Make Your Menu More Valuable with Branded Products

Published :  July 22, 2017

Add recognizable brands to help elevate your menu and increase sales.

Restaurants are hungry for the latest trend of putting branded items on their menus. Using branded items not only helps boost sales, bring in more customers and satisfy tastes, it also helps increase consumer trust and perception of the quality of the dish. Take Burger King, for example, who introduced Mac n’ Cheetos and more recently Cheetos Chicken Fries. These innovative items, which play upon the consumer’s love and familiarity of the Cheetos brand, became buzz-worthy hits and drove sales and demand. We know your business is much different than a large chain restaurant, but on a smaller scale, you can easily ramp up your offerings and include popular and respected branded items in your menus and recipes.

In Technomic’s 2016 Sandwich Consumer Trend Report, over half (54 percent) of consumers said they would be willing to pay more for sandwiches that have brand-name condiments and spreads. With this in mind, discover ways to add branded products to help strengthen your menu and help increase profits.

 
 

Serve Something Unique

Making small tweaks and adding new, branded items to your menu can help create renewed interest in the food and beverages you’re already offering. It can be as easy as changing your breakfast option to a Quaker Mango Strawberry Overnight Oats. Or you can revamp your bar menu to include popular PepsiCo beverages such as MTN DEW®, 7UP® to create innovative mixers. These brands already have a strong following, so pairing them up to create a cocktail can increase the value and the popularity.

The best way to offer this collaboration is to spotlight the well-known brand, but deliver it in a way that creates excitement for your business as well. One way to do this is to create your own recipe using branded products like a local bagel shop in New Jersey, The Bagel Nook, which added a Flaming Hot Cheetos Bagel to their menu. The red-hot (literally and figuratively) bagel now sells out every single day. If that doesn’t inspire your own culinary ideas, then we have a number of great recipes, created by PepsiCo Chefs, in our Recipes for you to use from snacks, drinks and meals to quickly get into the branding game.

 
 
 

Get Creative

If you decide to create your own innovative recipe or add chef-created PepsiCo branded recipes to your existing offerings, you need to promote them creatively. Like the bagel shop did, instead of calling your new dish by the ingredients, e.g., Burger and Cheetos, create a new name with the product and make it catchy and descriptive. Check out Greek Fattoush Salad made with STACY'S® Pita Chips. Adding exciting language can better communicate satisfaction and interest to your customers and that will help them remember it the next time they visit your establishment. Creative recipes and names might also prompt customers to take pictures and share them on social media, which can increase buzz around your restaurant. Even just a photo of the creation on your business website or on your own social media pages can peak interest and encourage sharing.
 
For more inspiration on what branded recipes to serve, check out our recipes, created specifically by PepsiCo chefs, for beverages and foods that highlight your favorite PepsiCo products.