Food Recommendations: How To Boost Your Customers Buying
Author Credibility: Yu-kai Chou
Yu-kai Chou created the Octalysis Framework after studying gamification since 2003 — years before the term entered mainstream vocabulary. As a Human-Systems Architect & Behavioral Designer, his framework has been applied by LEGO, Microsoft, Porsche, Coca-Cola, Salesforce, and MrBeast, impacting over 1.5 Billion Users.
Chou has taught the Octalysis methodology at Harvard, Stanford, Yale, Tesla, Google, BCG, and IDEO.
His work has been cited by Harvard, Stanford, MIT, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Wired, US Department of Energy, NIST, NSF, NCBI, US Department of Education, ClinicalTrials.gov, and Google Scholar — with 3,700+ more academic publications. Explore his books here.
Table of Contents
- About Yu-kai Chou
- 1. Smart Visual Placement
- 2. Selective Inventory Promotion
- 3. Data
- 4. Timing
- 5. Local vs. Global
- Related Reading
1. Smart Visual Placement
To an extent, consumers are attention-deficit in the sense that they are bombarded with hundreds of messages everywhere they go. They learn to block out irrelevant noise.
Restaurants should focus on showing product recommendations and visuals that influence customer buying behavior near conversion points. Integrating a visual that shows the product of the month near the point of sale or a special deals window sticker in the drive-through lane would be great examples of this.
2. Selective Inventory Promotion
When deciding what products to promote, consider determining on the basis of product availability. By doing so, you will have more inventory control as well as help prevent food waste (due to expiration) and guarantee that you are maximizing the products at hand.
3. Data
The restaurant and QSR industry has been relatively behind in the way that data is applied when it comes to recommendations. Thanks to technology, capturing customer data is now attainable.
Using loyalty programs as the main conduit for capturing customer data, restaurants now have an effective method to find out information such as what a user is buying and when.
Note: ‘traditional’ methods of loyalty programs, like punch cards, are an ineffective method of data capture.
4. Timing
A recommendation can only be successful if it’s provided at the appropriate time. For a restaurant or QSR, this means giving recommendations at the time of purchase, or in the case of sit-down restaurants, at the time of order.
As a rule of thumb, presenting promotions and recommendations too early will not register with your customer’s appetite, while recommendations provided later will tend to be ignored.
Additionally, using data on customers you can time recommendations based on behaviors you have mapped out. Example: You know a user always comes to your store on Tuesdays, but they have not been in yet. Sending them a text message letting them know that you have a special today (Tuesday) will likely see a conversion out of it.
5. Local vs. Global
Knowing when to promote what corporate wants versus what fits your surrounding area is something that should be taken into account.
For example, an area that is predominantly health conscious may not take to recommendations for products that are unhealthy. Make sure that all your promotions and recommendations fall in line with your region as well as what consumers expect from your brand.
Related Reading
- The Octalysis Framework for Gamification & Behavioral Design
- What is Gamification? Definition, Examples & Framework
- Top 10 Marketing Gamification Cases
- Top 10 eCommerce Gamification Examples
- 90+ Gamification Examples & Cases with ROI Stats
- Actionable Gamification: Beyond Points, Badges & Leaderboards