One of the things I’ve noticed about non-commercial foodservice is that, for all of the networking that operators do and all of the conferences that are held and all of the research conducted, the industry is surprisingly hard to quantify.
At FoodService Director, we do nearly a dozen surveys every year, starting with a census of each of the major segments of the industry. We also survey select groups of operators in all segments on such topics as sustainability, menu offerings and customers’ grab-and-go habits. And yet, several times a year we get requests for information that no one has gathered.
The restaurant industry is much easier to research, because companies like Technomic, NPD and others survey consumers about their dining habits and then use the answers to quantify restaurant business and make predictions on food trends and buying habits. But nailing down customers regarding non-commercial foodservice is next to impossible, and no one has ever tried a comprehensive survey of operators about their businesses and customers.
We think we’d like to give it a shot. We’d like to ask readers a whole series of questions, about their customers, their employees, their menus, their marketing and promotion efforts—even about their own work habits. But we need your help.
If you were crafting a questionnaire for your fellow operators, what kinds of questions would you want to ask? What topics would be important enough to you to want to take up people’s time with a survey? We’d really like to know. If you could provide the questions, we’d be happy to ask them. So, I’d like to ask you to take a few minutes and give this some thought, and jot those thoughts in an email to me at pking@cspnet.com. If the interest is there, we’ll make it happen.