It’s now a fortnight since we wrapped up the fifth edition of the Restaurant Marketer & Innovator (RMI) European Summit, which attracted hundreds of the sector’s best thinkers from 11 countries, over five events, across three days. More than 80 speakers from both inside and outside the sector took to the stage, or welcomed the industry into their venues.

We first started this community and event in 2018, off the back of a series of successful marketing workshops. The purpose was about giving recognition and a platform to professionals in non-operating roles in the sector across business development, marketing and strategy, with the event series now attracting a wide spectrum of roles from tactical marketers to chief executives.

Within this article, I’ll share some of my top takeaways.

For as long as we have hosted this event series, there has been a fixation on data, and, from a marketer’s perspective, the holy grail of the one-customer viewpoint. It seems we’ve reached a watershed moment where businesses are simply overwhelmed with the amount of data available to them, and what to do with it. Before getting too excited, please don’t think for a minute that I’m recommending we go back to days of old, where decision-making was based on gut feeling and intuition alone, because that would be a backward step. But there’s something to be said about blending the data with intuition and creativity. 

This was eloquently underscored by our opening speaker, renowned behavioural scientist and vice-chairman of Ogilvy, Rory Sutherland, who said: “The problem with data is that data only tells you the what…and while data is very valuable, you need the why – and the why is normally psychological.”

When framing what that means, he referenced the book Unreasonable Hospitality by Will Guidara, who applied a 95:5 principle. Under this principle, you should spend 95% of your time running a restaurant logically and as a finance director would want you to do, but spend 5% of your time being disproportionately amazing and creating the point of difference. I’ve personally referenced this as the “sizzle” for my career in marketing and couldn’t agree more.

Following on from the point around data addressed above, Sutherland continued: “If you’re not annoying your finance director, you are doing something wrong.” Which is, of course, tongue-in-cheek, albeit probably true if you are really being disruptive in marketing. 

This does, however, come with its challenges around the place and respect for marketers within the sector. A clear theme of the RMI events for as long as I can remember is the question of “having a seat around the table”. This is in reference to the role non-operating positions, particularly marketing, play strategically and at board level. It’s clear that in the past, marketing has been deemed as the “colouring in-department” by some, a tactical department acting as a studio generating posters and managing menus.

When marketing works best, it represents the customer voice, challenges thinking, crosses departments and has the most holistic view of the business, owning the guest journey and customer experience. On stage, these discussions played out the ownership marketing should have in different areas of the business, particularly around proposition and menu development, and how marketers need to be more commercial and be able to demonstrate value to gain respect. When done right, marketing can be a driving force for success and drive a longer-term brand focus. 

The global pandemic certainly helped shift the needle on the importance of these marketing and development roles as the sector became more omnichannel focused, increasingly reliant on technology and aware that future prosperity may well rely on a more diversified proposition and operating format.

The good news is we’re seeing more marketers on boards and moving into key leaderships roles, including that of chief executive, where a glass ceiling previously existed – the most common narrative cited by our “30 under 30” alumni over the past six years. Some great examples of marketers taking up the top job include: Jill McDonald, who until recently was chief executive at Costa Coffee and is now executive vice-president and president, international operated markets at McDonalds, overseeing five markets; Emma Woods, the former Wagamama chief executive who is now a non-executive director/chair of many great companies including Tortilla; and Alistair Macrow, chief executive of McDonald’s UK and Ireland. 

A marketing background brings an ability to look holistically, think strategically and be more customer-centric, skills that make for a great chief executive or board director. As could be seen at the RMI event, there are many amazing women who hold senior marketing roles across our sector, who have a lot to offer and who should be seen as future chief executives. Not only would many be incredible at doing this job, but it would also be a breath of fresh air to see these appointments help overcome the terrible lack of gender balance we have in boardrooms across much of the industry.

In economically challenging periods like today, it’s easy to cut corners and throw values out of the window in the name of survival. A key focus of the event this year was purpose and what it means to be a responsible business, with an array of speakers from across the industry expertly curated by Mark Stretton, of Fleet Street Communications. We had some big-hitters on stage from Burger King UK, Nando’s and Gail’s Bakery, all reinforcing the message that it’s not a case of choosing between profit and purpose as businesses need to deliver on both. 

 

Colin Hill, chief executive of Nando’s, talked about the importance of having values and using them to guide your business, while also focusing on how important it was to team members, who see it as a vital part of the decision-making when choosing an employer. He touched on the importance of having clear key performance indicators, which is something Tim Doubleday, chief financial officer of Burger King UK, (who also chairs the sustainability committee for UKHospitality) talked about extensively, ensuring you minimise the number of core metrics you are monitoring and focusing on, but ensuring they include the ones that make you a more responsible business. 

There was a general consensus that while consumers expect to see more responsible businesses, it was really the role of the businesses themselves to set the agenda and be moving beyond a response to customer expectations. On a more tactical note, around site fit-outs and designs, Brett Parker, the property director at Gail’s Bakery, shared how the business was adapting design to reduce the amount of new materials it used, salvaging more and upcycling, highlighting that customers and teams loved hearing of furniture that had a story to tell. Kate Nicholls, chief executive of UKHospitality, shared how sustainability shouldn’t be a competitive edge and something we hide from others, but an open book and an industry-wide collaboration. When it comes to making the world a better place for the long term, we all win. 

 

A key question that needs answering is who takes responsibility for this area. It touches almost every department yet has no natural home, and without accountability, we know that change is slow. With marketing, it risks being seen as virtue signalling and reactive to consumers. With finance, it’s potentially at risk of being overshadowed by profitability. With operations, it’s likely to get lost within business-as-usual. One thing for sure is it needs to be the responsibility of someone senior who is willing to disrupt, with sway in the business and the full support of the chief executive and board.

Adoption of customer-facing technology skyrocketed during covid, as you’d expect given the unique circumstances. The legacy is that consumers are more willing than ever to engage in technology – but only if it is seamless and unintrusive, on the one hand, and more convenient or adds value to their experience on the other. It’s clear that many businesses rushed to implement technologies quickly across their estate to support the continuation of trading, with the result for some being a clunky experience that didn’t dovetail into the customer journey or was at odds with the expectations of customers. 

The best brands have gone back to the drawing board with these learnings and are considering technology as an enabler, not the solution. They focus on designing their ideal customer journey and operational model, then mapping how technology can support this. We heard that when this was successful, it required brilliant change management to ensure teams bought into it, often an incentivisation or education of customers, and at times, a rethink of operating models and trading format. 

Over the past few years, we’ve seen considerable changes to how businesses operate when considering the omnichannel opportunity presented through delivery, takeout, virtual brands and dine-at-home retail packs. The results can be complete store layout design changes, larger kitchens for multiple kitchen teams, one kitchen serving multiple store fronts, additional space for kiosks and venues within a venue, to name just a few. Examples shared on stage included BrewDog’s gargantuan new site at Waterloo, which has everything from a bottle shop and ice cream van to a coffee shop and even a podcast studio. Meanwhile, Azzurri Group has scaled Coco di Mama through partnerships and its wider estate, leveraging the dark kitchen model and virtual brands. Adding to the in-store experience, the reduction in cost of hardware makes more audacious projects more accessible, as is demonstrated with a fantastic activation by Marugame Udon, with large format screens transporting customers to Japan. 

As ever with technology, downtime at the worst time can be crippling for businesses when fully reliant on technology, which is increasingly the case, with a worst-case scenario cited by a contract caterer that saw the payment solution go down before the interval of a major concert at a stadium. The message was loud and clear that working with the right suppliers that provide the best product and service is paramount. 

Leaving the best example to last, we were in for a treat when introduced to the story of the Mini Chef restaurant at Lego House in Billund, Denmark, where it has most certainly been proved that robots and restaurants can work seamlessly together to create the most incredible concept. Be sure to go search it out online, or even better, book a flight, as I’ve done for later this year!

A brand is only as good as your reputation. The brand is not a logo or the glossy presentation designed by your creative agency; it lives and breathes every day in your operation, being delivered by your people. You live and die by every interaction. Consistency is key. 

There are frequently tensions between marketing and operations, especially when trade is tough. Often, marketing is looked at to boost performance of underperforming stores, but we heard multiple examples throughout the conference where it is clear the problem often sits with poor operational standards, customer service or site leadership. By investing time and money into marketing these sites, you are adding fuel to the fire, driving even more customers to an experience they are unlikely to enjoy and fanning the flames through the sharing of their experience to friends or online.

Vikki O’Neill, global marketing director with Vapiano, made the point in the best way I’ve heard when, towards the end of the conference, she told the audience that most marketers feel frustration when operators don’t deliver. She advised that you should refuse to do any marketing for stores that have poor scores, and once they have pulled themselves together, then invest in marketing. This was met with both laughter and applause. Legendary!

With so much inspiration and information, there is so much more I could write, but I’ll leave it there for now. It really is incredible to start the year on such a high, being surrounded by industry peers who remind me of what a fabulously vibrant sector we work in. I want to take the opportunity to thank everyone that helps make it the success it is – from our speakers and sponsors to the delegates that join and support us year in, year out.

The full video suite will be available to delegates and those subscribing to Propel Premium, but as a little Monday treat, here’s the recording of our Restaurant of the Future session, which is the outcome of a think tank of cross-functional leaders. I don’t agree for a second that the sector is broken, but I loved the later thinking in the session video. Enjoy!