A Guide To The Best Restaurant Marketing Tactics Of Sucessful Restaurant Operators

There’s a vicious cycle going on when it comes to restaurant marketing.

Don’t get me wrong. There are several great ways to market a restaurant. But even so, many restaurant operators simply aren’t made aware of the best restaurant marketing techniques by their consultants or advertising sales people. They want you to come to them from time to time. If it means giving you mediocre advices that work, but still mediocre, then so be it.

For now I’ll be discussing the key points of some of the best restaurant marketing campaigns I’ve seen in recent years. So the next time you talk to your consultant, you’ll know when he or she is holding out on you.

Here goes.

1. Branding
There has been a lot of talk going on about branding. They say a restaurant operator needs to do more branding or else do a better job of it if he or she wants to stay on business. But no one seems to slow down and explain what branding really is and how to build it.

A brand is a promise. Period. The brand is what the media, vendors, employees (internal customers) and most importantly, the customers, come to expect when they sit down at one of your tables. Building your restaurant’s brand means you are closing the gap between what you promised and what you deliver.

As a restaurant operator, it should be your life-long commitment to establish a strong brand for your restaurant.

2. Positioning
Positioning is another word for “marketing gimmick”. It is one of the best restaurant marketing tactics around, though underdeveloped in its execution most of the time.

Positioning is the place your brand holds in the customers’ minds relative to the rest of the competition. For example, $6 quick meals, served in 55 seconds or its free, etc. Great positioning makes effective use of USP, or unique selling proposition. Your restaurant’s USP is what’s yours and yours alone.

For example, both Burger King and McDonald’s sell burgers. But Burger King’s market positioning is they go for flame-grilled burgers while McDonald’s likes them fried.

3. Due Diligence
Rome wasn’t built in a day. Sure. Your restaurant is no great city, but the principle still applies.

The best restaurant marketing tactics do not materialize in a vacuum. They are built on a solid foundation of knowledge and facts, your customers, your competition, your financial history, your market history, other financial factors and all things in between. Not even Coca-Cola could market to everyone all the time.

An exercise in consistent market research and due diligence only has room for business success in the long run.

4. Training
What’s the point of marketing a restaurant that can’t even serve itself? Simply put, even the best restaurant marketing tactics won’t be able to do much for a B-grade restaurant. The money is better off spent on improving internal operations.

Training is a vital component of an effective restaurant marketing campaign. I’m not talking about a grand orientation program. As a restaurant operator, you need to set up an ongoing training regime that improves your staff’s competencies over time. And incorporating restaurant marketing sessions in one of your training programs isn’t a bad idea either.

The most successful restaurant businesses in the country makes use of one or more of these restaurant marketing techniques. Take it from me, employ the above tactics and put them to great effect, and you’ll only see good things to come for your business - thanks to these four key aspects of the best restaurant marketing tactics around.

Do You Wish There Was An Easier Way To Resolve The Issue Of Non-Tippers In Your Restaurant?

I am a big fan of the TV show Friends. Last night I was watching some of the back episodes when this scene came up. In the scene, Ross was having a fit because Leonard, Rachel’s father, didn’t want to give the waiter anything more than 4%. Or was it 8%? Anyway, one or the other.

This struck a chord in me as I sit there watching comfortably on the sofa. I know this restaurant business by heart, and I’m very much aware that there are people who simply refuse to give the waiter a decent tip, even when the service was superb. In the show, it was a funny thing. But it isn’t so funny in real life especially when you’re the one looking down the barrel.

There are two sides to this story.

I did some research. It turns out, most diners actually agree that tipping is always polite and means a lot to the waiter. Waiters don’t get paid much up front. So they rely on tips to make a decent income. “15% is minimum, 20% is better,” says a forumer on the Yahoo! forums.

But for restaurant operators, it’s become a serious problem. I don’t want to generalize, but there really are certain groups who simply don’t tip. Period. My restaurant operator friends tell me they’ve been seeing some serious dissatisfaction on their waiter’s faces regarding this problem.

A simple solution is to impose in an auto gratuity policy for large groups. For example 15% auto gratuity for six diners, with a 2% increase for every additional person. It looks to me like a sound plan, and it is, with a few minor exceptions.

Some waiters don’t like the idea of a fixed auto gratuity. They say, “That customer could’ve tipped me more if there wasn’t a 15% auto gratuity policy written on the menu.” For customers, the idea of an auto gratuity policy always feels somewhat forced. In short, even both parties have problems with this system.

Here’s my take on the issue.

I believe diners should be satisfied with your restaurant’s service, tip or no tip. If a group of six diners enjoyed the experience at your place, then you just made six repeat customers. That’s very good for your business.

About tipping, I also believe that most diners would be more than happy to provide the waiter a generous tip if they were really happy with the service. If they still refused to tip, so okay, they are still going to be repeat customers in the future. You could always pay the waiter a little extra if the group came back and still refused to tip. I doubt you’ll be getting shorthanded in this exchange.

Auto gratuity isn’t a bad idea. But at least give your waiters the option to choose whether they want it imposed or not on a particular customer. In the end, it’s still the customer’s satisfaction that counts.

You know what else I believe in? I still believe there are more Ross’ than Leonards in this world.

Six Action Ideas To Market Your Restaurant To Schools In Your Area

The other day I didn’t feel like going to work. So I decided to drop my daughter off at the school. I did that, and that’s when the idea hit me. Schools are a great way to market your restaurant.

Think about it. Being school-friendly not only allows you to market your restaurant to children but to their parents and teachers as well. It also shows you are a responsible and caring member of the community. I mean, what have you got to lose?

Here are some ideas that come to mind.

1.   Reward outstanding efforts
I believe it’s important to reward a child who has exceeded the expectations of people around him or her. Talk to the principal and teachers and ask them to nominate students based on effect and diligence. As a reward, offer free desserts, free meals, or even parties. Gift certificates isn’t too bad an idea either.

2.   Sponsor school activities
All schools hold activities where the students travel long distances as part of an extra-curricular activity. If the principal knows you well enough, he or she might ask you to come along. It’s the perfect opportunity to connect with kids and other local businesses in your area.

3.   Host a cooking show at the school
This could be a great idea because it is both educational and rewarding at the same time for all parties involved. Bring in a couple of your own cooks from the restaurant. Get the teachers and students to participate as well. You could also throw in some nutrition lessons here and there.

As long as the timing is right, the principal and the teachers are going to love you for taking the time to do this at their school.

4.   Distribute coupons and share the profits with the school
Here’s a great way to increase profit during slow times.

Give out coupons to students and school staffs and ask to distribute them to family, friends, neighbors, co-workers, etc. For every coupon redeemed at the restaurant, your restaurant, 10% of the profit goes back to the school.

5.   Sponsor funding for school equipment
Schools are always looking to buy more equipment, sports uniforms, books, etc.

Volunteer to become a sponsor, and then cook up an event at your restaurant that will allow you to raise the funds needed for it. If you live in a small community, I believe your customers are going to be more than happy to support you since their kids might be attending that school next year.

What do you think? It’s a feasible idea, right, to participate in school-related events as a means of restaurant marketing. I think it’s a fantastic idea.

You Don’t Have To Be A Saint To Deal With Difficult Restaurant Customers

As a restaurant operator, if there’s one thing you can’t avoid from happening in your restaurant, it’s dealing with difficult customers. It won’t matter how much you train your employees to try and put on a happy face very early in the morning. Simply put, there are customers who come to your place lugging along their emotional baggage - it can’t be helped.

There are three basic types of difficult customers: the Chatty, the Critic, and the Vociferous. Here are some tips on how to identify and handle each type.

1. The Chatty
Chatty customers are quite friendly, perhaps too friendly, because they tend to keep your staff entertained by telling stories about themselves, asking them questions all the time, etc. This kind of small talk is disruptive to your operations especially on a busy day.

How to deal with chatty customer: Train your staff to say something like, “I’m sorry, I know you have something interesting to share. But it’s a busy day today and I need to tend to other tables. Maybe you could stop by Monday nights when we have fewer customers? I’ll have more time to talk with you then.”

If chatty customer still doesn’t get it, approach the table and instruct the waiter to attend to another matter, then say a few nice words to the customer and excuse yourself with a smile.

2. The Critic
The critic likes to put down anything and anybody. They’ll criticize the smallest things and pick apart your food, your place, etc.

How to deal with the critic: Listen.

Elizabeth Stanczak says,

“One of the best ways to deal with an angry person is to actively listen to what they are saying. Often the angry person is frustrated because they don’t believe they are being heard and think no one wants to help them.”

Make the time to listen to the critic’s grievances. Listen to what they have to say, then try your best to come up with a feasible solution. This should diffuse their frustrations and leave everyone happy.

Stanczak is the executive director for UTSA’s health and counseling services.

3. The Vociferous
This person displays bad manners in public, and if you’re unlucky, that public place is your restaurant. A classic example of a vociferous customer is one who talks very loudly enough for the whole restaurant to hear about his or her day.

How to deal with vociferous customer: It can be quite tricky handling this one. You can try and move the loud customers to a secluded part of the dining area, telling them the other diners are enjoying the background music and since they’re having such a lively conversation, maybe they’d like to sit in an area where they’ll have more privacy.

On the other hand, you can try and offer nearby diners to move to another, more quieter part of the restaurant. Hopefully vociferous customer would realize the loud talking isn’t being appreciated and quiet down on his or her own.

You don’t have to be a saint to deal with difficult customers. You just need lots of patience, and more patience, and follow my advice.

Learn How To Explode Your Restaurant’s Sales Using Twitter

They say learning is a never-ending process.

For restaurant operators, here’s the opportunity to learn something very important: Twitter might just be the killer application that could turn your restaurant brand into a household name. It’s social, it’s easy, and most importantly, it’s cheap.

Let’s learn something from the success of Naked Pizza.

Naked Pizza is a small pizza joint in New Orleans, described by AdAge as a “healthful” pizza shop. Its co-founder Jeff Leach wanted to build an online following. So he decided to market the brand using Twitter. He created an account, tracked people within a three-mile radius, and then started conversations with folks he felt might be interested in what his store has to offer.

Guess what? The idea clicked. On April 23, 2009, sales from Twitter accounted for 15% of the day’s earning. Not a bad number, if you ask me.

Here are five tips on how to market your restaurant effectively using Twitter:

1.    Track every sale
Build a simple point-of-sale system that will allow you to distinguish the origin of the sale. This way you’ll know if your efforts on Twitter are paying off and by how much.

2.    Twitter isn’t Facebook
Twitter is simpler than MySpace or Facebook, says Greg Sterling, principal of Sterling Market Intelligence. Twitter is also more immediate, more social, than Facebook.

3.    Stir up a conversation
This is self-explanatory, and I have already gone over this a couple times before.

Don’t bombard your followers with product placements, etc. Start a friendly conversation. Then slowly stir the talk towards what you’re trying to sell. The secret is for everything to appear natural.

4.    Sell last-minute inventory
Twitter’s ability to produce last-minute sales is its biggest strength. Zack Steven himself, co-founder of LocalTweeps, caught some discounted tickets at Guthrie Theater simply by founding out about it on Twitter at the last minute.

5.    Alert followers about your plans
Here I’ll be making another reference to KogiBBQ, a rolling Korean taco store that drives around LA, which uses Twitter to alert some 20,000 followers where it’s headed next.

Twitter gives you, the restaurant operator, the power to not just reach out, but also target people within your geographic location.

In many ways restaurant marketing on Twitter is similar to setting something on fire. You gather the materials (your promotions) that would start the flame, making sure they are highly combustible (effective promotions), pile them up together in one location (your target area), drench it in gasoline (start a friendly conversation), and finally flick a lit match onto it. Then step back and enjoy the show.

Build A Reputation Of Cleanliness Your Restaurant Can Be Proud Of

Customers might let you get away with bad-tasting food, sure, but they won’t let you get away for running a kitchen that doesn’t meet basic sanitation protocols. Cleanliness and sanitation of the work place should always be on your list of top priorities.

I once read an article on the New York Times that said humans pose a greater risk to food contamination than rats. The article goes,

“Professor Anderson filmed 100 people preparing a meat entree and a salad at home. The subjects were told they were being observed for chicken and meatloaf recipes, but the study was actually about food safety. Of the 100 cooks, fewer than 50 washed their hands before preparing food; 30 failed to clean their cutting boards; 82 undercooked the chicken; 46 undercooked the meatloaf; and 24 didn’t store raw meat on the bottom shelf of the refrigerator (to keep any leaking juices from dripping onto other food).”

This sanitation issue holds the very foundation of your restaurant business and keeps it together. If you can’t keep your restaurant clean, then might as well close up shop before the local government agency shuts you down for good. Here are some tips on how to keep your restaurant clean at all times.

1. Cleaning vs Sanitizing
Cleaning is removing any food particles from a surface, sanitizing is reducing the number of microorganisms down to safe levels. There’s a difference. On the other hand sterilizing is an effective way to clean and sanitize an object. As a restaurant operator it is your responsibility to make sure all your kitchen implements are properly sterilized before and after use.

Any surface, such as a cutting board or mixing bowl, that comes in contact with food needs to be properly cleaned and sanitized…

• after each use.
• anytime you switch to working on another type of food.
• anytime you are interrupted from a task long enough for the tools you are using to become contaminated.
• at least once every four hours if the tool or item is constantly being used.

2. Maintaining a clean dishwasher
A restaurant needs to have at least one dishwasher working in the kitchen. Pots and pans usually go straight to the sink for manual washing–but the dishes, flatware and glassware, they are best left to the dishwasher for cleaning.

According to the National Association of Foodservice Equipment Manufacturers, dishwashers are rated based on how many racks are cleaned in an hour, with an average of 20 dishes per rack. So take note of your average dish count on a busy day before you set out to buy a commercial dishwasher.

Here are some dishwasher cleanliness and sanitation tips:

• Check the dishwasher once a day if it’s still clean.
• Don’t overload the racks. Slide them in correctly and make sure the surfaces are exposed to the spray area of the machine.
• Air dry all items. Place pots and pans, cup and glasses upside down on the drying rack.
• Manage the crew’s operations so the same person doesn’t end up loading the dirty dishes and removing the clean ones from the racks.

3. Proper manual dish washing techniques
Anything that doesn’t go in the dishwasher ends up in the sink. All three sinks should be rinsed, cleaned and sanitized before and after use. Fill the first and second sink with warm water - at least 110 F. The first sink is used for soaking and washing, the second sink for rinsing, and then the third one for sanitizing.

If you’re using a sanitizing product on your equipment, don’t rinse it off. Air dry all equipment.

Here are some manual dish washing tips:

• Wear heavy duty nitrile pot sink gloves while dish washing.
• Check the water temperature from time to time and make sure it stays within the recommended range.
• Drain the rinse water as soon as it becomes cloudy.
• Don’t leave the water running while you’re washing the dishes.
• Instruct your dish washers to clean their hands thoroughly before and after washing.

The same New York Times article goes,

“And to echo the punch line of many a nature documentary, the greatest threat to restaurant sanitation is man: salmonella, for example, is typically initiated or spread through improper hand-washing, food handling or cooking.”

The greatest restaurant marketing approach is through word of mouth, and the best way to do that is to 1) serve your customers great food and 2) maintain a clean and sanitized restaurant at all times. Get these two things right and you basically nailed down the essential elements of what really makes a great restaurant click.

A Guide To Effective Restaurant Management

This time I’m going back to basics and talk about the “Four C’s” of effective restaurant management. So are you ready? Let’s begin.

The Four C’s of effective restaurant management are…

1.    Cost
Cost is one of the biggest reasons why restaurant operators fail at their own game. For a restaurant business, the biggest cost killer is food.

Maintaining food cost is more than just about buying at the lowest prices. I know, how much you pay for stuff is important, too, but it should be noted that controlling food costs also means watching how much goes to waste and how much leave the storerooms when no one is looking. Deal with this problem by doing a regular inventory check.

2.    Customer service
Customers are the reason you are in this business. I once overheard someone say, “It would be great working here if it wasn’t for the customers.” I remember shaking my head at that train of thought.

Some customers can be very difficult, okay, but also remember that most problems are solved by simply doing a better job of taking care of the customers up front. Train your staff consistently about quality customer service, and demand that they treat anyone who walks in those doors as honored guests.

3.    Consistency
This one is so important it deserves repeating. Your customers could have gone anywhere, but they chose to come to you. The reason for this is because they liked what they got from you the last time and so they are back for some more.

Be consistent with your service, the quality of your food, cleanliness, everything. If I’m a customer and I came back, it means I liked something the last time and I’m here for the same experience. If I ordered the same thing off the menu, I want the same exact recipe, prepared the same way.

4.    Cleanliness
I’ll tell you a secret. Most customers decide on the quality of food in a restaurant long before a plate is served in front of them.

I remember walking out of a little take-out joint because the place looked dirty. I have friends who tell me the food there actually tastes good. But even so, they don’t go there anymore because the place looked like it could use a little bit of cleaning every time.

In my recent posts I’ve only talked about restaurant marketing. Marketing on Twitter, marketing on YouTube, establishing a WiFi hotspot to increase sales, this and that, etc. But don’t get me wrong. While marketing is the bread-and-butter to your restaurant business, the last thing you want to do is lose focus on the management of the business itself.

As a dedicated restaurant operator, you need to be the best at both worlds.

Proof That Susan Boyle Can Help Improve Your Restaurant Business

The Eagles once said,

“There’s talk on the street, and it sounds so familiar.”

There’s definitely some talk going on in the online world, and it’s about none other than Susan Boyle.

Last month, around the first or second week of April, one or the other, a video of Susan Boyle singing on Britain’s Got Talent was aired on CNN. I was stunned. Everyone in my house was stunned, and the judges and the audience on TV, they were stunned, too. Within minutes of the performance Susan Boyle’s fans had uploaded the video on YouTube and millions of people were watching it at a rate of thousands of clicks per second.

A month later, the lucky – and extremely talented – singer is now a household name. What can your restaurant business learn from this incident?

The point I’m trying to get across is this: viral video marketing. Do you think it’s possible for your restaurant to achieve this kind of success through viral video marketing? The short answer is YES.

“The buzzwords viral marketing and viral advertising refer to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness…”

Notice the word “pre-existing”. Viral video marketing is effective, almost too good to be true, because it is cheap because it uses social networks that are already in place, most of them free. In my previous articles I’ve talked about advertising on Facebook, Twitter, etc. This time heed Susan Boyle’s example of viral video marketing.

Thing is you never really know which videos will go viral and which videos won’t. The principle is that it only takes one video out of a hundred videos to become a sensation. It’s your job to find that magic video. I believe that as a restaurant operator you should always be on the lookout for happy moments in your dining and kitchen area, and capture it using any video recorder you could buy these days for less than $150. Now that’s a bargain.

It is common courtesy to ask your customers’ permissions first before uploading the website on YouTube. Keep this in mind. I’m sure they’d say YES anyway.

Check out Kogi Korean BBQ restaurant for sample videos made for restaurant blogs.

Want To Turn Your Restaurant Into A WiFi Hotspot?

I’m always impressed whenever I see the sign “WiFi zone area” in a public place, especially in a café or a restaurant. Free Internet access is always a nice touch for any establishment. It’s a new business trend that’s been going on for some time now, and restaurant operators everywhere are quickly seeing its potential.

Turning your restaurant into a free Internet zone is easy. Don’t worry about the expenses. Studies show that a restaurant-turned-hotspot experienced a boost in sales by as much as 8%, and that’s not accounting for repeat customers in the future.

But before you set up anything, here’s what you need to know about turning your restaurant into a WiFi hotspot:

1.   It should be free service
Most restaurant hotspots are giving away free Internet access, and that’s what you should do too, because that’s what your customers expect from you. In return, you can expect increased sales and customer loyalty.

2.    Protect the network
Maintain a private server and only give away the password to customers when they are seated. This prevents nearby establishments from pirating your bandwidth and slowing it down.

3.    Remove electrical outlets near the dining area
One thing that worries restaurant operators about setting up a WiFi zone is that customers might turn into table campers who stay at their tables for hours on end with only a cup of coffee to their name.

In fact most customers don’t do this. But if you want to play it safe, make electrical outlets scarce so they can’t plug in their notebooks. They’ll run out of juice eventually.

4.    Create a separate network for your customers
Just because you already have an office network in place doesn’t mean you should use the same network for your WiFi zone area. The last thing you want is some creative customer hacking into your POS system and stealing vital business information. Creating two separate networks ensures everything is secure and where it should be.

As a final reminder, not every restaurant concept deserves to be a hotspot. A fine dining restaurant catering to couples doesn’t jibe very well with a free Internet service, for obvious reasons. On the other hand, if you operate a café or a casual dining joint, free Internet access is most welcome.

Are you ready to turn your restaurant into a hotspot?

If You Don’t Monitor Your Restaurant’s Brand On Twitter Now, You’ll Hate Yourself Later

It was three in the morning—I couldn’t sleep—when the idea for this article suddenly hit me while I was browsing through my Twitter updates. A friend of a friend of mine posted an update about a certain restaurant brand I’d rather not name. Anyway, the message went something like this,

“Just came out of this burger joint, and I must say I’m extremely let down they didn’t have Swiss cheese. That’s like riding in a train without handrails or staying in a hotel that doesn’t have towels.”

I immediately passed the update along to my friends as most of my friends are restaurant operators. I wanted to share this guy’s opinions to them, and in the process teach them the value of monitoring their online presence.

Monitoring your restaurant’s brand online is very important, especially on Twitter, where a mere comment has the extremely volatile property to catch on like wildfire.

I was hooked. I checked the followers of this guy on Twitter and it clocked in at 138,945 – he’s a pretty famous personality. It means that at the click of a button some 138,945 people were alerted to his negative opinions about the restaurant, and those were some very valid opinions too, if I might add.

In a split second, the restaurant’s name was challenged.

I can only hope the restaurant knows the word that’s been spreading about it on Twitter and hopefully be able to defend and redeem itself.

That’s the point I’m trying to get across folks. You can’t please everyone. Sooner or later somebody’s going to complain about this thing or that about your restaurant. You can’t stop these things from happening. Even the most famous restaurants have its detractors.

But what you can do, at least, is monitor your restaurant’s brand online. So when something like this happens, you can take care of the disgruntled customer right away and defend your restaurant’s reputation. In a way, it also serves as customer feedback on your part.

Putting on a blindfold and tying your hands behind your back has never been the best way to win a fight.

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