Case Study: Garden Fresh Restaurant Delivers Lasting Loyalty

Garden Fresh Restaurant (doing business as Souplantation/Sweet Tomatoes), a 30-year veteran of the all-you-care-to-eat restaurant business, lacks the margin to develop expensive guest loyalty and employee retention programs. Instead, the company made trust — respect and responsiveness to its diners and its employees — its guiding business principle. By consciously embracing this principle over the long term, by making key business decisions in the context of this strategy, and by applying it equally to guests and employees, the company has succeeded in increasing sales, reducing costs, and creating brand fanatics inside and outside of the organization.