MK Happy Lunch

Thai’s food industry is worth more than 400 billion THB and growing 4-5% every year. Restaurant business represents 50% of Thai food industry while 40% is QSR (Quick Service Restaurant).

In Thailand, MK Restaurants has known as the chain of Thai-style sukiyaki restaurant which positioning itself as a family restaurant where all family member can slowly cook suki in the pot to share a happy moment together for more than 30 years. Since Thai food industry is growing 4-5% per year so MK’s challenge is how to catch up with the food industry in Thailand.

Research has shown that customers of franchise restaurant can be classified into 2 periods, lunch and dinner.

Lunch is considered as a rush-hour where consumers cannot afford the time to have big lunch sets with cost 400-500 Baht/person (MK is also perceived as an expensive restaurant). When compared to other restaurants, the consumer will choose QSR for lunch which they can offer quick-serve at cheaper prices. MK’s growth strategy is to expand to QSR business by transforming the perception from a big set of Thai style sukiyaki tagged with an expensive price tag to offering quick, affordable prices, completed meals, and variety of innovation rooted from their strength menu through promotion campaign “MK Happy Lunch Set 99 Bath”.

The core target of franchise restaurant is Thais who living in the big cities. They are more than 5.3 million people who are searching for restaurants via the internet and select choose the recommended restaurants (6.6% searching increased in Y2018 when compared to Y2017), along with tendencies to believe more in influencers who are locals rather people than celebrities.

MK applied it’s promotion strategy through influencers (including popular social pages), encouraging them to change profiles to the ‘MK happy lunch menu’ visual and setting FB event as ‘going to have lunch at MK’ on the same day. Through this sequence of events, we created the hype of ‘our lunch appointment at MK’ all over Thailand.