Some may consider this a clever strategy to keep kids and families coming back to the restaurant: Offer a kids meal toy collection for a limited time but then release one per week. However…what happens to families and kids that visit the location or locations with more frequency? Should they be punished for doing so? Are these not the most important customers that need attention?
The idea behind a kids’ meal program is to increase traffic, sales, brand awareness and to catch the spirit of the client’s brand. Nobody, and I mean this, NO ONE wants to feel obligated to go somewhere or to buy or do anything. You can suggest, you can encourage, you can try to persuade, but you cannot make people visit your restaurant. And even if you manage to get them to come back to collect the whole set...do you think they are coming back because of the food you serve or the service you offer? Think again.
Kids meal toys should be packaged assorted and the whole set should be offered throughout the promotion. I left my business card behind and got a call from the restaurant owner a few days later. She explained that the reason why they had chosen to go this route was because their previous supplier of toys would offer items in the assortment that carried a very large gap of perceived value. What she meant was that in the same collection, there would be a toy everybody wanted…but there would also be one or two, that people would leave behind as it did not compare in size, perceived value and overall playability with the better option. But wait…we are now going to wait until the last week of the promotion to release the “crappiest” toy of the bunch? We still have not addressed the problem.
This is an issue that should not be managed by the owner/manager of the restaurants. The agency/company that has developed/designed/produced the program SHOULD have taken this into consideration before. There should have been more emphasis placed on the perceived value of the program as a whole but also independently on each of the items that were part of that collection. This would have truly addressed the problem from the start and BEFORE it got to the end user. If you are hiring a professional or an agency to do the job for you (first of all, you should NOT consider them a supplier, but a partner)…you should be able to trust them and trust that what they are doing is right. Make sure you have the correct promotional partner on your side and make sure they keep YOUR interests first and foremost – that will guarantee future success in your programs.
