Companies decided to lower the bill after applying all known restructuring and cost-cutting measures: space relocation, rent renegotiation, suspending investments scheduled in previous years, personnel downsizing, and salary cuts.
“Because we foresaw, since the beginning of last year, that many unpleasant things would happen on the market in 2009, our marketing plan for this year included a few more aggressive value-type campaigns. The main purpose was maintaining or raising the number of clients, for all the restaurants in the group,” Dragos Petrescu, owner of the City Grill restaurant chain, told Business Standard.
Thus, all the network’s restaurants launched a RON 19 (some €4.4) menu in the first part of this year which includes a full lunch. In the second quarter, the restaurants controlled by Petrescu introduced loyalty cards with a six percent discount for a meal, regardless of the number of clients.
Another player on the local restaurant market, the “La mama” network decided to accept payment in the form of meal tickets. As such, for two meal tickets totalling RON 16 (less than €4), you can have two lunch courses.
At Pizza Hut, less than €5 gets you “all you can eat,” every day from 6-9 p.m., or you can choose one of the three RON 15 (€3.5) menus.
