01
eat for 5 minutes, queue for two hours
queuing is something everyone has encountered, many places need to line up, because queuing brings order. You need to line up when you are in the scenic area, you need to line up when you eat in a restaurant, and you need to line up when there are many people on the bus. Queuing is everywhere.
Catering is a very polarized industry, which suffers from droughts and floods. For example, the Huangjihuang three-juice braised pot I have ever eaten. At that time, Huangjihuang was still very hot. Basically every store had to queue up. The long time was over 1 hour, and the short time took 20-30 minutes.
On the contrary, with the exception of those restaurants that are in the limelight, most of the other restaurants have had little response. Queuing, waiting, etc. are invisible unless you are in a popular scenic spot or a popular location. Compared with before, queues are actually becoming more frequent.
Speaking of the initiator of the large-scale queuing phenomenon, it has to go back to the 15 or 16 years of the Internet celebrity restaurant era. Internet celebrity restaurants have successfully used Internet marketing to stir themselves up, followed by batches of "admiringly" people. Either because of curiosity, or because of being coerced by friends.
This period is a period of high incidence of queuing, and there are no online celebrity restaurants that do not line up. Even sometimes people with a lot of people need to wait for more than 2 hours to eat. But even so, mass consumers are still happy to go to the Internet celebrity restaurant to line up for dinner.
even gave birth to the group of "net celebrity dining evaluation" during this period. They introduce various Internet celebrity restaurants and try to eat, give the tasting experience, and then pass the information to consumers through major traffic platforms such as Weibo, official accounts, and Douyin. During this period, internet celebrity restaurants and catering internet celebrity reviewers made a lot of money. Everyone knows what happened afterwards
. Internet celebrity catering quickly died. The specific reason is also very simple, that is, the product does not work. But one thing is really worth thinking about, that is, why can Internet celebrity restaurants gather such a large amount of traffic when the product is not working?
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What is the motivation for customers to line up?
1, conformity
Everyone is conformity, and there is no such thing as nonconformity. Because people are social animals, as long as they are social animals, they will be affected by various social events, social culture and other people. For the general public, they do not deliberately distinguish between the right and wrong of various things, and they don't care about the specific situation. So in most cases, people agree.
Speaking of conformity, I have to remind me of a problem I found when I was out for dinner. Generally speaking, how consumers choose a restaurant naturally depends on whether the restaurant offers good products, good environment, good service, and so on.
Which product is good or not has a great influence on consumer choice. Because catering is a fast-moving category rather than a durable goods category. You can’t open a restaurant just to make money from new customers. Only by maintaining regular customers can the restaurant survive for a long time. According to incomplete calculations, for a restaurant, when the proportion of regular customers reaches 40% to 60%, it is a relatively safe interval.
The answer seems to be very simple, as long as we choose those delicious restaurants to eat. But in fact the situation is more complicated than this. For example, we can find that in terms of taste, most products on the market are actually half a catty, maybe a little bit better, maybe a little bit worse, but there is not much difference between them.
In addition, most of the restaurants in our country are still street shops, and their decorations are also half a catty, so this brings a lot of trouble to customers' choices. Therefore, the indicator for consumers to choose a restaurant has become the simple and simple herd mentality of "the number of people watching the meal." But this is actually inaccurate in many cases.
The author once discovered this problem when I went to eat. In one place, there are two restaurants with little difference. The food inside is not much different in terms of taste or quality. Although it can make a difference, andThere is no obvious gap. Which one has a good business at this time basically depends on luck.
For example, when the first day passed by the author, I saw that the first store had a lot of people and the second store had fewer people, so naturally I would choose the restaurant with more families. However, when the author passed the next day, he saw the opposite situation again. There were more people in the second family and fewer in the first family. At this time, the author is naturally more inclined to eat in places where the second family has more people.
Why this happens is very simple. At the beginning, there was no one in the two houses. At this time, one or two people came, and they immediately chose one to enter. Later, people who came later saw that there were people in one house and no one in the other, so they would naturally choose the one with people to enter. Thus, the herd effect started, and there were more and more customers in the house.
People tend to follow the trend, rather than analyze the pros and cons and analyze the pros and cons. That is too time-consuming and energy-consuming. "Since there are so many families in this family, then naturally this house is good, so I also go to this house" is a tendency that exists when everyone makes choices.
Internet celebrity restaurants did just that, although in the end people saw through the specific level of Internet celebrity restaurants. But I have to deny that the marketing of the Internet celebrity restaurant is really good. Through various big V endorsements, crazy advertising, marketing gimmicks, and hiring people to line up to create a hot illusion, a large number of consumers were easily harvested.
2. Customers who have to line up
In addition to the reasons mentioned above, it is not ruled out that the restaurant's products and services are excellent, and the attraction of customers after the huge brand influence is generated. For example, Haidilao is very popular everywhere. Even in Chongqing, the hot pot spot, it still has a huge popularity.
At this time, the reason why customers line up is not simply a herd mentality, but because they have to line up. When the catering brand has enough attractiveness, the distance between the customer and the restaurant will not be a problem. After the customer makes a choice in their mind, they will eat even if they are in line.
Therefore, most people choose well-known restaurants, and queuing becomes inevitable. How does
03
let customers enjoy the queuing process?
In most cases, queuing can represent the quality of a restaurant. From the perspective of catering operators, queuing more means good business, but queuing can also bring hidden dangers to restaurants.
queuing means waiting. As mentioned earlier, queuing for 2 hours may only take a few minutes to eat. In the long queue, customers' emotions will inevitably fluctuate, such as anxiety, impatience and so on. At this time, it has become a test for businesses.
The Haidilao mentioned earlier should be recognized as the "king of queuing". Basically, when you go to Haidilao for dinner, there is no time not to queue. However, we found that Haidilao’s queued customers do not experience anxiety.
Haidilao’s high-quality service is not only reflected in the restaurant, but also in the queuing area outside the restaurant. In addition to nail art and shoe shine, customers can also enjoy snacks, fruits, etc. in the waiting area, as well as chess and backgammon for entertainment. In this case, customers naturally don't feel that queuing is a boring thing.
However, if your restaurant just puts a few stools and the waiters are busy, the queue of customers becomes torment, and even rebellious psychology will occur. Even if your restaurant’s products are delicious, the customers get what The experience was not good, which affected the expectations and thoughts of coming to the restaurant next time.
In the process of queuing customers, the restaurant can do many things besides providing good service. For example, setting up an automatic ordering machine, or a small program for waiting in line, allows customers to adjust the time freely, and come back when the number is about to arrive. This way customers are also very willing to see.
