Voucher Tracker

“Greed is good” and “Wellness”

The Beverage Standards Association brings you Peter’s Monday 30th August 2021 Weekly Briefing every Tuesday morning.

Monday, 30th August 2021 Weekly Briefing
Voucher Tracker

Several years ago, I started a service which I called Voucher Tracker – because that’s what it did. It monitored the vouchers (what they covered, their discounts and so on) offered by casual dining and quick service operators. For a while it thrived and provided very useful insights into how some operators – indeed whole sectors – were building their sales through vouchers.

Slowly though, Voucher Tracker started to measure less and less of the real market as vouchers morphed from pieces of paper to online offers; from being offered by specific operators on their own websites, vouchers began to be offered by aggregators like MoneySavingExpert.

Paper to website

But importantly, although the methods used for making vouchers available changed from paper to website, the money-off enticement didn’t – and the “£ off” promise became embedded in the financial structures of restaurants that lived off vouchers. A mindset of “offer a discount or die”seemed to emerge, with all that implies for profitability. Importantly, too, restaurant brands that became known for offering money-off vouchers also felt the impact on their brand positionings which were at risk from losing whatever was their previous salience and gaining a reputation for being a price-fighter with all that it implies for consumer expectations of low prices.

Thank you for reading part of the Monday 30th August 2021 Weekly Briefing. A full edition can be found here.


Peters Monthly Report for June 2021 is now available here.

Peter provides consultancy on the eating out market and opens eyes to brand new ways of thinking about the sector and its multiple opportunities for success.

(E) peter@peterbackmanfs.com (w) www.peterbackmanfs.com