Communications Across the Sales Channels – Module 11

Since GMI actually holds a stake in some of the U.S.’s most popular restaurant franchises – Olive Garden, Red Lobster, Logan’s – I’ll use those properties as my example for this post.

These units have been spun off into a subsidiary called Darden – which is a completely separate entity from GMI. Darden operates its many brands with a familiar, GMI-like precision. Take Olive Garden, for example.

Whenever you see one of their commercials, you almost ALWAYS here the phrase, “when you’re here, you’re family.” The idea behind the marketing tagline is to convey a sense of quality, home cooking, with a sense of family atmosphere and togetherness.

When you peek at the Darden website, you’ll find that they shape the brand in the same way, stating:

Olive Garden welcomed its first guests in 1982. Nearly 30 years later, Olive Garden remains committed to its purpose of Hospitaliano! - providing 100% guest delight through a genuine Italian dining experience.

Darden works hard to ensure that the communications it issues are consistent, and on message, and that each franchise shapes the brand and its assets in a similar manner. Most of you probably know the typical drill – big tables, salad, bread, huge portions of food – those have become expectations when visiting one of these franchise – no matter if that Olive Garden is in Michigan or Texas.

Darden has many franchises, and it measures it relations with them in several ways, including:

1

   .     The number of franchises under the brand umbrella.

2 .     The volume of business at each franchise.

3 .     The quality of customer satisfaction at each franchise.

4 .     The success of sales and promo deals for each brand.

As we can see, there are several ways that Darden can (and does) measure the quality of franchisee relations – the higher the metrics, the better the overall state of business and customer relations.

In the end, the KPI’s for measuring relationships is very much like measuring a customer's relationship with a brand like Cheerios or Larabar. You want to reach out to the customer and establish an everlasting bond that ensures they’ll buy again and again – because you’ve set the bar for what the expectation should be. GMI has done it with the way a Cheerio is “supposed to taste,” and Darden does it by recreating a consistent dining experience across the nation.

The key to any franchisee (brand) relationship is to establish a universal “standard of expectation,” and to execute that standard to the highest level again and again – regardless of geography or location.

References:

http://www.darden.com/restaurants/olivegarden/