Menu Strategy: Season’s 52

[Menu Design Seasons 52 Dessert Program]

Season’s 52 is the new darling of Darden Restaurants. Darden as many of you know is the world’s largest casual dining restaurant chain (other brands include Olive Garden, Red Lobster, Bahama Breeze, Capital Grill, etc). Darden will only invest in a concept if they believe it has at least a $1 billion market potential. While there is much to point to as innovative with regard to Season’s 52 – and while the example of their dessert program has been lauded quite a bit already – it is worth mentioning again just how good of a job they did with their dessert program. While most restaurants have less than 3% of their revenues derived from the dessert case and have dismal “capture rates” (number of customers who opt for dessert as a percentage), Season’s 52 has been reputed to have dessert capture rates of as much as 80%. Rather than sell a 2-pound cake for $7.95 as many dated casual dining players still did, Season’s 52 offered an assortment of fresh desserts in a “taster” size for just $1.95. This was the casual dining restaurant equivalent of putting those candies and lifestyle magazines at the grocery store checkout – you couldn’t miss them and it is an easy indulgence. To my dismay, many casual dining players have tried to just knock-off the Season’s 52 program rather than learn the deeper lessons is offers about innovation, merchandizing, impulse purchases, being first, and challenging conventional wisdom. They looked at desserts in casual dining how Steve Jobs looked at mobile phones and set out to not just do something “better”, but do something with fresh-eyed enthusiasm and entrepreneur-ism in the spirit of innovation.

Restaurant Consultant