What’s the value of sound market planning for restaurants and QSRs that want to grow?

Appearing on Fast Casual’s podcast series, Charles Wetzel was asked:

What’s the value of sound market planning for business that want to grow? And what’s the risk of getting it wrong?

We so often hear restaurant customers say “this is a great spot – it would be amazing if you had one in X location”, but with large amounts of capital required to open new locations, it’s important to apply sound logic to these decisions.

There are multiple ways to grow. You can grow within your existing market. You can expand into an adjacent market, or you can grow into completely new areas.

One of the fundamental mistakes that people make is moving a little too fast, and choose the wrong direction because they’re basing their decisions on gut feel rather than data.

For every bad location you need to have 4-5 good locations. This is a particular risk for small brands as if you open a location that doesn’t perform well it sucks up your resources which then starts to impact your good locations.

Having data and analytics to hand won’t make the decisions for you, but it allows you to come at each challenge from a more informed perspective. Enhancing your decisions with data helps to better evaluate opportunities and minimize risk.

Watch or listen to the full podcast here.