How A Restaurant Operator From New York Turned Collecting Customer Emails Into A Nightmare

There’s nothing wrong with asking help from your employees in collecting customer emails. It’s their job to help you, the restaurant operator, so you could help them, your employees, pay their electric bills and make ends meet. But don’t do it like this guy, Vadim Ponorovsky, who one day decided to email his restaurant staff and threatened to get them fired if they didn’t meet his quota of 20 customer emails in two weeks.

Jesus. Ponorovsky’s expletive-laden email is available here.

If anything, I applaud the guy for understanding the value of restaurant email marketing. But lines need to be drawn, and Ponorovsky here just crossed it big time.

I don’t believe throwing insults at your staff is the right way to establish a positive workplace attitude. It goes against everything I’ve advocated since day one. So in retrospect, here are a few tips on how you could motivate your staff about collecting customer emails… done MY way.

• Reward your staff with a dollar or two for every valid customer email address.
• Raise the stakes higher. For every 45 valid customer email addresses, they get $100.
• Why not turn the whole thing into a competitive game? Whoever collects the most valid emails gets a free lunch, etc.
• On the other hand, encourage your customers. Tempt them by putting together a part of the menu available only if they provide a valid email address. Experiment and learn from customer feedback.
• Assign someone to stand at the checkout counter and explain to customers about your “email only” menu items and services.
• Any customer on the restaurant email address list gets a 3%~5% VIP discount.

Be positive, not expletive. I’m pretty sure with proper encouragement your staff would be happy to help you with whatever restaurant marketing campaigns you’ve got cooking on the back burner. Just don’t send them morning emails like Vadim Ponorovsky.

I’m thrilled to hear your opinions on this latest series of events. Leave a comment below.

Proof That Social Media Works As An Effective Restaurant Marketing Platform

Always try to see things in a positive light, even when there’s tough competition. Fact is if there’s one thing you could take from having other restaurants in your business area, it’s the opportunity to learn from your competitors. As the saying goes, “Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.”

This is what came to mind when I heard Red Mango was pulling this stunt on the Internet.

Recently Red Mango opened its fan page on Facebook, the social media website that’s on everyone’s mind these days. To celebrate its garnering more than 100,000 fans, the yoghurt franchise is giving away coupons to its Facebook fans good for slashing $1 off any order.

Dan Kim says about this recent development,

“In a short time our Facebook fans have become dedicated lovers of our all natural frozen yogurt. Facebook is a fun, engaging and rewarding way for Red Mango to communicate directly and interactively with our customers. We are excited to thank the 100,000 fans that stand by our product and brand.”

Dan Kim is the CEO, president, and founder of Red Mango Inc.

Red Mango is planning to give fans additional rewards for every 100,000 new fans on Facebook.

Like I said, the moral of the story is to learn from the competition. See what works for them and what doesn’t. Then take the things that work and modify it a little so it goes well with your business workflow. In this case, Red Mango is harnessing the marketing potential of Facebook by giving away free coupons on its fan page and encouraging more people to sign up.

As a restaurant operator, I’m sure you could come up with other ways to take advantage of social media to boost sales. I wrote this article simply to prove a point: that advertising on social media works. But it’ll only work if you’re determined to make it work. Otherwise, sit back and watch your competition take in all the customers, even your loyal patrons.

Learn from Red Mango’s example.

Visit the Online Marketing section of this blog for more detailed tips on social media marketing for restaurants.

Five Amazing Guerilla Marketing Strategies For Restaurants

There will always be competition.

This is something you need to get into your head the moment you decide to open a restaurant. If there isn’t a single restaurant in your area, expect one to pop up within months or a year of your operation. No doubt your prominent presence as the only restaurant in the area should give other entrepreneurs some ideas. There’s no escaping this scenario.

When there’s competition, the only way to gain the upper hand is to market your restaurant. If you’re low on budget, guerilla restaurant marketing is a viable option, which involves the use of more than one type of smaller marketing ideas instead of focusing on bigger, more expensive advertising.

Here are some effective guerilla restaurant marketing tactics:

1.    Billboard signs
Put up the biggest, most creative sign you could think of. If the local community restricts the size of billboard signs up to a certain dimension, then use every inch of it. It helps make your restaurant stand out from the rest.

2.    Flyers
In literature, they call it “Start your story with a bang.” Same is true for restaurants. Open with a bang, and make sure everyone knows about it by handing out flyers in advance, where you offer meal discounts and free drinks on opening day.

3.    PR gimmicks
Make your staff wear turkey costumes on Thanksgiving, Santa or even Rudolph costumes on Christmas. Be creative and keep your customers talking. Of course don’t forget to compensate your employees afterwards.

4.    Feedback cards
Feedback cards or forms are a great way to collect the names, birthdates and email addresses of your patrons so you could send them coupons and discount offers later on. Admit it. When a restaurant you only visited once remembers your birthday, it never fails to touch a chord somewhere.

5.    Build a website
A website is no doubt the best way to communicate with customers without talking face-to-face. This is where you inform them what hours you’re open, what’s on the menu, the type of payment methods you accept, and other things. Simply put, a restaurant website is a must.

Some of these tactics you’ve already heard before. But even so, they deserve another mention, especially when there’s tough competition and your restaurant business is at stake.

I’ll discuss more guerilla restaurant marketing techniques in my next posts.

Send me a message by leaving a comment below.

You Don’t Have To Be One Of The McDonald Brothers To Start A Successful Restaurant Business

Someone looking to start a restaurant business shouldn’t read the paper. It’s disheartening to read about what’s going on in the economy these days. In fact statistics show that 90% of businesses, just about, would fail and shut down for good during its first five years.

So okay, who wants to start a new business?

But here is the thing. The success of a restaurant business first and foremost depends on you. Sure, there are several elements involved on the way to success, but all of them require effort from you – the restaurant operator.

Some restaurant owners are happy about their restaurant succeeding in one area and failing in another. You can’t please everyone, right? Wrong. Many restaurants fail because their owners get lazy or refuse to exert more effort. Some owners come up with a good idea now and then, but fail to back it up with action.

You must understand that people need to eat. But unlike our ancestors, who eat in order to survive, modern people are always looking to explore different tastes. Which is why a restaurant business is always a good thing, recession or no recession. You just need to come up with a solid business plan.

So what makes a solid business plan?

• A nice location
• The perfect theme or concept
• A hardworking team of restaurant staff

First things first, don’t rush out to buy the first piece of real estate offered on your table. You need to consider a couple things. Does the location fit my desired concept? Does it coincide with my market niche? Am I going to be visible in this location? Stuff like that. Your choice of location should of course go along with your choice of theme. If the two don’t mix well together, scout for another location or else revise your theme, one thing or the other, all the while putting your budget into consideration.

Next is your restaurant’s workforce. Simply put, your main commodity, the food, is going to be prepared by your chefs, and the waiters and waitresses will be the face of your brand name. So make sure you hire only the best people for the position, not someone who’s only looking for a paycheck. Likewise take good care of your staff. Reward them where it’s due, and be sure to provide them a respectable workplace that they’d be proud to tell their friends and family about.

You can never take a bad picture of Paris.

DJ Mo Twister.

Same goes for restaurants. There’s no such thing as a bad time for starting a restaurant business. All you need are the right ingredients to make it work, to find the perfect blend of good food and a unique dining experience that customers would come back to again and again.

Leave a comment below.

Little Known Ways To Attract More Restaurant Patrons

Most business experts say that around 80% of income comes from only 20% of the restaurant’s clients. This is called the 80/20 rule, and it’s something new restaurant owners should note down. Fact is seasoned restaurant business owners use this knowledge to boost their success.

What does the 20% denominator tell you? Out of 10 people who visit your restaurant, only two will become loyal patrons. This is where creative restaurant marketing comes in. As a restaurant operator, you need first and foremost to make that 20% of loyal customers feel like they’re the only people in the world.

The point: focus on your loyal customers.

But don’t get the wrong idea. When I say “focus“, I mean going the extra mile to add small touches to your service that would make them feel special and glad they’d chosen to dine at your restaurant.

For instance, if a patron calls to schedule a reservation, try to find what the occasion is about, and surprise them when they come in to dine. If it’s Valentine’s Day, place a single red rose on the lady’s seat. If it’s to celebrate an anniversary, compliment them with a bottle of red wine. Think of something creative no matter what the occasion.

I know what you’re thinking. What’s all this for? Am I supposed to content myself with just 20% fan base?

Far from it. All this effort is to promote “positive word-of-mouth”, a form of advertisement more effective than a 30-minute spot on a Superbowl game.

Truth is that people seem to remember the little things the most, the small touches, like a single red rose or a romantic message printed on a piece of napkin on their table. They will tell their friends about it—how your restaurant made their dinner date extra special. Before you know it, you could barely afford to seat any more people next Valentine’s Day.

The trick is to be creative. Creative restaurant marketing campaign. That’s something you don’t hear every day. But pull it off right and it might as well be the best decision you’ll make as a restaurant entrepreneur.

Do You Struggle With Restaurant Blogging?

The concept of running a restaurant is simple:

You serve the food, customers come to your restaurant, you get paid for the service.

It’s a very simple yet effective way of doing business, and it’s been like that for so many years. But the invention of the Internet made one thing very clear to restaurant operators everywhere: that restaurants have a hard time connecting directly with customers.

These days people are always wanting more. They want more value, they want healthier food, and they want you, the restaurant owner, to “wow” them before they even take a seat at one of your tables.

One way to do just that is through restaurant blogging. Here are some tips on how to effectively blog about your restaurant.

1.    A blog is a tool to update your patrons
A blog can be a very effective tool to update customers and patrons about upcoming events and other things – effective, if done right. Anything from menu changes to in-house improvements to changes in the staff should be shared on your restaurant’s blog.

2.    Pictures don’t lie
One of the best ways to make use of your restaurant blog is to make your customers salivate through pictures of your best dishes, etc.

Do you think one of your chefs just created his or her masterpiece? Take a picture and post it on your restaurant blog. Also post pictures of events and other happenings in your restaurant.

These days people want real media. Forget about crappy descriptions of food. Show them the goods!

3.    Get answers directly from your customers
Like I always say, a real entrepreneur always strives to make a connection with his or her customers.

On your blog, write brief articles about your staff, the menu, or conduct surveys from time to time. Ask customers what they think about certain dishes, or simply just receive comments from visitors. It’s a great way to connect with patrons and gather some invaluable data in the process.

4.    Restaurant blogging is online marketing
A blog also allows you – the restaurant owner – to advertise your own restaurant.

If there’s a website, then there’s definitely a sidebar or a header panel. Once again take pictures of your best dishes and slap them onto one of those sidebars. That’s one way to make the most of the space available on your blog.

Any person who has spent a considerable amount of time on the Internet knows that blogs rank well in search engines. That should put a glimmer of hope on any restaurant entrepreneur’s face. So next time you’re thinking about sending a press release to a paid commercial website, post it on your blog instead—if you have one, that is.

A well-kept and regularly-updated blog should help your restaurant’s brand name catch on to consumer consciousness like wildfire.

Do You Wish There Was An Easier Way To Collect Restaurant Customer Emails?

Is it starting to get to you? Email marketing this, email marketing that. Why should you care about email marketing? “I’m in the restaurant business. I should be worried about the menu and not about whether my newsletter is making the rounds in the neighborhood, right?”

Wrong.

You are in the sales business. You sell food and drinks. Delicious menu items at value prices don’t matter if nobody in your area of business knows what they’re missing.

According to e-marketeer, back in 2006, 90% of Internet users, more or less, use an email service programs for various reasons. In the US, that accounts for 56% of all Americans. The statistics are telling. If you want to put your brand name out in the minds of consumers, there’s no better vehicle to do it than an email marketing campaign.

But shooting blindly is not an option. If you want an effective restaurant email marketing campaign you need to set up a focused email database that allows you to collect customer’s addresses either online or at the restaurant.

Some tips.

1.    Solicit email addresses through your restaurant’s website
Your restaurant’s website is the best place to solicit customers’ email addresses in exchange for incentives and meal discounts.

The tricky part is getting the customer interested. Anyone could give away an email address or two. What you should do, as a restaurant operator, is to make sure that subscribers receive “relevant updates” – incentives, discount coupons, gift certificates – on a regular basis to keep them tuned in on your email campaign. According to a certain study, it takes four or more contacts, just about, with subscribers before they’ll actually visit your restaurant.

Online restaurant email marketing requires more effort and dedication than it looks. Once you get it down though, the rest should come in aces.

2.    Solicit email addresses at the restaurant
When was the last time you had dinner out with your family, and in the middle of the meal the waitress approaches your little daughter and gives her a small slip of paper that asks what you thought about their service and required your email address?

The waitress even left a pen at your table while she tended to the other customers. She was real nice.

This is how most restaurants find a way to contact you long after you’ve cleared your plate. For the restaurant operator, that small slip of paper is an invaluable tool in turning one-time customers to loyal patrons.

As I said earlier, you are in the restaurant business, sure, but you are first and foremost a sales person. Knowing a good way to establish a stronger relationship with your customers is just as good as selling burgers for $1, and you don’t even have to lose money in the process.

How’s your restaurant email campaign coming along?

For comments and feedback, leave a message below.

How Pizza Hut Turned Charity Work Into A Phenomenal Brand Promotion Campaign On Twitter

At a time of affordable burgers at McDonald’s and three-figure meals at Le Cirque, more people around the world spend their days hungry and without food. We all know this. But are we doing anything about it? Pizza Hut is.

Last month, Pizza Hut launched an ambitious online campaign to fight world hunger. Partnered with Twitter, the famous pizza chain turned to its 17,500, more or less, followers on the social media site.

For each re-tweet, Pizza Hut pledged to donate four meals to the World Hunger Relief, a support campaign of the United Nations World Food Programme and other hunger relief agencies worldwide.

President of Pizza Hut Scott Bergren says,

Global hunger has reached epic proportions this year — reaching more than 1 billion hungry people around the world. At Pizza Hut, our goal is to get the word out about what can be done to help feed the hungry. We’re asking our customers to help us spread the word through a simple tweet, and in exchange we will provide meals for World Hunger Relief.

The tweet goes like this: “We will donate 4 meals to World Hunger Relief 4 each person who RTs this: http://ow.ly/qWn8 #pizzahut (More: http://ow.ly/r3Cy).”

What does this say about reaching out to customers on social media sites like Twitter?

It’s very effective, especially when done right. The right occasion and the right message could put anyone’s attention on your restaurant, even people who aren’t familiar with your brand, with just a simple Tweet alert.

For tips on how to establish a good following on Twitter, view this post.

Pizza Hut pulled a good one this time – promoting brand name through charity works using an effective online campaign. Is your restaurant doing the same?

Tell me what you think by leaving a comment after this post.

Four Deadly Restaurant Management Sins

Most of the time we like to read stories of success or else brush up on ways to improve our restaurant’s services. I admit, I’m guilty of both counts. But I’m also aware that sometimes we need to learn the sad truth before we could appreciate the brighter side of things.

As a topic related to restaurant management, it means we need to be familiar with the problem first before anything else.

For this article, I’ll enlist the help of Mr. Chip Evans, who wrote an article titled, “A Dozen Things That Can Go Wrong With Any Foodservice Business“. I’ll discuss the Top 4 most important ones.

1.    Losing focus
Most restaurant owners start out with a lot of focus and very passionate about the business. A year or two later, an Italian-themed cafe, for example, now sells Chinese dimsum.

What happened along the way? The restaurant owner lost focus.

Chip Evans says,

Stay focused on what you do best.  If you sell hamburgers, don’t over-expand the menu and forget your core hook.  Do not confuse efforts with results.

2.    Keeping unproductive people on the payroll
This is one of the strongest reasons why a restaurant closes down for good. Uncompetitive, unproductive staff is bad for business. Very bad. Sooner or later, their incompetence is going to show up in the figures, and you’re the one who’s going to have to pay the price.

Fire unproductive staff, even if it’s family. That’s the only remedy to this problem.

3.    Not hiring the best people
Letting competitive employees go and not hiring them is just as bad as keeping unproductive ones on the payroll, maybe even worse.

Chip Evans believes the trick is to hire people who are better than you at doing “sector” jobs so you could focus all your attention on running the business.

4.    Not having accurate business plans with clear objectives and timelines for execution
Every business needs a definite plan. The plan should lay out what you intend to achieve long term, plus a brief description of the timeline for their execution.

In today’s business environment a business plan can often be no longer than 6 months long.  It’s no longer ‘business as usual,’

says Chip Evans.

When real capital is involved, it pays to think and plan first and act later.

Chip Evans is the current president of The Evans Group LLC. Based on his credentials, and my own personal experience as a former restaurant operator, Evans definitely knows what he’s talking about. More than anything, these tips will help you improve your restaurant service.

Leave a message below for comments and feedback.

Five Action Ideas To Improve Your Restaurant Email List

For restaurants, the battle for customers is no longer restricted to whoever serves the bigger meatball on top of their spaghetti platter. The war first and foremost takes place online. As a restaurant owner, you ought to be concerned about growing your list of emails as much as what’s the daily special for next Tuesday.

But sometimes no matter how hard you work on your online marketing, all you get are low conversion rates. That’s the hard truth about online restaurant marketing.

So without further ado, here are five things to consider when growing your restaurant email list.

1.    The sign-up form should be easy to find
I see too many “free newsletter” sign-up icons tucked away in some obscure section of the webpage—at the bottom of the page, or else mixed in with a lot of text and images that makes it hard to see for anyone who isn’t looking for it.

Thing is a simple email could easily turn a one-time visitor into a loyal patron.

Make sure your forms are strategically placed in easy-to-spot locations on the webpage, and on as many pages as possible where the form is relevant. Forget buttons. Take note every page on your website is a potential landing page, especially if the visitor was directed by a search engine.

2.    Be specific and tell them what they’re getting
I’ve seen too many “Sign up for our free newsletter” ads on too many websites trying to grow their list of customer emails. Most of the time it does the trick. The sad part is, what if it doesn’t?

There’s always room for concern whenever some anonymous website asks for your email address. So what you should do is provide convincing proof that the user’s inbox won’t be bombarded by email spam as soon as he or she signs up. Give them specifics of what they will and won’t be receiving.

Experiment on what works best for you and your website visitors.

3.    Don’t press them for too much details
When you ask visitors to sign up, the purpose is for them to receive your newsletter, and for you to get their email address. So stop asking them to fill out forms that look like they are at the doctor’s getting ready to be checked up for sexually-transmitted diseases.

Keep it simple. Most of the time the visitor’s name and email address are all you really need.

4.    Say “Thank You” and mean it
You got their email address. Are we done?

You’re done if you are only concerned about getting their email addresses for your list. But for some of us who wish to express our gratitude and, hopefully, keep the visitors interested to come back a second time, you should construct a simple but effective “Thank You” page that tells visitors what they can expect to receive in their inbox and when.

Use this opportunity to explain what visitors can do with your emails. Don’t just link back to the homepage.

5.    Think hard on why old-timers are leaving
Like I said before, it’s impossible to fill a bucket with water if there’s a gaping hole at the bottom of the container. A leaky bucket.

Don’t panic. Instead, think. Take time to understand why old-timers and subscribers are leaving in the first place. Most online restaurant marketing campaigns prompt subscribers on their way out to complete a feedback form on why they’re leaving. I suggest you take these messages to heart. They might provide valuable input on how you could improve your online restaurant marketing service.

The thing to understand is that there is always room for improvement. When subscribers are leaving one after the other, take a long hard look at your marketing campaign and try to pinpoint the root of the problem. There is always room for improvement.

Get these five points right and you should see a healthy spike in your email list growth in no time.

For comments and suggestions, leave a message below.

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