Competition is the first important thing that entrepreneurs should seriously consider from the beginning of restaurant preparation. In the market economy and society, competition is inevitable. Judging from the current catering development and investment, we have entered an era of extreme competition. In this era, it is an indisputable fact that whoever can make a restaurant different and gain the recognition of customers will have the last laugh. Since I started this catering consulting job, I have traveled to 15 provinces and learned a lot in just half a year. At the same time, I found that many restaurant owners are blindly operating and unreasonably managing their own restaurants. I am blind because many restaurant owners think that others are doing it and I am doing it. This method is unreasonable because. Why is this happening? Personally, I think that's because most restaurant owners lack competitive thinking. When I say this, many bosses will definitely disagree, thinking that they attach great importance to competition. What does someone else's restaurant do? What is the price? Do what activities? I am very concerned and very clear. Ladies and gentlemen, these are all things to pay attention to, but these are superficial "cleverness". If we want to turn these "information" into something useful to us, we must put ourselves in other's shoes and implement differentiated competitive strategies, which many bosses lack. What is differentiated competition? Differentiated competition is something that differentiates the products or services provided by enterprises and establishes the uniqueness of enterprises in the industry. Through personalized service to market segments, we can improve customer satisfaction and better acquire and retain customers-Michael Porter. Simply put, can we make a difference with our opponents by doing this? Can we be remembered by customers? Today, we explain how differentiated competitive thinking should be carried out according to several common phenomena in some restaurants: 1. 1. Traditional thinking: once the food is served, it will not be returned. I believe that many restaurants, especially many hot pot and soup pot restaurants, even put a sentence on the menu: "Please order as appropriate. Once the dishes are served, they will not be returned." Ladies and gentlemen, is this good for restaurant management? Let's analyze: (1) Why do customers change dishes or return them? There are several reasons why customers want to change dishes after serving: (1) The dishes don't match the pictures. The menus in many restaurants are beautifully made, and the pictures of the dishes are even more appetizing, but the dishes actually served on the table are quite different. Of course, customers are unhappy, feel cheated and ask for a refund or a change of dishes. (2) The quantity and price of dishes are different. Many restaurants have prices on their menus, but no quantity labels. When the dishes are served, customers find that there is a big gap between the quantity and price of the dishes, and they feel slaughtered psychologically, so they ask for a replacement or return. (3) the quality of the dishes is not good. When the food was served, the customer found that the food was stale and tasted bad, and asked for a refund. (4) Dishes are not well cut, such as tofu. Many hot pot restaurants cut tofu into square chunks, but as a hot pot, this square chunk is not easy to taste. There are many dishes in hot pot that need to be cut and matched. If the way of cutting and matching is wrong, customers may not like it, and may have the idea of returning or changing dishes. (5) Too many dishes, because the waiter didn't give reasonable guidance when ordering, and the customer didn't know the weight of the restaurant dishes, which led to too many dishes. When the food was served, the customer felt that the food was inedible and wanted to return it. (2) The impact of not returning (changing) the food. For restaurants, the advantage of not agreeing to return (changing) the food is to reduce the workload of employees and ostensibly ensure the income of the restaurant. Why on the surface? Because if a customer asks for a return of food for the above justified reasons, and the restaurant can't satisfy it, then the restaurant is likely to lose this customer. Without this customer, it will lose the opportunity of secondary consumption, which is the biggest loss for the restaurant. 2. Differentiated competitive thinking: there is no reason to return the dishes. A restaurant with excellent products should dare to return dishes for no reason. When the guest introduces the situation of returning the food, the first reply from the service staff should be: "OK, I'm sorry for the trouble", and then ask the guest the reason for returning the food, which is convenient for the production department to improve. Many bosses will worry that this will waste a lot of food and greatly reduce their income. Ladies and gentlemen, first of all, we must believe that customers (don't get stuck) generally don't ask for a refund for no reason. It must be that our own work has not been done well. Now the customer gives us the opportunity to correct it, and you don't accept it. It is conceivable that the probability of customer churn is very high. Customers give us opportunities, and we will make up for them in time. There must be a great opportunity to win the recognition and favor of customers. The better your products and services are, the less likely it is to happen. In doing so, we have apparently reduced our income and profits, but we have gained the recognition of our customers, which is our biggest source of wealth. If the boss has such concerns, it means that you have no confidence in your products and services at all. If you don't allow customers to have opinions on things that you are not confident about, how can your restaurant last long? The dishes and services are immature and unsatisfactory. More importantly, you should let customers return goods for no reason, so as to promote our employees to improve our products and services quickly. You should know that customers are our best teachers. If your restaurant really does this, you will stand out from many competitors and form a huge difference with your competitors, and your business will get better and better. Second, 1, traditional thinking: the kitchen is an important place and visitors are not allowed. I believe you can see this sentence in 90% kitchen doors. This is a normal thing in traditional catering operations, based on various considerations. But for modern catering management, catering competition is becoming more and more fierce, and customers pay more attention to health and hygiene. So now many restaurants are fully transparent. At present, the design of many restaurants is still a traditional closed kitchen. Some local government departments are vigorously promoting the "bright kitchen" project, transmitting the working scene of the kitchen to the screen of the front hall through cameras, so that customers can supervise the restaurant through monitoring. But for these closed kitchens, this kind of "bright kitchen" is far from competitive. 2. Differentiated competitive thinking: visit the kitchen and send it politely. At the beginning of restaurant design, the kitchen that can be designed as bright as possible should also be designed as bright as possible. If the objective conditions or the restaurant that has been opened are really not good, we should also introduce differentiated competitive thinking here. Please ask the kitchen staff to manage and tidy the kitchen, invite customers to visit the kitchen, invite customers to visit the kitchen when they enter the restaurant, sit down and serve food, and say that it is polite to visit the kitchen restaurant (send some drinks or cold dishes). No matter whether the customers come in the end or not, we will do so, which shows that our raw materials are ok, customers can eat boldly and they will be impressed by us. Some poorly run small restaurants or restaurants with poor raw materials don't dare to do this at all, so we have formed a huge difference with our competitors. In many restaurants, fruit is delivered after meals, whether it's your home or mine, thus forming a routine. Customers basically don't come to your house for consumption because others send fruit and your house doesn't send fruit. Therefore, sending fruit will not have much impact on your business. At the same time, the cost of fruit is relatively high, indicating that the restaurant spent money, but it was not done well. 2. Differentiated competitive thinking: let customers remember me with the last gift? Since it costs money to give to customers, why don't we spend some time and use this thing to deepen customers' understanding of us, and why do something meaningless? Here are two real examples. I used to run a 400-square-meter Korean restaurant. At that time, other competitors would give each customer a small pudding ice cream after eating. At that time, we thought that although the price of small pudding was low, it would be meaningless if we also sent it, and customers would not decide to eat there because you sent it or not, so our shareholders began to think about what we should send to our customers. Because I have rich travel experience, I thought of "Shenyang Zhongjie glutinous rice". Why choose it? This thing is also a kind of ice cream. The outside is made of glutinous rice and the inside is wrapped with ice cream. It is very distinctive, delicious and inexpensive. There is one in 0.3 yuan. At present, this thing is only available in the north, but not in the south of the Yellow River. So I went to Beijing and took it to Chongqing with twists and turns. After each customer finished eating, everyone sent a copy, which was greatly appreciated. The next time customers want to eat, they can only come to our store for consumption (not selling separately). The second example is made for a client who cooks Northeast cuisine in Nanjing. I asked my customers to deliver ordinary fruits, not northeast frozen pears. Frozen pears in Northeast China are called the best in Northeast China. They are unique, delicious and inexpensive. This has greatly deepened the customer's feelings and evaluation of the restaurant. In these two cases, we deepened the customer's experience and evaluation of the restaurant with the least cost, and differentiated ourselves from our competitors. Why not? The purpose of making products and services with differentiated competitive thinking is to gain relative competitive advantage and thus gain development opportunities. In the whole process of our restaurant operation, there are many different opportunities for us, depending on whether our operators can find and use them.