If you haven’t heard of it, Hooters is a restaurant based our of the USA. It’s known for it’s .. erm .. ‘endowed’ waitresses and skimpy clothes. It’s tacky, but that’s its brand. And the people who delight in this brand image are it’s market.
On a recent episode of the US series Undercover Boss, CEO Coby Brooks goes ‘undercover’ to see what it’s like to work on the front lines of the restaurant chain. Of particular interest for me was his evident surprise that the public did not see Hooters as a family restaurant. It wasn’t the sort of place Americans wanted to bring their families. Obviously the effort they put in to promoting the ‘family restaurant’ image isn’t working.
I’m really surprised Brooks thought otherwise.
So why am I writing about this? It’s not for the possible Google Juice for mentioning Hooters*
Tread carefully: Once you have an established brand, trying to shift your market is likely to lose more customers than it gains.
Hooters appears to want to be seen as a place you can bring the family. After all there’s surely considerably more money in families than there is in just men!
But they’ve now discovered that America doesn’t see them as a family brand.
What will be their next step? Here’s what they might do: tone down the skimpy uniforms and hire people that look more regular as wait staff. Add in a kids menu. Introduce a cartoon version of their owl who can do children’s parties.
All these things are fairly likely going to lead to losing more customers than they gain.
They’ll lose those lone guys, because the food isn’t good enough to create loyalty. If the ‘scenery’ goes away, there’s not much left for them that isn’t offered at the local sports bar. So they lose those customers.
But that doesn’t matter if they can attract the more lucrative family market. Can they do that? I think it’s extremely unlikely:
First, even after toning down the uniforms, there’s a whole generation that immediately associates Hooters with .. well .. hooters. They’ll never forget that, no matter what you do to the uniform. These family people will just think of the place as being “the hooter place”.
Second, there’s a lot of competition in the family restaurant genre. They will need to steal marketshare from McDonalds, KFC, Pizza Huts, Dennys, Wendies and Arbies (that’s about the limit of my knowledge of the US family restaurant genre!). These are very established brands and there’s one or more of them within a stone’s throw of every single Hooters. In order to be a successful family restaurant, they will have to dislodge their extremely successful competition.
So what should Hooters do? My advice is don’t pretend you’re a family restaurant, or worse, try to become one. Instead, take the brand you have in the market you have and push it deeper and deeper. I’d like to call it lateral movement rather than vertical or horizonal. Keep the waitresses (though treat them better than seen in Undercover Boss please) but make the place feel classier. Serve food that appeals to the modern man (think ‘manscaping’ and ‘metrosexual’) rather than straight burgers and fries. Get classier, but keep your core brand and market.
And what’s the take home if you’re not Coby Brooks?
Once you have an established brand, trying to shift your market is likely to lose more customers than it gains.
If your core market is medium sized retail businesses, then don’t ignore them to chase enterprise customers. If you sell cash registers, don’t find a different product, instead sell POS machines. It’s a lateral move. Focus on what you know, focus on the customer segment you’re already successful in. The chance of succeeding with some other vertical or horizontal is incredibly unlikely.
