Millennial Marketing

When my friend and former colleague, John Rood, SVP Marketing at ABC Family, told me a little over a year ago that they were planning to reposition the network to Millennials, I admit I was more than skeptical. Disney-owned ABC Family was anything but hip. It sounded like a Bridge to Terabitha too far.

Fast forward one year and ABC Family, tagline “A New Kind of Family”, is on fire going into the crucial April ‘upfront’ advertiser buying season. According to Multichannel.com, ABC Family network just finished its best quarter ever. The reason? Strength in its core audience of 12-34 year old “millennials”.

Its new show, “The Secret Life of the American Teenager” about a young teen dealing with an unwanted pregnancy, finished its first season last month as the network’s most-watched series ever, averaging 3.9 million viewers, despite being head to head with the established ‘Gossip Girls’ on CW. Two other hit shows, “Greek” and “Lincoln Heights”, deal with multi-cultural family issues.

Movies are another bright spot. The Jan. 18 premiere of “Another Cinderella Story” was the top cable movie of the first quarter, drawing 5.6 million viewers. The April 19 premiere of the original movie, “My Fake Fiance”, about a woman who devises an engagement sham to replace her stolen belongings scored 3.7 million viewers, ranked as ABC Family’s fourth best ever among adults and women 18 to 34.

An understanding of the importance of family relationships to Millennials combined with a willingness to deal with the new family issues of the new Millennium (in a way that doesn’t alienate their parents), appears to underlie ABC’s success with this group, an insight confirmed by President, Paul Lee:

“[Millennials] are optimistic, they make decisions by consensus, and they’re diverse — but most importantly they love family, which is great for our name and the brand,” he said. “They may define family differently — it’s not Ozzie and Harriet, but rather a much messier, more passionate, more fun, more real family,”
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A visit to the Secret Life of the American Teenager blog reveals the depth of attachment viewers feel for this show. Here are some sample responses to the question of whether 15-year old Amy will make a good mom:

“I think Amy will do great as a mom and i think her and ben make a great couple cuz i mean wat guy would stay with a pregnant girl and its not even his baby that shows how much he really cares about amy unlike ricky he was still having sex with adrian and trying to get with grace at the same time! But i think ricky should still be in the baby’s life because the baby needs to know the real father, but ben and amy will do great. ”

“Okay, I’m getting annoyed at Amy right now. She’s always feeling so sorry for herself, but look at everyone else, they’re not. Ricky loves John and isn’t feeling sorry for himself. Everyone’s being such a great support system. I totally think Amy will be a great mom, but only when she finds out how lucky she is to have such a strong support system, because a lot of girls don’t no matter the situation whether boys, drugs, sickness, or babies. OMGSecretLife”

“Amy is going to be a great mom. yes, it will be dificult she mite even have to dump Ben and focuse more on baby John. Ricky is also going to be a great daddy..::. I LOVE THE SECRET LIFE OF THE AMERICAN TEENAGER.::.”

Okaaaayyy, this is definitely not Father Knows Best. Bravo to ABC Family for having the courage to address this target in a relevant way. And sorry, John, for ever doubting it.

Everyone knows by now that the way to reach Millennials is to go where they are, which is Facebook, MySpace, blogs, and other social media. In theory, the cost is low and the ROI potential is high, but figuring out exactly how to do it can be daunting.

Eric Brown, landlord at Urbane Apartments in Royal Oak, Michigan outside Detroit, spent the last six months cracking the code. Using the insight “no one cares about your apartments”, he worked with Mike Whaling of 30 Lines to build community, reduce paid listings, enhance reputation and increase sales. No small order. The campaign (description starts page 22 of the slide share presentation embedded above) left no social media stone unturned: Facebook, Myspace, blogs, Flickr, VIP passes, logo merchandise, text messaging and more. The creative is hip and fun and gives extra meaning to the word ‘community’.

The results are impresive — 65% increase in web traffic, 4300% increase in blog traffic and a 100% increase in lease conversions. With no paid media for 6 months, Urbane is in third position on a google search for ‘Royal Oak Apartments’. Most impressive, Whaley reports low manpower cost – 2 employees at 1-2 hours a day plus a few paid resident bloggers.

This case demonstrates the incredible power of social media to flatten the playing field for marketers. What I like about it is that it shows how anyone can use these tools to increase business performance if they have imagination and understand that social media is ultimately about customer service and community. Eric Brown was featured as one of four social media innovators in BusinessWeek in February. Thanks, Mike, for sharing the details.

Social media creates communities of interest, so what could be more natural than reaching young wine enthusiasts through Twitter? Wine is inherently social – you drink it with other people. It’s also inherently discussable and recommendations are a form of social currency.

Given the affinities, it’s no great surprise that it’s pretty easy to find young wine marketers on Twitter. Yesterday I spoke with Shana Ray (@sharayray), an ex-ad agency strategic planning professional and social media strategist who works with the Sonoma County Tourism Bureau to help wineries with their social media strategies. Shana says there is a lot of interest in Millennials among wine marketers. She is considering doing some of her own ethnographic research to help them get insight into young wine enthusiasts.

Other fascinating Millennial wine marketers I’ve friended online include Sasha Kadey, (@skadey, King Estate Winery), and Leah Hennessey (@millennier).

Most of the tweeting is around books, wine news, wines tasted. But there has already been at least one real time ‘Twitter wine tastings‘, sponsored by Project Vino. (This technique was first used by bloggers has been going strong for over a year at WinebloggingWednesday.org).

As more Millennials join Twitter, I suspect wine marketers will be among the first to engage them with real social currency — knowledge of and news of wine, where to find it, and connections to real wine authorities. What makes these conversations so powerful is that they can happen right in the store or restaurant. Mike McGowan, aka @WineGuyMike is creating in-store kiosks and a few months ago I blogged about Drync Wine, a cool mobile app for easy access to wine recommendations. Mintel data suggests that it will be worth the effort: adults 18-24 are more likely than average to say they ‘stick with the brands they know’ and more decided based on brand than on price.

Millennials’ love affair with wine is part of a larger relationship wtih gourmet foods. Millennials think of food and wine as an ‘art form’, and eating and drinking with discrimination as another means of self-expression. Although it may seem counter intuitive, a love for gourmet actually decreases with age. 22% of young people 18-24 agree with the statement “I try to eat gourmet food whenever I can”, a figure that is 20% higher than that of all U.S. adults. Their love of fine food extends to wine. Unlike French Millennials, young adults in North America are increasing their wine consumption. A Gen Y blogger who calls himself ‘The VinoBandito’ describes the appeal this way:

I’d like to let you in on a little secret about young people. Just around the time we reach legal drinking age we also start to have a desire for sophistication or a desire to be seen as an adult. We’ve done a lot of moving on from our teenage years and, contrary to popular belief, the majority of us are not a bunch of binge drinking, hard partying, pierced, and tattooed hooligans as we are portrayed in the press. The majority of young people today are smart, ambitious, inquisitive, and above all we’re sophisticated and discerning consumers (even if we’re not yet, we like to think so). This is where wine can compete. Make us feel sophisticated, after all this is one of the ways it is marketed to adults. Wine is a complex and beautiful drink with a great history and a great culture. This is something a lot of the Millennial Generation would love to learn about but the marketers don’t think we want to learn the story. Sure we have our idiosyncrasies and like cool stores, but most of all we want to be treated like the adults that we are.

Evidence that Millennials are food and wine enthusiasts isn’t hard to find. When my daughter, Ariella (right), went to Hong Kong two summers ago, most of her photos were of the things she ate — both before and after they were cooked. The title of her Facebook album “Adventures in Cuisine”, sort of says it all.

Two of our Millennial researchers, Sara and Marty of Portland, OR record their meals in area restaurants in a blog, knowourvelocity.com and regularly post reviews on yelp.com. While doing taxes they “discovered a shocking amount of money was spent on dining in and out for just the two of us last year.” In March, they travelled to Ireland.

Ariella, Sarah and Marty are all fairly typical of their age group:

• According to Mintel, two out of three Millennials are Cooking Enthusiasts who make an average of 4.4 ‘elaborate’ or ‘gourmet’ meals every six months.

• Millennials’s spend a disproportionate amount of their income on food, food away from home and alcoholic beverages.

• Millennials are driving growth in the beer, wine and bourbon categories. They tend to prefer premium / imported brands.

• Millennials are trading up from fast food in their restaurant choices: 18-24 year olds were the only age group to show a decline in the average number of meals eaten at QSR’s between 2007 and 2008.

• 18-24 year olds are 17% more valuable than the average customer to the leading seven chains of casual restaurants.

With their absolute size and aggregate income expected soon to exceed that of Baby Boomers, it is critical for marketers to understand how Millennials think about their food, beer and spirits choices. But learning about Millennials, and especially trendsetters, can be tricky. They are unlikely to respond to traditional surveys, and their answers are likely to be superficial when they do. By definition, their tastes can change rapidly.They are hungry for newness, and want to know what is emerging and coming next. Because of this mindset they don’t get stuck being literal and instead thrive on new ideas and can envision how or why something not yet a part of their world might fit in.

Here’s how Marty describes his desire to stay on trend:

I think one of the challenges is always keeping a brand or product ‘new’ while maintaining the core brand characteristics that drew Millennials to it in the first place. That’s certainly true of my own experience anyway. Whether we’re eating out or I’m cooking, the underlying motivation is almost always avoiding boredom…hate doing the same things again and again. I think there’s a related tendency to want to avoid things (brands, idea, anything) that seems too mainstream. SEEMS being the key word. We’ve actually shifted our grocery shopping away from Whole Foods for that very reason, in part. All the excitement over ‘natural’ and ‘organic’ foods was new and exciting at first, but after awhile it seemed a little too..typical…like we were doing it just because it was the thing to do. Why do I want organic chicken again? What does that even mean? Why do two small chicken breasts cost me $15?

Understanding Millennial food and wine enthusiasts proves to be a very real challenge to marketers who want to learn how to make their offerings appealing. That’s why we are starting a unique research project designed to investigate these questions. Here are some of the topics we plan to investigate:

• What motivates their interest in new tastes, flavors and experiences? What is emerging in terms of new tastes, flavors and experiences? What motivates these desires?

• Where do they learn about new food, restaurants, recipes, wine and distilled spirits products? What is the role of word of mouth, on premise consumption and off premise parties? Who do they look up to for recommendations?

• How important are characteristics such as ‘organic’, ‘locally grown’ and ‘hormone free’ in their food and wine choices? Everyone talks about it, but do they do more than make more than token gestures? What exactly what are they doing? What more would they like to be doing?

• How interested are they in travel shows, cooking shows, celebrity chefs and other food and wine media? Which ones are most influential and why?

• What are their different restaurant eating occasions? What drives or triggers a night out? What do they look for in a restaurant experience and how does that vary by occasion or who they are with? How important is the dining experience relative to the food? What would get them to eat out more often?

• How is the economic downturn influencing their overall spending and brand choices? Where are they cutting back and what are they holding ‘sacred’? If they had more money, how would they spend it?

The study will focus on Millennial trendsetters who love food and wine. If you are a marketer interested in partiipating, give me a call!

I am often asked when does Gen Y end and what comes next? Because they are still children, there is room for debate as to when Gen Z start(ed) and what it will be like. Some say it began as early as 1991, but I would say later — today’s 18-year old looks like a Millennial to me. Some say it started in 2001 with 9/11, which would slam this group with a very unfortunate name.

What will define Gen Z is a more interesting and relevant question. In the absence of any real data, the temptation is to say that Gen Z will be just like Gen Y only moreso. I doubt it. Every generation so far has had unique qualities based on the times they were raised and prevailing parental attitudes. Those who ascribe to the Fourth Turning generational theory predict Gen Z will be a second ‘Silent Generation’. This may prove to be true, given their common roots in a depression/recession.

There are some clues to be gained by watching Gen Z’s parents, mostly Gen X’ers, but also late Boomers and early Gen Y’s. These parents take ‘helicopter’ parenting to new heights. It’s been said, never to allow work to get between a Gen X mom and her child. Until recently, these kids have had the best of everything technology and money can buy. Mintel data shows the best predictor of use of organic foods and locally grown foods by far is presence of children. Gen X puts ‘time for family’ among its top values.

In the end, there’s really no way to really know yet how the combination of super-parenting and recession will influence Gen Z, but it will be fascinating to watch.

In the past week, I’ve been told I think like a Millennial and that I ‘totally get Millennials’. As a Boomer, I am very proud of this accomplishment. It’s not easy for people my age to think Millenniall-ly, I had to work at it.

Do you think like a Millennial? Here are some simple tests:

1. Is work something you ‘go to’ or something you just do? Younger workers view work as something you do — anywhere, any time. They are experts at time shifting, asynchronous communication, and multi-tasking. They see no reason why they can’t use Facebook at work and take work calls at home. It’s just life.

2. When faced with a problem, is your first resort to check the manual or just dive right in? Gen Y knows they can find out the answer to anything anytime anywhere. Their first response to a question they don’t know is to Google it. Lack of information is never a problem, because they know how to find out.

3. Do you prefer face to face communication or electronic? Gen Y uses all the tools, email, IM, text, Facebook, Twitter, blogs and more. If it can be handled electronically, why should we meet?

4. When you describe Millennials as ‘entitled’ do you mean it as a criticism or a compliment? What many Boomers think of as unjustified arrogance, Millennials believe is earned.

5. Do you feel loyal to the company or to your co-workers? Millennials have no sense of loyalty to a firm, but they do feel passionate about their team. They are collaborative to a fault.

6. Are you striving to make a mark or to make a difference? Gen Y’s core value is to fight for what they believe in. They want to do well by doing good, not wait until they’ve done well to do good.

7. Do you laugh at or with Ryan Howard on the Office? Ryan is caricature of what Gen X thinks of Millennials — overly technology laden, surly, and arrogant. Yet Ryan’s humor is some of the most subtle on the show (in fact many of the episodes were written by BJ Novak who plays Ryan). Ex: “I miss the days when there was only one office party I didn’t want to go to”.

8. Do you embrace or distrust the term ‘Millennial’? Millennials really hate being labeled at all. They chafe at the expectation that just because they are young, they are totally up on all things ‘Millennial’. They prefer not to be thought of as part of a generation, but as an individual.

9. Do you think of a day as 12 hours or 24 hours? Millennials think of time as a resource to be allocated as needed, not by a clock.

10. Is your glass half empty or half full? Millennials are notoriously civic-minded and optimistic. It’s no coincidence that Obama and Pepsi both made optimism cornerstones of their brands. No matter that the average Millennial carries $24,000 in college debt and is most likely underemployed. They see a better world coming.

New research by Ohio State reports a link between time spend on Facebook and academic performance. (“Facebook Use Linked to Less Textbook Time“, USA Today). Students who said they used Facebook reported grade-point averages between 3.0 and 3.5; those who don’t use it said they average 3.5 to 4.0. Also, Facebook users said they studied one to five hours a week, vs. non-users’ 11 hours or more. Students who spend their time accumulating friends, chatting and “poking” others on the site may devote as little as one hour a week to their academic work.

There’s no question that effective use of social media requires an enormous amount of time. 65% of the students in the Ohio State study who use Facebook reported using using it at least once every day, and many were accessing it multiple times. A new study of marketers who are using social media says nearly two-thirds (64%) of are using social media for five hours or more each week, with 39% using it 10 or more hours weekly. 10% are spending more than 20 hours each week with social media. In my own work, I find that ‘social media creep’ has set in. I now devote several hours a day to two blogs and Tweetdeck. I’ve been blogging for about a year now, and I devote more time to it every month. According to this study, I am pretty typical:

The survey found that there is a direct relationship between how long marketers have been using social media and their weekly time commitment. For people just beginning with social media, the median weekly time commitment is two hours per week. However, for those who have been at it for months, the median jumps to 10 hours per week. For those who report social media marketing use for years, the median is 20+ hours each week.

So what is the ROI on all that precious time that’s being invested? Is it ‘worth it’? I suppose it depends on what kind of reward you are looking for.

At the most basic level, social media is entertainment, that’s why it’s called ‘media’. Does entertainment need an ‘ROI’? If it replaces other entertainment like TV, sports or and video games, I would say ‘no’. However, if it eats into study or work time, the answer is ‘yes’.

There are more productive ways to develop social skills (see the Dentyne campaign for examples). According to my Millennial daughter, “there are plenty of people completely lacking social skills on Facebook, that’s why they’re on facebook
rather than interacting and using said social skills.” The skills students are developing in ‘personal branding’ also should be considered a poor tradeoff when thousands of dollars are being spent on education. But for marketers, boomers, and other professionals, the answer may depend on how social media ‘rewards’ are measured.

Accenture surveyed 3000 adults of all ages on their adoption of various technologies. The findings show there has been a very rapid adoption of blogging, podcasts and other social media among older consumers over the past year — and a leveling off among Millennials. In fact, Accenture’s research found “boomers increased their uptake of popular consumer technology applications at an average of 50 percent last year, nearly 20 times faster than Generation Y.”

* Boomers increased their rate of reading blogs and listening to podcasts by 67 percent year-over-year. That’s nearly 80 times faster than Gen Y (1 percent).

* Boomers posted a 59 percent increase in use of social networking sites, more than 30 times faster than Gen Y (2 percent).

* Boomers increased watching/posting videos on the Internet by 35 percent,while Gen Y usage decreased slightly (-2 percent).

Marketers appear to be happy with the rewards of their social media activities. 81% say their social media efforts have generated exposure for their businesses. At least two in three participants found that increased traffic occurred with as little as 6 hours a week invested in social media marketing, while those who have been doing this for years reported better results. The study also found more than half of participants reported a rise in search engine rankings. Improved search engine rankings were most prevalent among those who’ve been using social media for years, with nearly 80% reporting a rise. Though about one in two found social media generated qualified leads, only about one in three said social media marketing helped close business, and this number goes up as high as 61% for those using SM longer. Finally, most strongly agree that marketing costs dropped when social media marketing was implemented.

For non-marketing types, the rewards also appear to be worth the time. According to Accenture, “they are likely adding life-enriching experiences that they see the younger generation adopting, and striving to remain intellectually and technologically literate, versatile and job-skill competitive.” Not bad for something that is also entertaining. No wonder newspapers and TV are having a hard time competing in the attention game!

In the end, how you measure ‘worth it’ may depend on what activity is being displaced. In my case, it is sleep. I think most Millennials would agree that is a reasonable tradeoff.

A posting on Penelope Trunk’s Brazen Careerist blog this week posed the question “Is Gen Y better than everyone else at promoting itself?” The answer is ‘You bet!’

The concept of ‘personal branding’ has been around for many years, ever since William Arruda and Tom Peters first introduced the then controversial concept 20 years or so ago. What’s changed are the tools and the mindset.

In the past, communicating about yourself meant a resume and a web site, at least for those who could build one or afford to pay someone else to build one. Now, social media makes communicating about yourself free and easy. What is Facebook if not an ‘ad’ for youself? What is Twitter but a new type of press release? What is Linked In but a rolodex on steroids?

The other, more important change, is mindset. Gen Y sees its career path evolving much differently from their parent’s. They don’t expect to ever see the rewards for staying with one company, so they think of themselves as free agents, with no qualms about having a series of short term jobs. Many are by-passing jobs altogether, selling their skills directly as freelancers or starting their own companies.

Dan Schwabel, 25, is emblematic of this new approach. In a matter of a year or so, he has built a personal brand on the subject of (what else?) personal branding. This week, he introduced his new book, Me 2.0. Dan must practice what he preaches because the blogosphere is alive with news of this book, as are the mainstream media. Here he is on the Huffington Post.

“Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success is the first book written by a millennial (I’m 25), for the millennial generation, about personal branding and it is the paramount book for using social media tools to build a personal brand. Me 2.0 follows my journey through social media, while walking the reader through my proven 4-step personal branding process (discover, create, communicate, maintain). It also includes over forty expert quotes from leaders including Don Tapscott, Libby Sartain, Penelope Trunk, Guy Kawasaki and David Kirkpatrick. There are more than seventy research reports, three personal case studies and enough tips to keep you occupied for hours. “

I have been following Dan on Twitter for many months (@danschawbel). He has over 16,000 followers and over 4000 tweets focused on personal branding advice and links. His blog, http://personalbrandingblog.com has over 5000 readers. There is also a magazine. He has been featured in Businessweek, NYT, Fast Company and more.

Dan may be the most accomplished Millennial in the personal branding space, but he is not the only one creating significant personal brands to showcase their areas of expertise. Here are a few of the more interesting Millennial marketer brands I’ve discovered:

Leah Hennessey: The Millennier: Millennials + Wine

Adrienne Waldo: Ask a Millennial @adriennewaldo

Blake Sunshine: The Perennial Millennial @blakesunshine

Nick Armstrong: I’m Nick Armstrong @imnickarmstrong.com

Greg Rollett: Gen Y + Youth Culture Marketing

Jabez LeBret: Jabez Productions@jabezlebret

According to Schawbel, here are five reasons why Generation Y is better at this process than everyone else:

1. We have the least amount of responsibilities.
Personal branding is a very time consuming exercise that most adults don’t do because of the sheer amount of responsibilities they have, which are priorities to them.

2. We’re already marketing ourselves intuitively.
We’re all marketing ourselves without thinking much of it, but Gen Y is doing it on steroids. Gen Y is all hyper-connected with mass media, including the fact that their cell phones are an extension of their hands and that we go online more than any other generation.

3. We are equipped with a bottomless pit of marketing tools.
Every communication channel is a marketing tool, and since Gen Y is the most plugged in generation, there isn’t a tool we don’t touch.

4. We understand how to build personal connections to build a brand.Gen Y’ers are the masters of social media, which means we understand that marketing exists through other people. We use social media tools to put us in touch with other people who can help make us more successful. Gen Y-ers can position themselves in their company as the go-to-person for all technology needs, making them an invaluable asset to their work group.

5. They have no choice but to be marketing mavens.
Standing out among the millions of job seekers is quite hard in this economy and the competition to succeed in any industry isn’t declining anytime soon. Internship hiring will be cut by 21%, co-op hiring by 11% and 22% less jobs for 2009 graduates, according to NACE. The amount of pressure on millennials is immense and it forces them to rethink the way they are perceived and how they market themselves to stand out from the pack.

Perhaps the strongest testimony to Schabel’s approach? He is advertising to hire an intern!

Over and over in our research we hear Millennials talk about wanting to make a difference. This article by Chip Walker provides perspective on this insight and helps explain what their idealism means for their careers and brand choices. I am especially intrigued by his description of Gen Y’s activism as ‘self-activism’ – the idea that their very life is a ’cause’. This is a key difference between Gen Y and Gen X. The article originally appeared on Mediapost’s Engage Gen Y blog. I have never reprinted an article in totality before, but this one was just to insightful to excerpt. It carries a strong message to brands or others who want to motivate this generation: Be sure you have a purpose ‘worth fighting for’.

The Rise Of Cultural Movements

Our research on behalf of New York-based Rosa Mexicano Restaurants, reinforces the importance of having the right mix of food and atmosphere to attract Millennials. The main reason young adults eat out is to ‘relax’. They want a place that isn’t too stuffy and the food is exciting and different. What stands out about Rosa’s are their signature items: tableside-prepared guacamole (photo left) and pomegranate margaritas. In addition, each of Rosa’s eight locations has unique decor and a lively bar. When I visited their Lincoln Center restaurant last month; there was no sign of a slow down.

Unfortunately, Rosa’s is the exception rather than the rule. Full service restaurant revenue has declined steadily since 2005, with fine dining being hit hardest. (IBIS, Dec. 2008)

With an average entree price of $19.52, 50% higher than at a casual restaurant, it’s no surprise that 47% of consumers say they are “spending less at fine dining restaurants” (Mintel, Nov. 2008). Consequently, fine dining is one of the sectors expected to be hardest hit by the recession. Technomic predicts revenue falling as much as 12%.

Who eats at fancy restaurants? Just about everyone it turns out. It’s true that frequency of eating at fine dining restaurants increases dramatically with income; all but the lowest income households eat at them at least a few times a year. The average household eats out at a fine dining restaurant about 8.6 times a year. Younger adults, 18-34 years, are especially important to fine dining restaurants with 10.9 visits a year. Their high level of eating out makes them 17% more important to casual restaurants as well.

Beyond mere frequency, younger age groups are also more likely to have larger dining parties than older age groups, a revenue driver that is only partially outweighed by the fact that “the larger the dining party becomes, the less is spent on a per-person basis.” Finally, Mintel reports menu item sharing is more prevalent with younger patrons, “as a form of socializing and experimenting, as well as a way to keep costs down. Older people may be more apt to view the occasion in more intimate terms with a loved one.”

In any event, younger patrons are critical to fine dining and casual restaurants, so it’s not surprising to learn marketers are finding innovative ways to keep young adults from trading down to fast food or cooking more special meals at home. The Wall Street Journal (“Bar Wars“, 4.3.08) reports urban high end restaurants are converting some of their dining space to bars and serving more affordable ‘bar food’. Not only are the smaller portions and less expensive ingredients of appetizers more profitable, the margins on beer, wine and cocktails are much higher than on food. Here are just four examples of this new trend:

Alain Ducasse’s Benoit bistro in New York recently rolled out a bar menu that includes sliders and $1 deviled eggs.

Daniel Boulud, the Manhattan chef behind one of the city’s most formal restaurants, Daniel, plans to open DBGB Kitchen & Bar, featuring 24 beers on tap and homemade sausage and hot dogs, in May or June.

Christophe Émé, chef and owner of Ortolan in Los Angeles, has begun calling about 100 customers a week to tell them about his new bar menu.

Thomas Keller’s Per Se restaurant in Manhattan, where the only dinner option has been a $275, nine-course prix fixe menu, launched an a la carte menu for its lounge area last week. Diners are seated around coffee tables.

Eric Greenspan’s Foundry, in Los Angeles, featured high end cuisine until 3 months ago when it was turned into a lounge with nightly live bands, cocktail waitresses and promotions such as “fried-chicken-and-waffles night.”

Casual restaurants are taking a different road to attracting Millennials, emphasizing low prices and special promotional offers. For example, T.G.I. Fridays is advertising its top ten entrees available on Friday’s for just $9.99.