We surveyed our restaurant evaluators with a short, but pithy question last month: "What general suggestions do you have for restaurants to increase business with rising prices and inflation?" These aren't restaurant consultants or industry insiders — they're everyday guests, evaluating real visits to real restaurants. That's exactly what makes their answers useful.
We read through every response. A few individual comments were specific to the restaurant being shopped, but four themes showed up over and over, across different guests, different clients, and different locations.
1. Guests want visible, recurring specials — and they're not shy about asking for them
This was, by a wide margin, the most common suggestion. More than half of the shoppers we surveyed brought up some version of a promotion, deal, or happy hour without being prompted. The specifics varied — weekday specials, all-day happy hours, buy-one-get-one offers during slow periods, a rotating "special of the month" — but the underlying ask was consistent: give guests a reason to feel like they're getting a deal, especially right now.
One shopper put it plainly: the restaurant already had specials, particularly on drinks, but nobody on staff ever mentioned them. Her suggestion wasn't to invent a new promotion — it was simply to have the host or server mention one during the visit. That's a distinct problem from not having a special at all, and a far easier one to fix.
of shoppers raised specials, deals, or happy hours as a suggestion — often citing fast food value comparisons as the benchmark they had in mind.
2. Loyalty and rewards programs directly influence where guests choose to go
Several shoppers specifically called out rewards programs as a deciding factor between one restaurant and another. One noted that a reward program "always entices me to visit a restaurant above another one." Another tied it directly to affordability, saying a decent rewards program "makes it feel more manageable." This isn't a minor perk in guests' minds — it's part of how they're actively comparing where to spend money when every dollar counts more than it used to.
3. Guests are quietly comparing you to fast food on value, not just price
A theme that came up more than once, sometimes directly and sometimes implied: guests are running a mental math comparison against fast food combo pricing. One shopper pointed out that a fast food restaurant could offer a sandwich, fries, and a drink for close to what this restaurant charged for a sandwich alone — and suggested simply including fries with sandwiches and burgers instead of charging extra for them. Another mentioned trying a new restaurant specifically because a promotional offer was "such a good deal," modeled after something they'd seen at a fast food chain.
This isn't guests asking full-service restaurants to compete on fast food prices. It's a signal that bundling and perceived value matter as much as the number on the menu — a guest who feels nickel-and-dimed on a $2 side will remember that far longer than the actual dollar amount involved.
4. Some guests don't want lower prices — they want consistency
This was the theme most likely to get missed if you only skim for "give me a discount" feedback, and it might be the most important one. A meaningful number of shoppers explicitly said the restaurant's pricing was already fair, and that the better strategy wasn't to discount — it was to protect what was already working. One shopper, visiting a packed location, called out portion size, food quality, and staff performance as all being strong, and made the point directly: when restaurants let quality, portions, or service slip, guests stop coming back, and it often only takes two of those three slipping at once to lose someone permanently.
This theme showed up alongside specific service feedback too — guests noticing when a server didn't offer menu suggestions, when a manager who used to stop by the table didn't this time, or when staff were friendly but not attentive to their section. None of that gets fixed with a coupon.
What this means for restaurant owners
Taken together, these four themes aren't in conflict — they're describing two sides of the same relationship. Specials and rewards programs are what get a guest to choose you over the place next door. Consistency in quality, portions, service, and basic operational accuracy is what gets them to come back without needing a discount to justify it. A restaurant that leans hard into promotions while letting service slip is solving the wrong half of the problem, and a restaurant with excellent food and service but zero visible value messaging is leaving an easy win on the table.
If you want to know which half of that equation your restaurant actually needs to work on, that's exactly what a Restaurant Mystery Shop is built to tell you — not guesses, but a documented account of what a real guest experienced, said, and would suggest, the same way this feedback was gathered.