Quick Serve Restaurant
A quick serve restaurant or QSR is a restaurant which offer certain food items that require minimal preparation time and are delivered through quick services. Typically, quick service restaurants cater to fast food items over a limited menu as they can be cooked in lesser time with minimum possible variation.
Quick Serve Restaurant (QSR) Strategy
Quick serve restaurants have much variety when it comes to the type of service they offer. There are also drive-through restaurants, which do not offer any tables or seats but rather collect the order and deliver it through a single counter. The orders are generally pre prepared and are highly standardized with no room for customization. These types of businesses don’t rely on margin over their services rather rely on the frequency of footfall. A key strategy used by quick service restaurants is the bundle pricing. QSR combine their food items on the menu into a bundle of complementary meals for example McDonald’s value meal of fries, a soft drink and a burger. Usually customers prefer these meals over individual food items as the former creates a sense of value addition and diversity to their expenditure. For the retailers, they give attractive discounts over bundled meals and set a substantial profit margin to lure from these offerings.
Types of Quick Serve Restaurant (QSR)
Quick serve restaurants generally function in a chains or franchises as they gain profit from the number of footfalls they receive. Operating multiple stores enables them to harness the footfall frequency from multiple locations and add to the company’s value. These restaurants often cater to complementary food items or just a single class of food stuff for example Starbucks. Starbucks offers beverage services along with light snacks which complements its taste. Similarly Pizza hut and Domino’s offer fast foods combined with light beverages. High degree of standardization is required at a QSR to deliver quick services to the customers that includes:
- Self serve restaurants: the customers approach the counter and order. For receiving the order, they collect it by their own from the counter
- Assisted self serve restaurants: places where either the order is collected at the table of the customer or the food is delivered to the table of the customer
- Full served restaurants: places where both the order placing and the food delivery are done by the staff at the table
Examples of Quick Serve Restaurant (QSR)
Some real-life examples of quick serve restaurants are Mc Donald’s, Subway, Burger King, KFC etc. Recent trends have shown a tremendous shift in the operations of local quick service restaurants. With rising number of food delivery services, these restaurants have started separating a division for food items which are cooked in bulk and then stored to be supplied to the delivery services. This does not only gives them an opportunity to earn margins by not investing in the restaurant seating spaces but also provides brand marketing for their restaurant brands.