Table of Contents

Definition

Borrowed operator-applied frame, term drawn from military, political, and bankruptcy strategy lexicon. A competitive maneuver where a low-priced front offering serves as cover for a category-line breach. The price is not the weapon, it is the cover. The low price draws the competitor’s Guest across the category line; once the Guest crosses, the full proposition of the moving brand does the holding work. Applied case: a QSR-adjacent chain’s discounted meal offer used not as a price war inside its own category but as a category breach against QSR, disguised as a price move.

Explanation

The mistake most operators make watching a competitor’s price cut is treating it as the whole strategy. A [Stalking Horse] move uses price as bait, not as the actual play — the real objective is getting a Guest who’s never crossed the category line to cross it once, because once they’re inside, the fuller proposition (menu, atmosphere, [Guest Experience]) is what has to close and hold them, not the discount that got them there.

The diagnostic is useful defensively as much as offensively: when a price cut from outside your category looks aggressive, ask what the cut is covering for. An independent operator who reads a competitor’s cheap offer as “they’re competing on price” and responds by cutting his own price has misread the move entirely — the competitor was never fighting on price, they were using price to breach a door the independent left open.