You saw it coming

In recent national press it seems that casual, full-service restaurant chains are having the most trying times they can remember.

When we began our RestaurantChains.net alerts newsletter displaying emerging/growing (and no longer growing) concepts in the beginning of this year, we were hard pressed to find casual chains that were growing at all. For the most part we only noticed they were closing them. We struggled and had a lot of tension in the office here towards trying to find some casual or upscale restaurant chains/groups to write about in the newsletter.

If you've reviewed our newsletters (you still can-they are archived on the website) you can barely find anything but quick service and fast casual chains that are growing. Newsletter after newsletter the point has been proven.

Next week, with the new month coming, we'll be releasing our new Retaurant Incubator Index numbers in the newsletter. To sign up for the newsletter please go to www.restaurantchains.net and sign up on the home page.

Restaurant chain incubator index

After nearly a year of evaluation and preparation we believe we've created a brand new benchmark for the restaurant industry. Next week, we will release our first findings as a result of our new incubator index.

The new incubator index starts with an index score of 1,000. We have included chains with 4 or more stores and less than 200. Already we are seeing fresh trends. We'll soon get into the details and methodologies. Stay tuned for the release.

Newsletter is now weekly

Today we are publishing our 13th RestaurantChains.net Alerts Newsletter. We have been publishing twice a month and our readership has grown to the point where we believe it makes sense to go weekly. We've also begun to accept advertising as a means of supporting the free newsletter. We do expect to be offering a more detailed paid version soon.

The new site is up!

After 9 months of planning, designing and getting ready, we have launched our new restaurantchains.net site. One of the best features is average unit volume per company. I personally took on this project and made the final assessment on the AUV's. Some, who are public companies were easier to gather information on. The bottom line is it took us around six months of time working into the night (weekends and holidays too) to get it done.

The result? A never before published field value (we're the first in the restaurant research/directory business to assess AUV's on so many companies) that makes sense! Now users can search on AUV ranges and create lookups that deliver.

Other changes include full searchability and "from and to" searches on sales.