CONNECTION IS EVERYTHING
24TH OF MARCH 2026
Speech Summary
With the birth of the Beta generation, we now have seven different consumer demographics to serve, seven different users whose needs we need to satisfy within a foodservice environment.
From Traditionalists (born after WWII) and Baby Boomers, all the way through to Gen X, Millennials, Gen Z, Gen Alpha and on to the Beta babies of today, meeting consumer needs has become a much more complex task.
Change in all forms presses down on every industry and the demands placed on foodservice is no exception. Change comes at us as Technological, Economic, Social, Regulatory and most critically from our shoppers expectations themselves.
To survive (and thrive) every brand needs to exert a greater force against these changes, otherwise we will be crushed by them. To survive and ensure our businesses are future focused, we need to have the courage to embrace new directions. We need to collaborate and have an excellence in execution to have better connections with our customer. The old business models of the early 2000s are not serving the modern consumer of today.
It would be arrogant of us to assume that we can continue to run our business and foodservice propositions the same way over the next 10 years as we have over the past 10, as arrogant as Kodak thinking digital photography would be a fad. Arrogance kills entire brands and industries, and it could kill your business faster than you think. As customer expectations change, alongside our business and service landscape, so must our restaurant offering.
Staying relevant is key to survival and so we aim to focus on what our customers value. It is in exploring and understanding the values of the modern customer connection, we can build brands and a foodservice proposition for future success.
Take your eye off what your customers value and you run the risk of becoming irrelevant. We discussed five key values during the keynote.
Authenticity
Today’s customers are looking to emotively connect with the brands they invite into their lives. This manifests in a desire to seek out ‘authentic connection’ in their consumption moments.
Previous success in foodservice came from scale and market dominance, but today such scale seems to undermine the connection we seek.
With scale often comes a dilution of customer connection, a loss of the community-vibe food brands built their success upon.
The challenge is to foster a sense of ‘real’. Taylor Swift and her strategic ‘behind-the-scenes’ videos are a masterclass in building authenticity at scale.
Think about how we can harness both scale and depth of connection.
You cannot fake authenticity but you can curate it.
Blue Dot Centricity
We need to place our customer at the centre, not the brand, product, foodservice operation, or our own ways of working. The customer is not some inconvenient truth at the end of a customer journey. They are the BLUE DOT – the pulsing centre point around which everything must revolve.
Everything comes to the customer today. Why go to a restaurant when Uber Eats will deliver to your home? Why go out on the streets to flag a cab when Uber will deliver on to your door? Why use an expensive orthodontist when you can straighten your teeth with mail- order clear braces? Customer service expectations have changed. As an industry, perhaps foodservice has often been product, brand or operationally led for too long. We need to shift from an transactional to a customer experience focus. The experience needs to be wholly customer centric.
Carrying the Blue Dot metaphor farther, no one would open Google maps and follow someone else’s blue dot on the map – you are only shown your own. The modern customer expects to be treated personally; made feel special, have heavily customised service at every touch point.
Make them feel special by connecting personally with them. Move away from a commodity experience. Use data to better leverage that connection. The foodservice experience can be notoriously commodity focused. Brand is everything when it comes to differentiation.
Think about how your brand can better connect with your customers in a way that makes them feel like they are at the centre.
Expectant
Customers expect it to be right, first time, every time. There is no room for inconsistencies in how a customer is treated today. Ultimately Customer Experience has become the battle ground for success, and in that reality, we need to strive for better. Their experience in a restaurant is our opportunity to go beyond their expectations.
No longer is a shopper delighted with expected levels of product or service. You must push past satisfaction and expectations into the ‘excite & delight’ space if you are to cut through with today’s consumer. They rightfully demand more from every brand experience they invite into their lives.
Think of a diving board analogy – your customer is at the very top in terms of their expectations of you. They want it, and they want it NOW, and they want it about them. Fail them and it’s a long way down.
Think about how to delight your customer in unexpected ways. Your customer experience needs to connect beyond mere product and service provision. It is only through going beyond expectations that we build brand advocacy and tribal belonging, an empowered customer. You need to be different from others in your industry, specifically in how we emotively connect with customers. Escape that commodity trap and build connection.
Remember those Harley Davidson and Red Bull tattoos – that is what we all want. An empowered consumer who will go out and sell your brand and business for you. We all need a Swiftie army outside the stadium.
In a highly competitive market, what truly differentiates your business? The brands that invest in CX and strive to go beyond any and every customer expectation lay down the foundations for Customer Lifetime Value.
Phygital
We now live in a ‘Digital First World’ – a world where we all reach for our digital devices first to answer any question or solve any problem. The digital Immersion is only going to increase with the coming Quantum Computing reality and as AI and Robotics converge alongside customer expectations.
Every brand proposition has to be part Physical, part Digital. Customers now expect digital to drive their experiences. The AI ‘spring-jump’ is real.
AI is set to change every industry. Most importantly, it will unleash a new set of customer expectations around hyper personalisation and relevance in their brand and service interactions. We need to engage with AI so that we free up the human talent to focus on connection.
AI is not all about productivity and efficiency – it is about using technology to better connect with customers and create better experiences. AI is only useful to us in customer experience if a customer feels something positive.
Agentic AI will also change the very nature of the customer decision making process. Once customers hand over buying control to their AI assistants, the human steps away from the decision-making process, unleashing a new channel; business-to-machine. In an Agentic AI world, our stores become critical as a space to build real customer connections.
Relational
Ultimately, building Customer Lifetime Value and Customer Intimacy is about building Relationships. It is about moving away from the old ‘transaction model’ and moving towards a model that is based around putting the Relationship at the centre.
This is why Experience Management has become such an inherent part of most companies’ strategy.
It is only when emotions are engaged do we build relationship, when the customer ‘feels’ something. We need to become a trusted partner in life for our customers, not just another brand. This is a new space for many brands, traditionally product or operationally led.
The more we embed emotional response and authentic, compassionate customer interactions in the customer experience, the more we build that bond with that customer. We achieve that scale and depth of connection mentioned earlier.
Look for ways to build significant relationships, with depth, authenticity and purpose. Recall the Taylor Swift fan enraptured with experiencing the product. This type of engagement only comes when there is a significant relationship related to the brand experience.
In our future deep-fake, AI-fuelled world, authentic relationship will be everything. The experience a customer has in-store should also build that relationship depth.
Your Strategy Audit
10 Questions to Answer
- If you were to make your product or restaurant proposition more BLUE DOT tomorrow, what would that look like? Where in the customer journey could you do a better job at making it about THE CUSTOMER and not about YOU?
- Where could you implement PROACTIVE service rather than waiting for a customer to ask? How could we build loyalty and brand respect by moving towards a proactive service model?
- Where do we routinely go beyond customer expectations into the delight space? What 5 ideas could we bring to life in a customer journey that would make a customer smile in delight on all sides of your business?
- What digital elements add value to the emotive customer experience? Are most of our digital tools about efficiency and process? Where are the delight moments using technology?
- What moments have we created in the last 3 months that would be your Swiftmas moment? Who is telling your Brand Story today?
- How do you share the moments of delight and above customer expectation internally? How does the organisation hear, routinely, that we are delighting our customers?
- Who is your Excite & Delight Director within your team, responsible for delivering moments that go beyond customer expectation in-store.
- What are you doing in the Employee Experience space that motivates your employees to want to deliver 5-star CX service? All of the values discussed apply to employees also.
- If a customer left your restaurant tomorrow, where is that failure most likely to have come from in your customer journey? Audit your CX processes, identify pain points and look to dissolve the friction.
- Where is the evidence you are building relationships and Customer Lifetime Value in your customer service provision in-store? Where are you authentic and pushing past transaction into relationship?
More content from Ken
To get a more detailed feel for Ken Hughes content, check out his Blog – The Blue Dot Consumer. Widely read by those in the marketing, customer experience and retail worlds, it is full of in-depth discussion and content relating to all things consumer.
THE BAD BUNNY HALFTIME EFFECT: WHY IDENTITY IS ONE OF THE MOST POWERFUL FORCES IN CUSTOMER CONNECTION
THE PSYCHOLOGY OF ANTICIPATION: 3 WAYS TO KEEP CUSTOMERS SPENDING
STRANGER THINGS: WHY LOYALTY LIVES IN THE UPSIDE DOWN
For those too lazy to read blogs, and to view further visual content and past performances from Ken Hughes, check out the YouTube channel where he discusses all things consumer and customer experience related.
I have gifted each of you a copy of my book to celebrate Future Menus.
I hope you enjoy it.
If after reading it, you think someone else might enjoy a sample, and you want to share the inspiration from today’s keynote, download two free chapters here
