Summary And Analysis Of Earl's Restaurant

Research & Analysis
Brand Image
Earls Kitchen and Bar prides itself on its love of hospitality, regionally-inspired offerings and bringing the ‘best of everything’ to their guests (“Earls.ca”, n.d.). In maintaining its hospitality values and contemporary vibe, the napkin decision should be considered in terms of consumer perceptions. A study conducted by American linen company Milliken & Company found that 82% of U.S. consumers associated cloth napkins with a better restaurant appearance and ambiance, 84% with being environmentally friendly, 75% with better food quality and 88% with better service. Furthermore, the same study found that cloth napkins are often associated with customers’ expectations to pay more for the service, and thus, result
The competitive set consists of restaurants in the upper casual segment in Canada and the U.S. Using downtown Toronto as our location of assessment, we found that majority of the competing restaurants used linen napkins, including the Keg, Milestone’s, Canyon Creek, Moxie’s and Oliver & Bonacini Café Grill, Joey’s Restaurants and Cactus Club Café. Upper casual restaurants using paper napkins included Jack Astors. We created a positioning matrix to better visualize their price differences in comparison to Earls and their ratings in terms of quality on Yelp (Appendix A). While they are all within the same market segment, it was found that Cactus Club Café was the only restaurant that highlighted their commitment to Environmental Sustainability on their website. Cactus Club Café, specifically the Park Royal location, is the only certified “green casual fine dining restaurant” in BC from the Green Table Network conservation initiative (“Cactus Club Cafe”, n.d.). This is a distinct point of differentiation that Cactus Club Café takes advantage of in the highly competitive upper casual restaurant
In this case, it would be beneficial to know the exact amounts of greenhouse gas emitted by creating paper napkins and throwing them in the landfill against the amounts of greenhouse gas emitted by creating linen napkins and continually washing them. Additionally, a feasibility study of the time it takes for napkins to be folded and the long-term sustainability of paper and linen napkins would be advantageous in the decision-making process. Without these statistics, there are significant limitations to the environmental factor of choosing between paper and linen napkins. However, we can ascertain that paper napkins are only used once, while linen napkins can be re-used, being washed 80-100 times (Poe, 2015). This is better aligned with Earls’ commitment to re-using and maintaining low impact on the environment (Earls Restaurant Ltd,