"All You Can Eat" - restaurants' latest attempt to curb their sales decline

Restaurant owners have been facing a sales decline and a cash register receipt decline since the beginning of this year, while small entrepreneurs in the sector saw their revenues plummet by as much as 50% against 2008. What is the solution? As many special offers as possible, adapted to the current context, and targeting a turnover rise, even at the expense of profit margins.

Customers are ordering less food when they go out, and tend to go as cheap as possible. Restaurants have acknowledged that, and have launched promotions more visible than ever on every table, and on companies' websites. From menus that include two courses and a dessert, all for 19.9 RON, to the crisis menu, which includes a small amount of cheap food for 9.9 RON, and to the "cheap menu", which costs 12 RON, all are meant to attract new consumers or to persuade already "loyal" ones to allocate a portion of their budget to eating out.

The Pizza Hut chain, managed under franchise by American Restaurant System, is the latest to launch a promotion in Bucharest - "All You Can Eat", which is rather unusual for Romanians, but very familiar to the US market and to the Western European market:

Under the slogan "Eat all you can for 19.9 RON", customers can order as many pizzas as they want, and their glass of juice can be refilled without paying additional money.

'We launched this promotion in order to boost our number of evening customers. The menu was first introduced in Pizza Hut restaurants in Cluj-Napoca and Iasi in July but, seeing that this menu's sales accounted for half the transactions recorded between 6 PM and 9 PM, and that it brought about an up to 30% turnover increase, we have extended the offer," said representatives of Pizza Hut, which posted 10 million euros in turnover in 2008, via 13 locations, six of which are in Bucharest.

The City Grill group, controlled by Dragos Petrescu through Trotter Prim, which ended 2008 with over 15 million euros in turnover, has introduced around 15 promotional offers in its City Grill, Caru' cu Bere and Buongiorno restaurants.