The hotel industry is consistently growing. The U.S. has more than 91,000 hotels and motels that generate more than $200 billion a year, according to IBISWorld.
According to the National Restaurant Association, in 2019, there were more than 1 million restaurants generating around $900 billion in the U.S.
The global food service equipment market was valued at $31 billion in 2017 and is projected to reach $50 billion by the year 2025, recording a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 6.4% from 2018 to 2025.
Foodservice equipment is used in the preparation and storage of food products for commercial purposes. It is commonly found in restaurants, hotels, and other commercial kitchens. The increase in demand and development of the hospitality industry and the use of different types of storage equipment for perishable and processed food items have driven the demand for food service equipment.
We at GrowByData collected hotel and restaurant service equipment retail price data in Google Shopping from January 2019 to January 2020. Below are market and competitive price intelligence insights from the price data we collected and analyzed on many sellers.
Top Retailers in the Market
During our data collection period, we found that WebstaurantStore.com had the most SKUs, followed closely by Hotel Restaurant Supply. If you are a retailer/manufacturer, these two online stores are your biggest competitors.
Most Price Competitive Retailers
Per our data, Houzz is the most competitive online retailers with the most frequent price changes. They recorded 16% of the price changes on 12,400 products. If you are a seller, you will have to use competitive pricing intelligence to optimize your prices to stand out on this platform.
Top Hotel & Restaurant Supply Brands
If you are a hotel and restaurant supply retailer, you want to sell brands like Eagle and GET, as they are the brands offering the greatest number of unique products.
Most Price Competitive Hotel and Restaurant Supply Brands
Flash products were the most competitive and had the highest number of price changes during our data collection period. We recorded almost four million price changes on 7,940 products. This means they are making price changes on one product approximately 500 times on average. Eagle, who has the largest variety of products, only had 58,000 price changes on 10,224 products, which gives them an average of 58 price changes per SKU.
Most Price Competitive Month of the Year
We found a total of 8.6 million price changes on more than 48,000 unique SKUs during our data collection period. Below is a breakdown of the price changes on a monthly basis. On average, there were two sellers that made price changes on a product every day. We found that April had the highest number of price changes and September had the lowest number of price changes.
When we broke the price changes down further, we found that in April, the prices were lowered more than other months while January and July had the highest percentage of prices raised. This means that as a buyer of hotel and restaurant supplies, you’ll want to consider buying in April because the prices are lowered more often. If you are a seller of these products, you are more likely to sell at higher prices in January (11%) or July (11%), as prices increased more often in these months.
Most Competitive Price Range
From the chart below, we see that about 37% of hotel and restaurant supply products are under $100, with 54% of the total price changes. Products ranging from $100 – $500 (42% of total SKUs) only consist of 36% of the total price changes. The higher cost products (more than $500) make up 21% of the total products, with 10% of the total price changes. This means that there is more price competition among the lower-priced products versus higher priced ones.
To Summarize
Hotels and Restaurants are a massive industry with many manufacturers, resellers, restaurants and hotels operating in the ecosystem. The buyers are price conscious and it is key to offer products at competitive prices. During Covid-19, hotels and restaurants have struggled and aren’t purchasing as much. However, those that are are price conscious. Moreover, when demand picks up, the demand for hotel and restaurant supplies will rise and the importance for suppliers to stay price competitive will remain important as ever.
We at GrowByData strongly suggest that suppliers utilize Competitive Pricing Intelligence software, understand how their competitors are pricing and dynamically reprice to offer a competitive price.