Restaurants face ‘post-branding era’ says Muller

“We’re in a truly paradoxical time for the restaurant business,” said Muller, Dean at the Boston University School of Hospitality Administration. In particular, consumers have radically changed the way they think about brands, with the widespread use of smartphones and social networking media giving them new ways to access them and tell people what they think about them. “I think we’re facing the post-branding era,” he said. “The authenticity of brands is no longer determined by us, but by the consumer.”

He said the boundaries between restaurants, grocery businesses and food industries were blurring, and that changing habits in home cooking were feeding into people's restaurant choices. “The restaurant has become nothing more than a pantry,” he suggested. The multitude of different places in which to eat was also challenging operators.

Muller alerted conference delegates to the issue of rising commodity prices, warning of their potentially significant knock-on effect on the industry. Demographic trends will also affect the industry, with more than half of the world’s people now living in cities and the world’s population expected to hit 12 billion by 2020.

Following the conference’s theme of 2020, he urged businesses to develop strategic plans to deal with the trends in population and commodity prices, and to find new ways of engaging with consumers. “The new branding is all about customers asking: ‘How are you going to make my life easier?’”

Download Chris Muller's slides by clicking on the file right under Related Media

The Peach Network 2020 conference was held in London last Thursday (November 18) at the Bafta Theatre. It was run in partnership with Coca-Cola, Martini, Royal Bank of Scotland, Coffer Corporate Leisure and Ecolab, and supported by Enotria world wine, Fishbowl Marketing, Fourth Hospitality and Empathica.