Restaurant Leadership Conference News
At age 84, Bernie Marcus wonders if restaurateurs and other small-business operators will be denied the sort of Cinderella life he earned through sweat and smarts. That’s why the co-founder of The Home Depot plans to make an impassioned case during the Restaurant Leadership Conference for standing up to anti-business forces.
It’s been done with hamburgers, with cocktails, with Mexican QSR. Take a familiar concept, one with a degree of built-in familiarity and consumer acceptance, and differentiate it—around the ingredients, the menu, the presentation, the service model. Make it unique and craveable, make it stand out from the competition; just don’t make it so strange that customers don’t know what to make of it.
We sat down with Hubert Keller during the 2013 Restaurant Leadership Conference to find out how he differentiates his restaurant and his burgers.
The Restaurant Leadership Conference will reconvene next year at the Westin Kierland Resort & Spa in Scottsdale, Arizona on March 30 through April 2.
Restaurateurs who view the business as a battlefield might’ve uttered an “amen” at the end of the presentation from retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey, who wound up this year’s conference with an analysis of leadership during wartime.
Reviewing our notes after the show, the editors of Restaurant Business spotted 10 ideas that any non-attendee of the RLC shouldn't miss. We suspect that some would've been lost to attendees, too, because of the sheer volume of innovations that were aired during the event. Consider this your Cliff Notes for the keepers:
In the mind of marketing consultant Tom Feltenstein, branding is how your brand makes people feel about themselves.