Guzman y Gomez S'pore head: Consumer habits being reformed in “dramatically different ways” amidst pandemic
Josh Bell joins the QSR Media Asia Conference & Awards’ marketing panel.
Guzman y Gomez is joining the QSR Media Asia Conference & Awards, represented by Josh Bell, the Mexican chain’s Singapore head.
Bell spent the early stages of his career with UBS based in Sydney, before moving to Singapore to launch Guzman y Gomez back in early 2014. The Guzman y Gomez Singapore team have been fortunate in the expansion of the brand, with 11 operational outlets.
Bell joins the event’s marketing panel, which already has Sour Sally Group founder Donny Pramono Ie, Texas Chicken senior marketing manager for Asia-Pacific Tay Jie, The Zest Group chief marketing officer Jess Tang and Adyen APAC vice president for business development Ben Wong.
Get to know Bell in this brief Q&A below:
QSR Media: From your vantage point - how has the pandemic changed the restaurant industry?
Bell: Many trends have been slowly building momentum in the past ~3 years (dark kitchens, delivery revenue as a % of total revenue lifting, restaurants ability to sustain profitability in high occupancy costs slowly fading, etc).
The pandemic has simply accelerated these trends (perhaps 5 years of development has occurred within 5 months). With such rapid change, attrition rates have also mirrored the pace of these trends.
What emerging trends are you seeing at this stage? How are businesses and consumers behaving?
We understand that a habit is formed, or broken, within 21 days. The lockdowns have broken so many consumer habits, and those habits are being reformed in dramatically different ways than prior to the pandemic. Restaurants' ability to flex their operations into many revenue channels (with those channels putting quite severe pressure on slow moving operational models) is critical.
How do you imagine a post-COVID environment would look?
A post-COVID world is going to be extremely exciting. Not that I have visited, although I understand that China's uptake and integration of digital self & digital livelihoods may now become the norm for the rest of the world. Convenience, reviews & ratings, innovation will be much more important than the past.
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