Winning The Chain Restaurant Game: 8 Key Strategies

Winning the Chain Restaurant Game

Are you ready for success?...

Find out what it takes in this insider's guide to making it in today's most exciting growth industry.

In this instructive and inspiring book, award-winning authors and foodservice industry experts Charles Bernstein and Ron Paul tell how the most successful restaurant companies win with bottom-up management, putting the customer on top. Based on interviews with more than a hundred industry executives and packed with enlightening examples as well as a few historic failures, this unique book teaches important lessons for restaurateurs and other entrepreneurs:
* Presents the first authoritative, in-depth look at the restaurant chain industry as a whole
* Tells how successful chain CEOs produce results with varied winning styles
* Isolates and clearly describes the eight crucial factors, or strategic "links," vital to restaurant chain success
* Tells how chains can capitalize on bulk purchasing, brand identity, consistent execution, an individual sense of style and--most of all--finding unique ways to please the customer


Few success stories so thoroughly embody the twentieth-century American dream as those of restaurant chains such as McDonald's, KFC, Pizza Hut, Wendy's, Little Caesar's, and Taco Bell. But besides the "true grit" demonstrated by entrepreneurial heros like McDonald's Ray Kroc and Wendy's Dave Thomas, what does it take to build and maintain a successful restaurant or retail chain? Find out in this first book to give a broad, long-term perspective on one of the nation's leading growth industries and to offer crucial lessons for all entrepreneurs, no matter what the business.

Winning the Chain Restaurant Game, by award-winning authors and noted foodservice industry experts Charles Bernstein and Ron Paul, documents the critical success factors required for one of the toughest, most competitive industries.

Highlighting the winning styles of more than a hundred chain executives, their triumphs, trials, disappointments, and turnarounds, this fascinating and instructive book identifies the eight strategic "links" that lead to victory in the chain restaurant business. With surgical precision, Bernstein and Paul explore such key factors as leadership, motivation, bulk purchasing, marketing, identity, consistency, and expansion. But they place focus ahead of everything and conclude that the entrepreneurial passion of an executive who deeply believes in his concept is the ultimate catalyst for success.

Small- to medium-size chains are going public at a dizzying pace and there are enormous financial opportunities for savvy restaurant owners. Winning the Chain Restaurant Game arms operators with the vital know-how needed to win the game.

CHARLES BERNSTEIN is Chains Editor of Restaurants & Institutions and Editor of The Bernstein Report, an insider's newsletter covering the restaurant industry. He was Chief Editor of Nation's Restaurant News from 1973 to 1991 and was named Hospitality Industry Person of the Year in 1991. He won the New York Business Press Editors first prize for best article of the year, an exclusive 1987 study of foodservice in the Soviet Union. A graduate of Cornell University and the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, he previously authored two books, Great Restaurant Innovators: Profiles in Success and Sambo's: The Inside Story of a Restaurant Empire's Rise and Fall, and coauthored Lessons in Leadership.

RON PAUL is President of Technomic, Inc., an international management consulting firm specializing in restaurants and chains. A noted authority on the foodservice industry, he is frequently quoted in the national and international press. He is coauthor of The 101 Best Performing Companies in America. Technomic, Inc., an authoritative source for the chain industry, has annually published key statistics on the top 100 volume chains since 1972.

The Leadership Touch.

Motivating to Win.

The Customer Is King or Queen.

Keep Your Eye on the Ball.

Marketing and Merchandising Versatility.

The Economic-Focus Dilemma.

Leveraging to Win.

The Life Cycle.

Leader of the Pack: The Big Mac.

The Thin Line: Success Versus Failure.

Conclusion: Forging the Links.

Index.