jellybean was delighted to attend the MCA Live Restaurant Conference at the Ham Yard Hotel on November the 7th. The event featured insightful discussions from industry leaders on a range of topics, including menu engineering, tech innovations, delivery, and gender diversity. Here are the key highlights:

Market Update by Katie Gallagher (Lumina Intelligence)

  • Consumer Confidence: While consumer confidence is improving, it hasn’t yet translated into higher spending.
  • Challenges: Rising business rates, food prices, and staff costs are impacting profitability, especially in service-led restaurants.
  • Growth Areas: “Food-to-go” channels are driving market growth. Lunch is a major opportunity, with restaurants increasing their share of lunch visits, particularly on weekends.
  • Health Trends: There’s a shift toward health-conscious choices, with operators offering more plant-based options and reducing alcohol-related offerings. Premiumising soft drinks is a growing trend to meet this demand.
  • Value Perception: Restaurants need to balance premium ingredients with value for money, as customers remain sensitive to pricing despite lower inflation.

Menu Engineering & NPD (Panel: Anthony Ekizian, Culinary Director at Rare Restaurants, Ines Lierena, Director at Pearson Ham Group, Will Bowlby, Co-Founder & Exec Chef at Kricket and Matt Snell, CEO at Gusto Italian)

  • Pricing Strategy: Set pricing at the outset to guide creativity and ensure clear positioning e.g. LTO, low-cost vs. premium items.
  • Innovation: True flavour innovation involves authenticity, understanding the cuisine’s origins and sharing those stories whilst adapting to local tastes.
  • Customer Experience: Value isn’t just about price—it’s about the overall experience. Even with inflation pressures, businesses must find ways to raise prices without losing customers.

QSR Growth – Tom Crowley (Popeyes UK)

  • Momentum & Format: Successful QSRs thrive on momentum—attracting talent, investment, and customers. Tailoring store formats to high-traffic areas (e.g., drive-thrus, travel hubs) is essential.
  • Quality & Speed: QSR is not just about speed. Focus must be on quality. Maintaining quality and value, as well as speed is where the repeat business comes.
  • Localised Marketing: Popeyes builds strong local connections by working with local PR agencies instead of centralised hubs.
  • Brand love: Staying fresh by bringing in new LTOs, launching the first queue-in-app and introducing AI drive thru ordering grows brand awareness and brand love.

Delivery & Tech (Panel: Libby Andrews, Marketing Director at PHO, Matt Sheppard, COO at Wingstop UK, Mark Finch, Director at Uber Eats UK&I and Maria Denny, CFO at Tortilla)

  • Operational Excellence: For successful delivery, businesses must get the basics right – focus on minimising defects, optimising packaging, driving down missing items on menu and auditing reviews.
  • Partner to Expand: Collaborating with delivery partners helps operators reach new day parts, increase order value (while considering regional pricing), and grow their customer base in new cities via dark kitchens, before investing in physical sites.
  • Tech Integration: Delivery shouldn’t be an afterthought. Building internal expertise and leveraging delivery apps for new customer acquisition is crucial. Also, focus on familiar offerings, as delivery customers tend to order less adventurously.

KFC’s UK Strategy – Meghan Farren (KFC UK & Ireland)

  • Brand Evolution: KFC’s recent acquisition of 200+ sites strengthen its leadership position. Focus is on operational efficiency, data-driven market planning, and innovating around the brand’s core offering.
  • Competition is good: Chickenisation is still highly prevalent in the UK market, driving better brands, better franchisees, better investors and making it even more critical to make your brand the most compelling choice.
  • Nutritional Transparency: Nutrition needs vary by individual, whether it’s calories, salt, fat, protein or sugar. Offer transparency and choice, to meet diverse nutritional needs.
  • Delivery Efficiency: A key challenge for delivery is running it smoothly without disrupting other channels. Resetting BOH & FOH operations and redesigning sites to accommodate delivery, collection, dine-in, and drive-thru is essential.
  • Franchisee Collaboration: Involving franchisees in decision-making around NPD, marketing, and supply chains is crucial for sustained growth.

Women in Senior Leadership (Panel: Gemma Glasson, MD at Wahaca, Laura Harper-Hinton, co-founder at Caravan Restaurants, Joycelyn Neve, Founder & MD at Seafood Pub Company and Sunaina Sethi, Co-Founder at JKS Restaurants)

  • Representation Gap: Women make up 60% of the hospitality workforce, but only 11% occupy senior leadership roles. However, companies with over 30% of women executives are more likely to outperform others.
  • Diversity Benefits: Diverse leadership fosters better decision-making, innovation, and team cohesion. Supporting diversity from the top-down leads to better commercial performance.
  • Closing the Gap: Adding one more woman to a recruitment shortlist makes the odds of hiring a woman 79x higher. Companies must actively promote diversity and inclusion to drive positive change.
  • Diversity and inclusion (EDI): 30% of employees feel that diversity has positively impacted their workplace and 64% of consumers say a venue’s EDI policy influences their decision on where to dine or visit. This highlights the growing importance of fostering inclusive environments, not only for employee satisfaction but also in attracting and retaining customers.

Thanks to the MCA team for hosting such an enriching and thought-provoking event. The conference provided valuable insights into the challenges and opportunities within the food and drink sector, and highlighted the importance of innovation, strategic thinking, and diversity in driving business success.