In the restaurant industry, it’s easy to get caught up in what your competitors are doing.

You check their reviews. You notice their new specials. You hear about their remodel.

But here’s the problem: focusing too much on beating the restaurant down the street can pull your attention away from what matters most: building the best version of your own brand.

The smartest operators approach competition differently. They don’t just look at what others are doing, they analyze where they can win and how they can stand out.

For decades, restaurant competition has been framed as a head-to-head race:

• Matching or undercutting prices
• Copying menu innovations
• Running similar promotions
• Outspending on advertising

The flaw? These tactics don’t necessarily improve your guest experience or loyalty. You might “win” in one area but lose in the long-term if it’s not something that matters to your guests.

Sometimes, your competitors may be winning in categories that aren’t worth your resources—or that you can’t realistically dominate without losing focus elsewhere.

A Smarter Approach to Restaurant Competition

Instead of chasing every move your competitors make, the best operators measure two things together:

• Guest Sentiment – How guests actually feel about their experience with you.
• Market Relative Performance – How that sentiment compares to other restaurants in your area.

When you look at both, you can:

• Double down on your true strengths
• Identify areas worth improving that actually impact loyalty
• Ignore distractions that won’t move the needle for your brand

This is the kind of insight that transforms competition from a distraction into a growth strategy.

Putting It Into Action

Here’s how you can start using this approach:

• Pull your data – Combine guest feedback, online review sentiment, and market comparisons.
• Plot your categories – Place each category in the quadrant it belongs.
• Make strategic decisions – Promote strengths, fix risks, improve differentiators, and decide on competitive gaps.
• Reassess quarterly – Track changes and see if your adjustments are paying off.

How Competitive Pulse Helps

Ovation’s Competitive Pulse, part of our Summer Release, is designed to make competitor analysis simpler and smarter.

Instead of reading hundreds of competitor reviews yourself, Competitive Pulse uses AI to analyze guest feedback across 34 categories for restaurants in your market.

Choose your competitors, and Ovation will use AI to classify their reviews into 34 restaurant-specific categories. You’ll be able to compare strengths and weaknesses across categories using public Google review data (with more platforms coming soon), based on the previous 90 days of reviews.

From there, you can apply the tips discussed in this article.

Ready to see where you stand in your market?

Request a demo of Competitive Pulse and discover the insights you need to compete smarter.