Red Lobster 2012 Annual Report Download - page 17

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SAME-RESTAURANT SALES GROWTH
Marketing Initiatives
Our marketing teams are focused on developing
initiatives to help drive same-restaurant sales
growth while building brand equity and ensuring
differentiated guest experiences. Among other
things, in fiscal 2013: Olive Garden will introduce
a new advertising campaign that puts a fresh face
on the brand while also launching a new core menu
that focuses on increasing everyday affordability
and strengthening its value leadership position.
Building on the success of its remodel initiative and
“Real People” advertising campaign, Red Lobster
plans to introduce a new core menu that addresses
affordability and broadens the selection of non-
seafood items. And LongHorn Steakhouse will
launch a new advertising campaign that even more
effectively communicates its unique brand promise.
To further strengthen our marketing capabilities,
we’re also embarking on a multi-year, enterprise-
wide effort to build a robust digital technology
platform and richer guest database. To maintain
strong brand relevance, we recognize the need for
a digital technology platform that supports the
guest-facing applications that are becoming more
and more expected as guests adopt more and more
digitally enabled lifestyles. The platform will also
enable us to capture the guest-specific information
required to complement our broad-based advertis-
ing and promotion efforts with much more targeted
direct marketing and relationship-building programs.
Restaurant Operations
Our restaurant operations teams are focused on
delivering exceptional experiences for millions of
guests every week across seven different brands in
nearly 2,000 restaurant locations. Successfully
delivering each brand’s unique guest experience not
only requires the commitment and dedication of our
restaurant teams, but also a network of systems
and support that gives our people time to make
the human touch an even larger part of dining
with us. Tools such as our proven and increasingly
effective guest forecasting systems help ensure
we’re prepared with the right amount of food and
the right amount of labor to serve our guests.
We’re also working to better enable operations-driven
sales growth and further strengthen operations talent
development by implementing a new operations
leadership structure at Red Lobster, Olive Garden and
LongHorn Steakhouse. We’re adding a new leadership
role between our Senior Vice Presidents of Operations
and our Directors of Operations. This new role –
Regional Vice President or Managing Director –
reports to a Senior Vice President of Operations
and manages Directors of Operations. The change
reduces the span of control of Senior Vice Presidents
of Operations, allowing them to focus on identifying
new tools and support and operations strategies to
sustainably grow guest counts and sales in their
divisions, while increasing the leadership attention
dedicated to day-to-day, in-restaurant execution.
Darden Restaurants, Inc. 2012 Annual Report 13