Restaurant loyalty

J

Jeff Grossman

Jeff Grossman
The other thread, as well as an apt private conversation, makes me curious to ask the following survey-ish question of the inmates:

Do you have a favorite restaurant? (I'll define 'favorite' as 'eat dinner there at least 6 times a year'.)
 
No.

My wife and I do not eat out very often. The closest we would come is a local diner for weekend breakfast but I do not think that is in the spirit of the question.
 
We have one, it actually just opened last summer. We've been there seven times already.
Hopefully they stick around for a while, fine dining in my town is a tough business. Every time we are in there it's been full. Our last favorite restaurant lasted about 3 years, the chef grew tired of the daily grind and moved to Hawaii to surf and bicycle.

The chef at the new restaurant came from Chicago I believe.
 
Gee...6 times?? That is a hard bridge to cross. Even for restaurants I "love", I might have ate at 6x max in my lifetime. Eating out is expensive, and I figure I get better bang for the buck at home.
 
Are you trying to get at something more specific than just the frequency of repeat dining? Like what causes us to become attached to certain places?

I'll agree with MarkS that 6 times per year is a lot for me, because I only eat out for dinner maybe 2-3 times in an average month (i.e. not including travel).

But there are still a few places that I would consider my 'favorites' - in the sense that they automatically pop to the top of my mind when considering where to go. Even if I never eat at any of them 6 times per year.
 
originally posted by Rahsaan:
Are you trying to get at something more specific than just the frequency of repeat dining? Like what causes us to become attached to certain places?
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I am interested to know how restaurants keep their doors open. That is achieved, trivially, by them paying their bills. But do they really get a good amount of money from people who say it's their favorite or is that just private emotional twaddle and, really, restaurants depend on a stream of tourists or hefty markup on bottles or sexy advertising or....
 
Aha. Fair question.

I know this is the venue at hand, so will see how the thread develops. But surely restaurants do research on this topic to track who their customers are, how much the various types spend, etc.
 
Yes. But, the reason(s) that they are favorites differ. The one unifying theme is that I am/have become friends with staff/owners.
 
Not anymore. Our favorite restaurants tend to keep either going out of business or losing their chef or turning into food trucks.

The last one was Apiary, but we never made it there six times in a year. I don't think we've ever been anywhere six times in a year. We just don't eat out that much. I can cook pretty well.
 
originally posted by Chris Coad:
Not anymore. Our favorite restaurants tend to keep either going out of business or losing their chef or turning into food trucks.

The last one was Apiary, but we never made it there six times in a year. I don't think we've ever been anywhere six times in a year. We just don't eat out that much. I can cook pretty well.
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See I think this is the crux. There are restaurants I return to, again and again, because I like the food-ambience-value, and will eat out at new places more often in a city that I'm traveling to (where it becomes essentially 'destination dining'), but most often I have better choices and can cook better at home. Unless you have a tiny, inadequate kitchen or a corporate-sponsored expense account, I see few upsides to eating out.
 
originally posted by MarkS:
Unless you have a tiny, inadequate kitchen or a corporate-sponsored expense account, I see few upsides to eating out.
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1. Change of pace.

2. Cuisine you cannot cook well at home. (Although maybe you are master of everything)

3. It's fun to be in the restaurant environment.

4. Convenient for a larger crowd that you might not want to host at home.

5. Convenient with the rest of your plans for the evening (theater, movie, etc).

6. Support local economy so you will continue to have the options in the future.

Of course I rarely eat out for dinner myself. But I do see the upsides!
 
Thinking about Rahsaan's point, I eat out at lunch virtually five days a week, almost always at the same restaurant. For dinner, I eat out mostly when traveling, and while we have a few favorites in DC, we never get to them 6x per year.
 
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