Officials at DineEquity, which owns and operates IHOP and Applebee’s restaurants, are pleased with the progress they’ve made at both brands from a customer experience/customer engagement perspective. But, they want to boost the customer experience at Applebee’s even more.
DineEquity Chairman and CEO Julia Stewart expanded on this point during the parent company’s second-quarter earnings conference call on July 29.
“I am really looking forward to spending more time with the management team at Applebee’s,” Stewart said, according to Seeking Alpha. “There are some interesting and key learnings from IHOP since its turnaround, and we believe that we can use that same playbook at Applebee’s. We know that there is an opportunity to improve and make the guest experience at Applebee’s much more fulfilling. And to achieve this, we are making good progress against our brand promise of being a modern grill and bar. As part of this evolution, we are elevating the guest experience by focusing on a strategy built on the three main pillars we discussed last quarter−again, these are food and menu, the guest experience, and marketing, which is how and where we talk to our guests.”
While there have been some positive results at Applebee’s, Stewart believes it takes time to change perception.
“We are on the right track,” she added. “We are still in the early process and will continue to fine-tune our strategy as necessary. But make no mistake, we intend to break out. Turning to the first pillar, the food and menu, we have taken a consumer insights-based approach to overhaul the menu. We then launched a new menu design nationwide on May 18 as part of our plan to establish very strong signature platforms which we will continue to introduce during the remainder of the year. Building on the successful new pub diet menu and appetizers platform, which were both introduced in the first quarter, we launched our new handhelds platform. This was also very well received. While much has been done around the menu, there is still more to do. Our guests can expect to see even more offerings that meet the definition of a modern grill and bar over the next 18 months.”
Turning to the second pillar, the guest experience, Stewart said the strategy is to evolve both brands and menus, and re-evaluate service.
“Further emphasis is being placed on the in-restaurant service each guest receives,” Stewart said. “This combined with our great food is what keeps our guests coming back. Through a new operations framework, we are focused on speed and consistency. We have reorganized our operations team to be even more focused on these opportunities. We realize that this is important, and we are focused on improving the four-wall guest experience. We’ve worked hard to understand what consumers think and to determine where we can improve. And we are actively working with franchisees to address this. Another tangible touch point is the experience at the bar. Our goal is to make the bar a destination in our restaurants, and it starts with our people.”
The third pillar is marketing.
“We are continuing to refine our marketing and advertising campaigns with the goal of driving traffic into our restaurants and changing perception,” Stewart explained. “During the course of the year, we took our marketing and social media initiatives to the next level. We hosted two exciting events focused on providing samples of our new sandwiches and appetizers to the hundreds of thousands of attendees combined over both days. Each event generated significant attention in social and traditional media, resulting in nearly 950 million impressions combined. We are a work in progress and remain focused on the four-wall guest experience with our strategy grounded in consumer insight. I’d like to thank our franchisees for their continued hard work, dedication and collaboration.”
Second-quarter sales at IHOP rose 6.2% while Applebee’s increased 1%, which marked its fifth consecutive quarter of positive growth. What’s more, for the eighth consecutive year, both IHOP and Applebee’s were ranked No. 1 in their respective categories by Nation’s Restaurant News on the basis of U.S. system-wide sales for the past fiscal year.