Beverage Menu: Table Talk
Red Robin increases specialty-beverage sales with a freestanding menu and table cubes.
By Monica Rogers, Contributing Editor -- Chain Leader, 2/1/2007
 In 2005, Red Robin began printing freestanding beverage menus in conjunction with spring and summer promotions, rather than just list the drinks on the back of the food menu.
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Red Robin guests just couldn’t keep their hands off the Disgruntled Elf—or at least the table cube picturing the drink—which led to increased beverage trials, says Vice President of Marketing Kim McBee. Putting photos of Red Robin’s 2006 holiday drinks, the Disgruntled Elf and the Gingerbread Shake, on the cube was the newest bit in the Greenwood Village, Colo.-based company’s strategy to better market beverages via tabletop elements.
"We knew we had a lot of great beverages but felt there was more we could do on the table to highlight them," says McBee.
Table cubes—six-sided paper boxes printed with colorful photography—have been attention-getters at the 345-unit chain for the last two years, promoting awareness and trial of new food items. "People just love to pick the cubes up and play with them," says McBee. "But this was the first time we decided to put a drink promotion on the cube."
Beyond bottomless lemonade, ice tea, coffee and soft drinks, Red Robin’s beverage program includes a dozen malts and milkshakes, a half-dozen specialty cocktails and smoothies, plus specialty lemonade, limeade, margaritas, beer and wine. "We felt there was more we could do to promote not just new beverages but some of our unsung heroes—longstanding, old favorites," McBee says.
In 2005, Red Robin began printing freestanding beverage menus in conjunction with spring and summer promotions, rather than just list the drinks on the back of the food menu. It had been several years since Red Robin printed a separate beverage menu. The menus featured a mix of seasonal specials on the cover.
Measuring Results
The new beverage menu debuted in spring 2005, featuring existing menu items, not new drinks. Red Robin saw an increase in people ordering the drinks pictured in it. "About 70 percent of our guests order beverages with their meals, usually soft drinks," McBee says. "With the launch of the new menu, about 2 percent shifted up to the pictured items."
The spring 2006 beverage menu included a mix of new and old items. Best-selling new introductions included the nonalcoholic Hawaiian Heart Throb smoothie, $3.99, a blend of strawberries, bananas, grenadine, coconut cream and pineapple juice. And the strongest selling old favorite pictured was Freckled Lemonade, $3.99, a blend of strawberries and lemonade.
But McBee says summer 2006’s promotional drink lineup was especially strong. The menu cover featured alcoholic beverages such as the Purple Craze Agua Fresca, $6.79, blueberries, vodka, blue curacao, pomegranate syrup and fresh lime wedge, selling to .5 percent of all guests. The Mango Bango Limeade $3.99—mango and passion-fruit syrups, lemon-lime soda and orange juice—and the Blueberry Pomegranate Limeade, $3.99—blueberries, pomegranate and lime syrups, and lemon-lime soda—both sold to about 1 percent of guests.
"With specialty drinks, selling to .5 percent or above is considered very strong performance for an alcoholic beverage, and selling above .8 percent is considered very strong performance for a nonalcoholic beverage," McBee explains.
She says it’s too soon to give exact numbers on sales increases prompted by the cubes during the ’06 winter holidays but says early results are positive.
Fresh to the Core
"We definitely look at what we can do to keep guest experiences fresh and interesting with new beverage options, trying to see what we can do to put a Red Robin spin on new trends," McBee says.
For ’06 that meant adding creative flavors to its best-selling limeades, lemonades and milkshakes. Last summer, Red Robin had good success adding vodka to its signature Freckled Lemonade, but it won’t quantify how well the drink sold.
This summer, Red Robin will do the same with smoothies, launching alcoholic and nonalcoholic versions of the Mayan Mango Smoothie, $3.99 (nonalcoholic) and $6.79 (alcoholic), a blend of coconut, mango, pineapple and vanilla creme, which will be prominently featured on the beverage menu cover along with the new Mandarin Mayhem Limeade, $3.99, Mandarin-orange syrup, lime juice and lemon-lime soda. "Limeades have become really popular for us. They offer profit margins for us that are similar to alcoholic beverages. We’re also testing sangrias," McBee says.
Expanding use of in-store printed promotional materials, McBee says Red Robin is creating new banners and posters for walls and soffits, and will add creative diecuts to the popular table cube to create whimsical shapes. "We’re working on one now that will be shaped like a truck," she concludes.
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