New flex-casual idea helping Mama Fu's drive sales

Many fast casual restaurants typically do well at lunch while dinner business falls off. Mama Fu's Asian House has developed a hybrid to boost sales at dinner and weekends. During the day, Mama Fu's locations operate with counter service for the lunch rush, but at night and weekends, the concept turns into a full-service format, making it more appealing for the dinner crowd, such as families. Randy Murphy, the president and CEO of the brand based in Austin, TX says, " the hybrid concept has proven very successful with Mama Fu's costumers, bringing in a dinner crowd that skirts most fast-casual concepts." He goes on to indicate, "Whereas most fast-casual concepts will do 60 percent revenue from lunch and 40 percent revenue from dinner, we do the opposite with 40 percent lunch and 60 percent dinner, and a lot of it is because of our flex-casual service model." This is one reason Mama Fu's has turned around from a struggling brand to a successful concept looking to grow. Will keep you posted if other fast casual concepts transition to flex-casual prototypes in the future.