New Price For Customers - Free Food
Forget having a good brand image. Forget about having a good product at a fair value. Forget having excellent store operations or effective advertising. No, the apparent way to customers is giving the food away for free (of which the promotion itself usually results in long service delays and perceptions of poor operations) sometimes without even the need to purchase a drink or side.
Is this the best strategy the chains can come up with? Even in these down times - scrapping along with consumers adjusting their frequency of fast food and overall restaurant usage? And, if one chain every 10 days or so is offering - free - how about a price offer that doesn’t give away the house and all profits?
How about a different tack - say - 79 cent ice cold soft drinks all summer long. Such a tactic would make the reduction `not permanent’; yet would offer real value - even allowing the customer to pay full price for a sandwich without feeling ripped off. Or, do the 79 cent drinks only on weekends to target the more `local’ home customers (and making your business base continue to give some profits during the week).
