IRI and Technomic Link Retail and Restaurant Habits

Retail data giant IRI and foodservice industry consultant Technomic have announced a new joint offering, Restaurant to Retail (R2R) Insights, which combines consumers' retail point-of-sale (POS) data with their habits eating at major chain restaurants.

The partners say the tools allows customizable, cross-channel analysis and will help manufacturers, retailers and restaurant operators to work together to increase sales through 'innovation, product placement, licensing and co-promotion'.

According to IRI and Technomic, clients have for long focused on growing their 'share of stomach', given the 'finite number of meal occasions', but have struggled to understand the relationship between what's bought in grocery stores and what's eaten out.

R2R Insights makes use of a survey of more than 50,000 IRI Consumer Network panelists covering visitation frequency, meal occasion and menu detail for the 23 largest limited-service chain restaurants. Two examples of its possible / suggested use are:

a manufacturing client using the R2R Insights solution to determine which of its brands would be the best fit as a side dish for a burger restaurant, as well as which burger restaurant would sell the most product.; and

helping a restaurant's menu innovation by looking at household retail purchases to help create new products in line with their purchasing behavior.

The partners says their ongoing relationship 'will result in additional R2R Insights surveys and findings in the future.' Web sites are at www.technomic.com and www.iriworldwide.com .