Restaurant & Fast Food Brand Index 2018 Q3

Please note: This is not the most recent Brand Index. If you’re right where you want to be, read on. If you’re looking for the latest data, click here for our most recent Brand Indexes. 

The Attest Brand Index is a platform agnostic measure of a brand’s total brand equity in the Restaurant & Fast Food sector, as determined by real consumers.

What do we mean by ‘platform agnostic’? We mean the results are not influenced by any particular method of obtaining them, such as looking only at social media mentions, or brand search terms. This reduces bias and provides a much more accurate view of a brand’s strength in any given category.

Learn more about why we believe this is the best methodology for Brand Intelligence.

To determine the Restaurant & Fast Food Brand Index, we look at three things.

1. Percentage of unprompted brand recall within a named category e.g. ‘Technology’ ‘Fashion’ or ‘Entertainment’
2. How likely a person is to purchase your particular brand (purchase intent)
3. How likely a person is to recommend your brand (net promoter score)

Our data is gathered every quarter from an online survey sent to a nationally representative panel of 1,000 UK consumers aged 18-65.

The top two spots remained stable. It seems chicken is still ruling the roost, with Nando’s claiming an impressive 17.4% of unprompted recall. They have increased their lead, since they’ve gained recall while McDonald’s who came in 2nd place both this and last quarter, have had a slight dip in recall.

Nando’s now lead recall by almost 5%.

Pizza Express are up from 5th place to 3rd place, while Pizza Hut remains in 4th. Last quarter’s bronze medal holder was KFC, but this time around, they find themselves in 6th—perhaps since Nando’s are gaining in dominance, other chains with chicken as their focus are finding it difficult to retain share of mind.

The only newcomer to our table this quarter was Harvester, who snuck into 10th place. Their NPS and Purchase Intent score aren’t particularly high, however, so the brand will need to focus on retaining this newly-won share of mind, but will need to work on likeability if they are to climb in the table.

By far the winner of NPS was Wagamama, with a stunning 92.9. Their menu has evolved significantly in recent times, notably to incorporate more vegan dishes. In a market that increasingly demands food brands to cater to various different lifestyles, health concerns, or allergens, Wagamama is clearly pleasing its consumers.

Wagamama was also the clear winner of purchase intent, coming in a full 20% points above Nando’s who had the second highest purchase intent.

KFC was bottom in NPS, and Harvester bottom of Purchase Intent. These two more budget offerings are obviously struggling to deliver on the qualities that people pride in restaurants (see word cloud below).

All of our top ten brands are big, country-wide chains. Their menus vary somewhat in price, but all make a clear effort to be affordable. Pizza Express, for example, which is one of the pricier restaurants that made the top 10, is famed for its near-constant discounts and promotions, including crowd-pleasing offers like free prosecco for all members of its newsletter when it’s their birthday.

Here is how people described the restaurant and fast food industry brands that came top of mind during unprompted brand recall:

The 2018 Restaurant & Fast Food Industry Brands Report

The full 2018 report includes:

• The UK’s leading Restaurant & Fast Food brands for Awareness, Purchase Intent and Net Promoter Score from the start of the year, so you can compare where shifts have occurred over time
• Industry-wide averages and market dynamics
• Key takeaways for the UK Restaurant & Fast Food industry

Click to view report