4 Simple Tips To Catapult Your Restaurant Brand Name On Facebook

Who hasn’t tried Facebook? Who doesn’t even know Facebook? I’d be hard pressed to find someone without a Restaurant City or Farmville account. Simply put, Facebook has become one of the most visited—or overcrowded—websites over the last couple years. A study shows that 6 billion minutes are spent every day on Facebook all over the world. The question: what does this mean for your restaurant?

Get that worried look off your face. If anything, Facebook brings a lot of blessings to your restaurant—or any business, for that matter. Facebook is a household name. It’s a place where millions of people hang out. Facebook is one of the most popular websites on the internet. Therefore Facebook is a marketing machine.

But take note there more than 700,000 other businesses are competing for people’s attention on Facebook. Your restaurant is just one of them. But what am I here for, right? Here are 4 effective strategies to advertise on Facebook and gain a loyal following.

1. Add, add, add friends
Facebook is a gem for business owners because it connects friends with friends and friends of friends of friends. The same goes for maintaining an active business page for your restaurant. Keep adding people to your friend list. Add as many as 5,000 friends, or more. Don’t stop adding until you hit that magic number.

2. Create a fan page for your restaurant
A fan page is where your fan and followers can post their ideas and suggestions about your brand name in an open forum. It encourages discussion and brand awareness. So as soon as you’ve created an account on Facebook, proceed to creating a Facebook fan page for your restaurant. And remember – keep the fan page updated as often as you can.

3. Keep the fan page active by publishing interesting content
After a brief biographical background of your restaurant, you need to keep updating your fan page with fresh, interesting content to keep it going. There’s no concrete rule on how many times a fan page requires an update. But a good rule to remember is at least twice a day, usually before the major meals – lunch and dinner. Add mouth-watering pictures of your delicious recipes and offerings. Who knows? You might just attract the taste buds of a hungry friend or two.

4. Find a partner
Two heads is better than one, right? Right.

Go around your neighborhood and search for businesses with a fan page on Facebook. Ask them that if they’d be kind enough to promote your business on their fan page, you’d happily do the same on yours. The more partners you have, the better. This way you could still market your restaurant to people outside your market range without looking like an outsider.

Follow these tips when creating your Facebook fan page, and update me with your results.

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3 Action Ideas To Make Your Restaurant Staff Happy To Work For You

These are hard times. Tough economic times for businesses, hard times for restaurants. But even so, this is no excuse not to invest some time and money on your restaurant staff. Take it from me. When a person loves his work, he works harder and provides better service to customers. The customers will love and remember the experience and keep coming back. It’s a snowball that began all the way back with a single, happy server.

Here are three ways to invest in your restaurant staff.

1. Recognize their efforts
Are you familiar with The One Minute Manager? It’s a popular book on business management, and one of its teachings is One Minute Praisings. In other words, praise your restaurant staff as soon as you catch him or her doing something right. Recognize his or her efforts. Salary isn’t everything. There is a special feeling of contentment when your boss at work commends you for a job well done.

2. Stir friendly competition by rewarding your staff
Nothing motivates a bored staff better than a little friendly competition. Most people are willing to work when they’re gunning for something in the long run.

The trick is to stay away from clichés like “Employee of the Month”. Who cares if you’re employee of the month? Instead you should stick to basic and concrete facts, such as the employee who made the most sales, the employee with the least absences, etc.

3. Get together once in a while
Call it a team building event, [insert restaurant name here] Employee’s Day, etc. Do this at least once a year with your restaurant staff to help further strengthen the bond with employees and yourself, the restaurant owner. Working every single day can be very stressful. You should know that. So planning this kind of event once in a while is a great way to say “Thank You” to your hardworking staff.

Sometimes we have too many problems coming in the front door all at once that we forget the most important thing that holds a successful company together – satisfied employees. So invest in your restaurant staff. Make them happy. You won’t be disappointed.

Share your tips on how to make your restaurant staff happy by leaving a comment below.

See How Easily You Can Increase Revenue By Conserving Water In Your Restaurant

The economy isn’t doing too well. It hasn’t been doing well for some years now. Everyone knows that. As a restaurant owner, what can you do to cut down on expenses and increase revenue?

One way is to control your use of water. Foodservice establishments use a lot for water – for cooking, cleaning up, washing dishes, and serving guests. Water conservation not only saves your money, you also earn the bragging rights to say your restaurant is a clean and environment-friendly business.

Here are some tips on how to conserve water in your restaurant.

1.    Wait for customers to place an order. Don’t serve them one full glass each right away assuming each guest is going to drink it. And don’t spoil your customers with bottled water either as it’s much more expensive. Instead serve them water from the tap installed with a filtering apparatus to ensure its drinking quality.

2.    Install a pre-rinse sink in the kitchen. These babies can save you a lot of water, especially since rinsing is one of the biggest culprits of excessive water use in most restaurants.

3.    Remind the staff to dishwash full racks only. Thing is many restaurants have some variation of this regulation in effect, but most employees simply choose not to follow, and that’s that. Reinforce the rule from time to time that only a full rack of dirty dishes should go into the dishwasher.

4.    Fix leaky faucets right away. Don’t wait for a few months before getting around to hiring someone to fix that leaky faucet in the back kitchen. A single drop of water can quickly add up to several thousand gallons each month. Now that’s a lot of money down the drain.

There are probably hundreds of different ways to go green with your restaurant, but I’ll tell you this: responsible use of water is no doubt one of the best ways to go about preserving the environment. Water conservation. It’s something every restaurant owner in every corner of the Earth should put into practice.

Do you have any more tips to share on how to conserve water in your restaurant? Leave a comment below.

What Everybody Ought To Know About Brochure Marketing For Restaurants

You’ve opened a great restaurant, says your friends and loyal customers. The menu is delicious, the service impeccable, and the ambiance is pitch perfect. But for some reason you still aren’t getting enough customers to fill your maximum seating capacity even during peak hours. Strange, isn’t it?

If you can’t get new customers to walk in through the front entrance even with all these great offers, it’s time to take a look at your marketing strategy. Re-think. Re-evaluate. For all it’s worth, a well-placed restaurant marketing brochure can make all the difference.

Restaurant brochures can grab and hold the attention of any potential customer who sees it.

But here is the thing. The design of the brochure needs to be well done. It should be clean, and it should look professional. Cluttered and messy designs don’t look good on marketing brochures, especially when you’re advertising a restaurant. In the end the design of your restaurant brochure should appeal to the appetite.

When I said the restaurant brochure must look professional, what I really mean to say is that you should take the time to hire a competent graphic designer. It’s going to cost you a little in fees, not including the cost of printing, but take it from me – you’re better off hiring a professional graphic designer than attempting to do the job yourself. It’s going to be worth every marketing dollar you put into it. If you can get your graphic designer to create a catchy and effective brochure for your restaurant business, you won’t be needing another one for a long time.

Professional graphic designers know more about what appeals to the senses than amateur designers. Jeff Goodby put it best when he said, “The biggest mistake young designers make is that they try to make their advertising look like advertising“.

So don’t play cheap. Find a good graphic designer, and leave the job to him or her. If you’re really working on a tight budget, you can even outsource the project to retain the high quality of design you need but at a lower cost.

Share your tips on restaurant brochure marketing by leaving a comment below.

Top 5 New Year’s Resolutions For 2010 Of Restaurant Owners

2009 has come and gone. Some restaurant operators are still reeling from its effects, but most are already looking forward to a hopeful new year. It’s human nature to look on the good side. restaurant owners should be the same.

But change doesn’t take place without action. If you want a brighter year for your restaurant business, if you want to get away from the global recession for a change, then you need to look at yourself as a restaurant owner and, as the King of Pop puts it, “make that change“.

Here are 5 New Year’s resolutions guaranteed to make a positive change for your restaurant this 2010.

• Resolve to hire competent consultants
Make it your new year’s resolution not to hire consultants offering to boost your restaurant sales overnight. Basically a quick fix. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and so is your restaurant. The mark of a true consultant is someone who details a realistic plan on how you’re going to go about attacking the market, one step at a time.

• Resolve to make smart marketing decisions
Make it your new year’s resolution not to overwhelm your budget by offering big discounts in exchange for long-term financial stability. There are far more effective ways to bait customers than to slash the prices on your menu all the time.

• Resolve to conduct feasibility studies
Make it your new year’s resolution to study the market. Learn more about your customers, recognize their eating habits, what they like, and what they don’t like about your restaurant, etc. You’ll see this pays off in the long run.

• Resolve to turn customers into friends
Make it your new year’s resolution to talk to your customers and make them your newest friends. You won’t only be getting their money, you’ll be also be receiving their loyalty.

• Resolve to work harder for your restaurant business
Make it your new year’s resolution to not think that we’re all going to be better off this 2010. Work, and work harder like it’s 2009. Who knows if we’re going to get hit again by the recession this year?

What are your New Year’s resolutions this 2010?

If You Don’t Invest On Direct Digital Marketing For Restaurants Now, You’ll Hate Yourself Later

These days we are discovering more and more ways to reach the average consumer. For business owner, this is a good thing, especially for restaurant entrepreneurs. restaurant owners can catch new and loyal customers who are on the move any time of day. But thing is, the competition can do so as well.

This is where direct digital marketing comes in. Now you don’t have to wait hours or even days for your message to reach customers through email. You can hit them anytime, anywhere, through more direct means, such as their mobile phone.

According to Quick-Service and Fast Casual (QSR) magazine,

Direct digital marketing is an addressable marketing method where relevant marketing communications are delivered to individuals through the e-mail, Web, and mobile channels using an e-mail address, a Web browser cookie, and a mobile phone number. The principles of direct digital marketing—addressability, message relevance, and personalization—are ideal for restaurant marketers and their customers.

Email marketing had its time and it was five or six years ago. These days there are more direct means to reach customers, and that is what direct digital marketing is all about – taking advantage of newer and faster ways to communicate with consumers.

But don’t take it the wrong way. email marketing for restaurants is still damn useful. But the medium has become more of a one-way communication channel. A customer can’t put a direct order through email. Direct digital marketing, on the other hand, encourages immediate consumer action and feedback.

Some restaurants are already capitalizing on direct digital marketing by developing mobile apps where customers receive the latest news, get coupons, and place orders on their iPhone. It should also be noted that the iPhone make up less than 7% of mobile phone users. But almost every mobile phone out there has an SMS or text messaging feature. This is a good place to try your hand on direct digital marketing as a small restaurant business owner.

QSR magazine writes,

To maximize reach and impact of any mobile program it is important to use the most common form of non-voice mobile communications: text messaging. Sending text messages containing special short-lived offers or limited-time coupons, and even enabling the placement of an order via mobile, are simple programs for marketers to set up and easy for consumers to use.

Direct digital marketing puts you, the restaurant owner, in the driver’s seat of your restaurant marketing campaign. You call the shots, and the message is relayed to your customers almost instantly. Direct digital marketing for restaurants allow you to set up coupons that expire within hours, not days.

Take it from the pros – direct digital marketing will boost your sales and make a positive impact on your restaurant business.

QSR magazine’s full article on direct digital marketing can be found here.

Check back on us for more restaurant marketing tips.

Top 4 Don’ts Of Social Media Marketing For Restaurants

Social media is a great tool for marketing a restaurant. It’s easy to get going, and most importantly, it costs less than the smallest ad at the back of the morning paper, which nobody reads by the way.

But thing is most restaurant owners have this misconception of social media being “too easy” that I’ve seen it done wrong more often than right. A lot of social media marketing for restaurants nowadays are simply ineffective. Some restaurant owners even do worse as if they’ve shot themselves in the foot with their choice of social media marketing.

On that note, here are four DON’TS in the world of social media marketing.

1.    Make it short and sweet
Keep your messages short and sweet. Go to any website and tell me what you see. Compared to most Pulitzer Prize-winning novels, articles on the Internet stay within the limits of four to five lines per paragraph, to make it easy on the eyes.

No one wants to read whole blocks of fodder on their monitor. So get straight to the point, will you?

2.    Don’t offer it for free if you’re going to make them pay for something else
It’s a ridiculous idea in the first place, whichever way you look at it. Don’t put offers like, “We’ll give you a free dessert if you buy three cheesecakes from us.” It’s silly, and it defeats the purpose of offering something for free.

3.    Keep it professional
As much as possible refrain from posting any personal information about you or your nasty next-door neighbor. You’re advertising on a social networking website, sure, but that’s no reason to spam messages to your followers about the next 10 mundane things that pops into your head.

Keep it professional, and keep all information related to your restaurant business. Post useful information, such as industry tips, secret recipes, personal recommendations, etc.

4.    The message should be clear
Customers have gotten lazy. I’m sorry to say, but they did. A potential customer will read “10% off our lunch specials!” and not realize anything. 10% isn’t much of a big deal. It won’t convince customers to visit if they’re already in the business of ignoring your restaurant in the first place.

Show them a GOOD offer. Something they can’t refuse. If you used to spend $500 to put out an ad on a magazine, since social media marketing is mostly free-of-charge, then put that $500 to good use and think of up a good offer to really tease customers into coming to your restaurant and see what’s cooking.

Sometimes you need to know what not to do in order to do things right.

Share what you think restaurant owners shouldn’t be doing on the Internet by leaving a comment below.

Boost Your Chances Of Success By Hiring A Restaurant Consultant

Anyone who has a little money and a dream can open a new restaurant. But the question is whether you can sustain it – do you have the technical skills and expertise to run a restaurant business?

You’re in big trouble if you don’t. In the long run you might end up losing more money than you make.

Which is why I recommend you to hire a restaurant consultant. I’ve seen too many friends who had to struggle their way out of debts and business loans just because they took the idea of hiring a consultant for granted. So I’ll break it to you now: don’t play cheap and hire a restaurant consultant.

Here are five strong reasons why you should hire a consultant.

1.    Hiring a restaurant consultant helps you save money. How? He or she prevents you from wasting it. It is a restaurant consultant’s job to help with quality planning so you don’t run into something unexpected.

2.    A restaurant consultant is responsible for conducting a feasibility study. Competition and other barriers to your success will stick out like a sore thumb when a feasibility study is done right. This is very important in the early stages of the restaurant business.

3.    A restaurant consultant helps your business become more profitable by providing third-party feedback. Like an artist who finds it difficult to criticize his own work, a restaurant owner should seek the advice of a consultant regarding design concept, theme, in-house operations, etc.

4.    restaurant consultants are invaluable in the hiring process. Face it: your staff and employees are the heart and soul of your business. So you only want to hire the best, and it is a consultant’s job to help you with that every step of the way.

5.    A restaurant consultant can help you get lower prices on your raw ingredients. After all it’s their job to help new restaurant owners get started. So it’s only natural they know how to negotiate with vendors, or else recommend you to someone they know.

A restaurant consultant is indispensable. If you think you’re throwing away money which could otherwise have gone to buy an extra table or a chair, think again. An extra table won’t help you to run the business smoothly. But a restaurant consultant can show you the ropes so customers keep coming back, even if it’s just to order take-out.

What do you say about restaurant consultants? Share tips by leaving a comment below.

Get Rid Of Restaurant Marketing Campaigns That Don’t Work Once And For All

I had a good talk with a friend the other day about his restaurant business. Like most restaurant owners trying to crawl past the recession, he was having some problems, and he had hired a couple of consultants to help him get to the bottom of things.

This is what he had to say.

“You know something?” he said, putting down his cup of coffee, “These days so many people are trying to get your money, and I had to figure that out the hard way.”

“What made you say that?” I said.

“My consultants want to me give away coupons. They want to me build a website, to invest in a couple magazines, in the Yellow Pages. Heck, I’m not rich!” he said. “I wouldn’t have hired them if I could afford all those things.“

And he was right. These days marketing professionals have tendencies to recommend expensive restaurant advertising campaigns like they’re talking to Bill Gates. Small restaurant owners simply can’t afford all those stuff.

The truth is, all those restaurant marketing campaigns don’t mean anything—unless, that is, you have a vision in place.

Before you spend a single cent on your restaurant marketing campaign, ask yourself these questions:

• Is your restaurant struggling seven days a week and you’re looking to attract more clients?
• Or is it more like there are specific days where business is slow and you’d like fill them up?
• Did you just open your restaurant and you’re looking to generate awareness for it?
• Are you promoting an event?
• Are you targeting a specific market niche or customer profile?

So do you see where this is going?

A restaurant consultant should get these questions out of the way as soon as you sit down with him or her at the table. If he or she starts handing out your marketing options before these circumstances have been established, then you need to fire one consultant off the payroll.

Learn your situation first, what your restaurant needs, before figuring out which way to go. Doing it the other way around is business suicide, wasting your time and thousands of dollars in the process.

Play smart. Know your situation first before deciding on a restaurant marketing campaign. That’s what I told my good friend.

For comments and feedback, leave a message after this post.

Get An Instant 20-30% Increase In Sales With These Simple Year-End Restaurant Tips

If anything, the Christmas holidays is a time for change.

It’s the season to spoil ourselves and, as restaurant owners, an opportunity to grow our business. But it’s also a great time to look at your business operations to see which aspects of it deserve carrying over to the new year and which ones has you saying, “Hey, this doesn’t work for me anymore. I need to find a way to fix it if I want to keep doing things right.”

One thing I recommend is for restaurant operators to invest in lost-cost-to-no-cost internal restaurant marketing. Forget TV commercials and billboards. The best way to gain the attention of customers is to pamper them inside your restaurant.

For instance, start seeing your customers as guests and not as… ahem… customers. We all want to feel special when we dine out with family and friends, and your customers are no different. Stop looking at them as if they’re one-time customers, because they will turn out that way. Instead build an on-going relationship with your guests. WOW them with your attention, and they’ll happily return the favor as loyal patrons.

When it comes to repetitive processes, invest in the effort to create systems that takes these responsibilities off your shoulders. Don’t do everything yourself. For recurring tasks, find which ones take up valuable time and, if possible, outsource them. If you could find someone who’s willing to do it at a low cost, by all means let them do it. Stop focusing on minimum wage activities and start training your attention on the more important matters at hand.

Last but not the least, this new year may be the best time to automate your restaurant. I’m not talking about the usual in-house POS system. I’m talking about the smaller, recurring tasks such as restaurant marketing mailers or weekly newsletters, food pricing, paying your bills, etc. The point is to buy you more time to manage other aspects of the business with these things on auto-pilot.

It pays to think about these matters as we inch closer to 2010. There’s no telling what challenges the new year has in store for restaurant operators. So it’s best to prepare beforehand—that is, by cementing your fair share of loyal patrons and outsourcing the small things so you could concentrate on the bigger things at hand.

Feel free to leave a comment below this post.

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