


The leaders devise strategies to clarify or adjust (or occasionally reinvent) their brand experience in response to changing consumer preferences and needs. There will always be brands that shrewdly navigate through shifting industry currents, attracting customers and retaining their loyalty-and doing so better than the competition. Consumers choose brands and experiences, not industry dining segments. It’s premature, however, to write off the CDR segment as having lost its relevance. Changing consumer demographics and the continuing evolution of dining trends suggest that the tide for most CDR brands will continue to recede. For many companies in the casual dining restaurant (CDR) segment, current declining market shares, shrinking margins, and dwindling shareholder returns reflect familiar cyclical patterns that have long affected brands in this segment as well as other major dining segments. A falling tide can just as easily beach them. Technology, Media, and TelecommunicationsĪ rising tide lifts all boats.
