How to bring Families to your Restaurant

Updated October 28th, 2013

Obviously families are a complex target market as various tastes and preferences need to be satisfied. Therefore restaurants aim at satisfying parents and children at the same time while such family friendly concepts are very difficult to sell to other target markets.

One of the most interesting group projects during my education at the Ecole hoteliere de Lausanne was to evaluate how to promote restaurants to accept families in the Lausanne area. We developed a lot of excitement for this project until the tough facts brought us back to reality. As harsh as it may sound here are some facts:

1. Family restaurants are ONLY interesting for families...nobody else wants to be there because of the resulting chaotic noise or mess. It is a good hearted idea and for sure, as an owner, makes you feel good to do something for families, but just do not expect that others will share this view by visiting your family friendly restaurant.
2. It is not an easy undertaking as the entire concept needs to be safe for children and you can go very far in order to ensure that your restaurant is safe in all aspects for families.
3. Family restaurants require much more space. From parking lots, entrance doors, tables, around table space, playground and for sure other details I am not thinking about now, all requires more space and needs to be maintained as such.
4. The simplicity of what kids actually want for food does not require amazing chefs but trends indicate that parents will ask for more and more health conscious dishes for their kids and at the same time themselves. Obviously, you will never get kids to go for nouvelle cuisine but kids have adapted to Sushi and will always like Italian. How the tasty and healthy Italian food is prepared, is up to the Chef.

But now to the good side of family friendly restaurants:

1. Families love to eat out, and they typically account for about 56% of food service sales. So the market is HUGE with little competition. Today it is a market worth more than 100 billion Euros yearly.
2. During our analysis, we came up with the final ratio that a well located family restaurant is needed for every 30’000 citizens.
3. While at first, pleasing the parents may seem more important, in fact kids’ opinions have a strong influence on their parents’ decision-making. According to a recent study, more than 75% of parents consider their children’s preference as an important factor when selecting a restaurant. This is why McDonalds has such a success among families. At a very young age, kids are able to remember their experience of McDonalds and therefore seek to visit it more often.

Creating an Atmosphere for Families is really dependent on details. Nothing is too childish, too colourful and looks for creativity, fantasy, fun and out of the box that you could never afford doing in a normal restaurant (most likely). There are two ways to do this:

1. Create a kid-focused atmosphere. You can provide entertainment and designs that are geared towards attracting kids. This could include providing an arcade, games and prizes, as well as decorating with bright colours and pictures. Other forms of entertainment you can provide include: aquariums, outdoor recreation and play rooms.
2. Make the adults comfortable. If you do not want to go to the extreme and create a kid-focused concept, you can still do everything in your power to make parents feel comfortable with bringing their kids to your restaurant. You can try the following:
   
   
   1. Train your servers to be polite and patient with children.
   2. Make sure changing stations, high chairs, sippy cups and bibs are readily available.
   3. Provide children with toys, crayons and paper at the table, but only after asking permission from the parents.
   4. Give families an oversized table to allow them enough room to spread out. For example, if a family of four comes in, seat them at the table for six.

Kids’ Cuisine

Culinary wise, family restaurants are still not difficult to create. Red remains the favorite nutritional colour and tomato sauce is still the hit among kids. They also like to eat with their hands so French fries, burgers, nuggets, or many other things handy are great to satisfy kids.

Major issues with kids menus is not necessarily what is being cooked but the portions served. Obesity is becoming a problem everywhere but we also tend to over serve all day long. It is cheaper for you as a business to offer more adequate quantities and provides a great tool to adapt accordingly the pricing for your clients.

Many kids like to have their own menu and order food on their own. Almost 90% of full service restaurants and 75% of limited-service restaurants choose to develop a separate menu for young children. Any restaurant that hopes to attract families should create a kids’ menu.

Extras and Promotions

The classic example of a kids’ restaurant promotion would be Pizza Hut’s “Book It” reading incentive program. Kids like it because they get a free Personal Pan Pizza®. Parents like it because it encourages kids to read. And Pizza Hut likes it because it attracts business; when kids redeem their free personal pizza, the parents often buy a pizza, too.

Good examples of extras and promotions for kids include the following:

1. Learn from the biggest (like McDonalds) and include simple toys with the food. It is best to include toys that are available in series so that the kid wants to come back to finish the series.
2. On a slow day create a “kids eat free” day. Either they have separate dishes or you create a real atmosphere like a spaghetti party where you offer all you can eat pasta with 4 different sauces.
3. Buffet-style dining for kids where they will feel like they can pick and choose whatever they want, but are unlikely to eat as much as adults.

Find the right balance between your business, parents and children’s expectations and make sure your restaurant is located on a good and accessible spot. These are the basics to be successful with a family restaurant. If this is too much and you would like to have only weekends or a special day for families, this may be a way to see if the market is looking for it.

Written by Daniel Grossmann