the core product line, plus a few complementary product line.

This is the first time that a product line is used as a core product line, but it is not the first time that a product line is used. The length of the product line is no more than 4 on the line.

Theoretically, this is the case, however, in practical application, there is a big problem.

2 Brands with more choices are more appealing to customers

The jam experiment tells us that customers faced with too many choices can become paralyzed in their decision-making and simply stop choosing. But there's another important conclusion from this experiment that everyone overlooked - and that's that the booth with 24 jam flavors attracted more people around.

That is to say, too many choices put customers off making a purchase, even though they had too many choices when it came to actually shelling out the money. But more choices were more appealing to customers to begin with.

3?Attraction Stage → Decision Stage

If you look at customer choice as a two-step process: that is, customers will first have a pre-choice attraction stage before they make an actual decision to buy.

1 Where does customer choice paralysis occur?

It's clear that customer choice paralysis occurs at the latter stage: transposed to a restaurant scenario, the customer is already attracted to a lot of products, is already in the store, and is already seated at the table ready to order before facing a real purchase decision.

By this time, the customer is already fed by the store. Just simply make the menu recommendations better, as long as the waiter's recommendations a little bit in place, the customer is unlikely to leave to go away.

So there are two real needs:

1. They need to feel like they have a lot of choices before they face a real decision;

2. They need to feel comfortable with the real decision-making process.

And it's often the first stage that really affects a restaurant's business - are customers attracted? . So a restaurant must give the impression of having a great range of products and lots of choice so that it catches the customer's eye at the attraction stage.

Then, after the customer has entered the store, in the specific ordering scenario, it is necessary to help the customer to make a decision - the signature recommendation to the right, to reduce their choice of anxiety. (Stall-type restaurants are a different story, as the decision is made without being in the store, so too many choices are likely to lead to churn.)

In a word, the product line must look at a lot and choose very little.

Single product strategy do not know how many restaurant people pitched. The single product strategy of the Internet is feasible because on the Internet, through the courier system an e-commerce platform can radiate the whole country, so that it faces the customer base is actually very large.

However, a restaurant tends to radiate only a few kilometers nearby, in this case hastily learn the single product strategy of the Internet, is to know the reason why.

2 single product strategy under what conditions is feasible?

Single product strategy, only in the following two environments is established:

1. Customer base is large, the human mobility is strong, more raw customers. For example, a tourist-type shopping district, or a city's top shopping mall;

2. The depth of the product is very good, although the surface looks like a single product, but it can be evolved out of different flavors, colors, collocation, the number of SKUs is not quite a lot.

So let's take the super single category of grilled fish from Tangyu, and pizza from Le Caesar. There are five or six types of fish and eighteen flavors, adding up to nearly 100 SKUs just for grilled fish, and it's supplemented by a side line of barbecue, which has a lot of choices as well.

However, on the contrary, Lecesar's durian pizza is only divided into three kinds of Golden Pillow, Sultan King and Elvis Presley, and the flavors of these three kinds of flavors are basically the same, far from the product depth, which is a very terrible thing.

So, single product strategy can be more than just a single product, a single product also has a Qiankun? . The same single product strategy, the product structure of the fish is much more successful than Le Caesar, the main line of products and secondary line with a reasonable, a lot of product depth, neither dilute the core brand equity, nor because too few choices lead to consumer boredom.

And in fact, from the current market response, two or three years after the market intimacy period, by the single product strategy to start the brand, the fish live better, while Le Caesar's customer base has obvious signs of decline.