The brunch trend: challenges and opportunities for restaurants?

For many French people, brunch is the new weekly get-together. Is it a trend or a new consumer habit? Brunch offers opportunities for many restaurants, provided they seize them...

Brunch", a contraction of the English terms "breakfast" and "lunch", is increasingly replacing the Sunday meal. Shared on Sundays, generally between 10am and 3pm, it combines traditional breakfast foods (pastries, pancakes, hot drinks, fruit juices, etc.) with a main course (often based around eggs). In 2011, according to a study conducted by Néorestauration and quoted by Themavision, there were 300 Parisian establishments offering brunch. Today, if you do the same search on Tripadvisor, 1,800 establishments are suggested. The craze seems to be real. Why is this so? Is it a real innovation, a genuine new consumer moment, or just an adaptation? How much of a game-changer is it for the restaurant industry?

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A meal that is increasingly popular with the French

Growing interest in online brunches

As its name suggests, the trend is strongly inspired by the Americans, but it has clearly been adopted in France, as evidenced by the Google Trends figures for the query "brunch" in recent years:

How do we explain the popularity of this meal, traditionally absent from French weeks? Brunch is likely to appeal because it's complete and often copious - hot drinks, fruit juices, pastries, toast, pancakes, cheeses, salmon, charcuterie, eggs... Here's what you'll find on most brunch menus. Brunch also offers a pretext for getting together with friends or family fora convivial moment, where everyone can find something to their liking. No need to choose a starter, main course and dessert, each guest can enjoy whatever they fancy. So much so that some establishments are launching a mono brunch offer.

New restaurant concepts dedicated to brunch

A number of establishments, such as the Parisian Café Foufou and Café Mareva, have opened with an "all-day brunch" offer, i.e., a catering concept based essentially on brunch.

An opportunity to generate sales at what was once a low point in the restaurant business

And yet, while Sunday lunch has traditionally been enjoyed at home - with many establishments closed on Sundays - brunch offers an opportunity, providing restaurateurs with a new working niche. And when they're looking for a place to have lunch on Sunday, many Internet users will no longer type "restaurant" but "brunch" or even "brunch Paris", depending on their location. These searches are carried out 100,000 times a month. Sites like oubruncher.com, which list addresses exclusively for brunch, receive between 80,000 and 100,000 visitors a month.

The average basket ticket for a brunch meal is often higher than for breakfast. Margins are also better if we bear in mind that most of the dishes served (plain, viennoiseries, croissants, eggs) have rather low material costs compared to a classic menu.

Launching a brunch formula in your establishment seems to offer great growth opportunities for restaurants (and hotels!). But where to start? What can you do to make it work?

How to create an effective brunch offer

Stay consistent to avoid losing customers

If brunch is still a mid-day meal on Sundays, it's still hard to pull off hot drinks, fruit juices, generous slices of toast, cakes and other pastries... Eggs, salmon, cheese and charcuterie are also classics. It's worth noting that many vegan brunches manage just fine without them. Nevertheless, offering brunch on the menu of a Japanese restaurant, for example, hardly seems to make sense. The brunch offer should complement the restaurant's menu, not detract from it, and draw synergies from products already worked with on a daily basis to facilitate operations.

Adapt its offering to the consumer issues that matter most to its customers

By favoring local, seasonal produce, the restaurateur demonstrates a commendable awareness of ecological, social and health issues. Homemade food is also a way of building customer confidence and serving better food.

Restaurateurs can also limit the use of plastic by avoiding straws and cups, and limit food waste by offering doggy bags or working with apps such as Too Good to Go or Karma.

To take things a step further, we've shared our tips for becoming an eco-responsible establishment in a dedicated article.

Finally, collaborating with local artisans (bakers, butchers, cheesemakers) for foods that are not prepared on site also enables us to offer greater quality to our customers and reinforce our commitment!

Another option: a vegetarian brunch. La Nouvelle République did so a few months ago, and more recently, Polichinelle, the new project by Steve Burggraf (co-founder of Big Fernand) in association with Christophe Michalak, proposes a restaurant that capitalizes on two strong dynamics in the restaurant business: the buffet and the vegetarian.

Buffet, formula or à la carte service?

Buffets allow you to plan ahead in the kitchen, save on staff costs, streamline customer service and satisfy their curiosity and desire to sample a wide range of dishes. However, customers are often afraid that the buffet option will compromise the quality of the food prepared.

The brunch formula (generally: a hot drink, juice, pastries, 2 or 3 savory dishes and 2 or 3 dessert options) allows you to limit the menu, make 2 or 3 services more easily, and better control costs and inventory. It's perhaps the simplest option for a restaurant to set up!

Finally, à la carte brunch is often offered in coffee shops or new "all day brunch" concepts such as Café Foufou or Bob's Bake Shop.

Thinking of families!

Brunch is increasingly taking the place of Sunday lunch, so it too is a family affair. It's therefore important to provide at least baby chairs and space for strollers. Think about games, coloring, even entertainment and areas dedicated to children, with entertainers if there are enough families. These little touches are sure to please children and their parents alike.

Anaïs from Parisianavores has started listing the best kid-friendly brunches in Paris on her blog, and her article is particularly well referenced on Google. If you're launching a really kid-friendly initiative, talk to her!

5 practical tips for promoting your brunch online

1. Devote an insert to it on your website

Offering a special space on the site for your restaurant's menu makes it more visible. If there's a real desire to generate sales from brunch, devote a dedicated page to it.

2. Give it an online existence on applications or sites dedicated to finding restaurants.

Platforms such as La Fourchette, Tripadvisor, Yelp, L'Internaute... all help to raise the profile of brunch.

3. Reference your brunch offer in relevant directories that are already well referenced for all brunch queries.

Dedicated sites such as Oubruncher.com are particularly well referenced on brunch-specific queries, with their links appearing among the first on Google. As a result, they offer a relevant showcase for promoting your offer. Please note, however, that they are generally subject to a fee: €280 excluding VAT for 1 year outside Paris, €390 for Paris.

4. Promote it on social media .

Instagram offers the perfect showcase to demonstrate the richness of the brunch offer and attract new customers. The two actions to be articulated together are stories and publications for greater effectiveness.

Nomad's has prepared an "anchored story", i.e. a short permanent video in which it shows the Sunday brunch, what is eaten there, the atmosphere found there:

It is complemented by publications dedicated to brunch:

5. Write a dedicated press release and share it with relevant journalists and influencers.

To build awareness of a brunch, it's important to get press, media and influencer coverage. The first step is to showcase the brunch by carefully drafting a press release (see our article for some tips), and by providing quality photos - that will make you want to attend.

The next step is to share the press release with the relevant journalists and influencers to publicize the brunch and encourage them to attend. Sending the press release en masse to a database of journalists and/or influencers is not at all effective. They're already swamped with hundreds of emails. You need to choose carefully who to share it with, take care with your approach, choose a compelling subject line, and personalize the message according to the recipient (has the journalist already tried your competitor's brunch? He was disappointed by the pancakes, and your recipe is particularly successful: approach him with this argument!) It's a time-consuming task, but one that will maximize your brunch's visibility and considerably increase its chances of success. If you're short of time, you can call in an agency, and to choose the best one: take a look at our article.

So, are you ready for brunch?

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