McDonalds #1 in Coffee Loyalty

Restaurant News: There are millions of coffee drinkers in the United States and every morning they head to Starbucks for that magical brown juice that wakes them up and helps to jump start their day. Are these coffee drinkers loyal followers or do some of the sheep stray from the flock?

CustomersDNA, a leading research and marketing company, recently conducted a large survey of over 15,000 of these coffee drinkers to try and determine their annual buying habits.

The results of this survey divided customers into two different types of groups: “loyal’ coffee drinkers and “roamers”. Loyal coffee drinkers never strayed from their chosen coffee spots, while roamers were the exact opposite. Roamers might frequent several different coffee chains like Dunkin Donuts, McDonald’s or Starbucks. The results were interesting. Only 41% of Starbucks customers were considered loyals while 53% were considered to be roamers.

The research also showed extremely similar results for Dunkin’ Donuts. Dunkin’ Donuts is 1% higher with 42% of their customers being classified as loyal and 53% roamers.

The report shows that McDonald’s has the highest retention of loyals in the bunch, with a large 62% that did not stray from the McDonald’s famous golden arches. It appears that they have the magic juice that keeps folks coming back for more.

The irony in all of this is the fact that the research data shows roamers visit the coffee chains twice as much as the loyals. This means that roamers spend twice as much money on coffee or breakfast sandwiches. The key to winning the coffee war would be to convert the roamers into loyals and effectively increase sales.

This survey lasted for twelve months and examined the habits of customers who purchased breakfast, lunch or dinner, hot beverages, cold beverages and frozen desserts.