As I mentioned earlier, CKR has said that it will not respond to the current value menu movement and stated on its last conference call that it will in most cases stay away from the bottom feeder $0.99-product person, which isn't [their] bailiwick.
In conjunction with that comment, the CEO said that he is more focused on driving sales than he is on traffic as traffic is not a measure of customers. It's not a customer count mechanism. It just tells you how many transactions you had during the day or the year so if you and I go into lunch together and I say, I'll buy, that's one transaction although it's two customers.
He went on to say, I think transactions are really not all that relevant and almost a misnomer. I am more concerned with how many people we have in the restaurants and how many transactions we ring up on the register. By the time, the CEO ended his longwinded response, we were not exactly clear on what he was saying, but in our view, it is never a good idea to move your focus away from driving traffic, and in today's current economic environment, that might mean driving more transactions at lower price points...as long as the customers keep coming!
Taking the other side transaction counts is MCD. MCD senior management said on its last conference call that MCD took market share, and we measure that on traffic, as you know, not on sales. And our focus is on traffic, because that's the critical component. If we get them in the restaurants, we'll figure out how to get the successful average check from them down the road.
We understand that there needs to be a balance between driving traffic and discounting (and protecting margins), but we think MCD wins this argument with significantly higher average unit volumes.
In conjunction with that comment, the CEO said that he is more focused on driving sales than he is on traffic as traffic is not a measure of customers. It's not a customer count mechanism. It just tells you how many transactions you had during the day or the year so if you and I go into lunch together and I say, I'll buy, that's one transaction although it's two customers.
He went on to say, I think transactions are really not all that relevant and almost a misnomer. I am more concerned with how many people we have in the restaurants and how many transactions we ring up on the register. By the time, the CEO ended his longwinded response, we were not exactly clear on what he was saying, but in our view, it is never a good idea to move your focus away from driving traffic, and in today's current economic environment, that might mean driving more transactions at lower price points...as long as the customers keep coming!
Taking the other side transaction counts is MCD. MCD senior management said on its last conference call that MCD took market share, and we measure that on traffic, as you know, not on sales. And our focus is on traffic, because that's the critical component. If we get them in the restaurants, we'll figure out how to get the successful average check from them down the road.
We understand that there needs to be a balance between driving traffic and discounting (and protecting margins), but we think MCD wins this argument with significantly higher average unit volumes.
