This 7-page paper focuses on the casual dining segment of the food industry. In addition to SWOT and Five Forces Analyses, the paper discusses current macroeconomic trends in this industry segment. Bibliography lists 3 sources.
Name of Research Paper File: D0_MTcasdin.rtf
Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
lot of money in terms of advertising and promotion. They are casual dining restaurants. Casual dining, which, 30 to 40 years ago was fairly nonexistent, has become a huge
segment of the overall food services industry today. Sandwiched between the more formal dining segment in the fast-food segment of the industry, casual dining has offered customers the opportunity
to eat out to have a good meal without having to dress up or pay too much money. As with any maturing
industry however, casual dining is facing some challenges as well as some opportunities. The purpose of this paper is to examine the environment, as well as challenges, opportunities and
other factors facing casual dining restaurants. We will do this by analyzing trends in the industry, then performing to analysis: a SWOT analysis and a Porter Five Forces analysis.
Trends In the entire food-services industry, casual dining continues to top industry sales growth charts (Silver, 2001). This does not mean however,
that this is necessarily a "safe" area of the industry -- much like the other parts of the food-services industry, casual dining is certainly seeing a downturn because of the
current economic slowdown (Silver, 2001). According to the NPD FoodWorld: Chain Restaurant Eating Share Trends data, sales rose in this segment 6.5 percent during 2000 (Silver, 2001). However, that were
presented to drop from the 7 percent increase experienced in 1999 (Silver, 2001). By the same token, while customer traffic had increased 3 percent in 2000, this was compared to
a 5 percent increase in 1999 (Silver, 2001). Because of that, casual dining is entering a new phase in trying to stay