8 Amazing Strategies To Advertising A New Restaurant

It’s the first month of the new year and you’ve just opened your dream restaurant. Take note, your dream restaurant. So as much as possible you want everything to work out smoothly, from the in-house operations to advertising. I can help you on the latter.

There are a few essential steps you can take, as a restaurant owner, when advertising a restaurant for the first time. Here are some tips.

1.    Google is your best friend
Proceed to www.google.com and search for restaurant review websites in your city. Click on some of the hits at the top and write a short review of your restaurant, including operation hours and what you have to offer. This helps get the word out about your restaurant on the Internet, also known as online restaurant marketing.

A restaurant consultant will tell you that online marketing is your best bet if you really want to advertise.

2.    Take-home menus
Most restaurant owners take this for granted, and this is where you come in. Take-home menus help customers decide who to call between your restaurant and Restaurant X for lunch-time delivery.

Assign one of your employees to distribute take-home menus at the door as customers leave the establishment. Include all your menu items and their prices, as well as your contact information.

3.    Spread them around town
Invest on a small budget to have your take-home menus placed strategically in convenient stores, in break rooms at local offices, and in schools around town. It’s the most effective way to inform the townspeople what your restaurant has to offer.

4.    Advertise on the local newspaper
Ask the local paper to write a short introductory article or, if possible, a review of your restaurant. Since your restaurant is new, I bet they’d be interested to cover. Prepare a small budget for this one, too.

5.    Advertise on the local radio
It doesn’t hurt to ask the local radio stations if they would appreciate you bringing them a free complimentary breakfast or lunch as a way to welcome your new business into the neighborhood. They might just plug your restaurant for free.

6.    Promos, promos
Start a coupon promo to encourage both casual customers and patrons to keep coming back. For example, they get free coffee for accumulating 10 chef salad coupons.

7.    Networking
If Google is your best friend, then word-of-mouth is the wife you’re destined to love forever. Talk to your friends about exciting things happening in your restaurant to get them talking to their friends. Maybe even offer them a free dessert for bringing a new customer to your restaurant.

8.    Show your presence
Participate in local events. As a local restaurant owner, offer to serve free food and drinks in exchange for advertisement. For example, serve simple sandwiches wrapped in personalized tissues that reads, “Catering provided by [your restaurant name and contact number].”

These tips are great for new restaurants since you don’t really need to set aside a large budget just to get them started—unlike building and maintaining a restaurant website. Anyway, a combination of these restaurant marketing strategies should give your business some decent exposure, enough to fuel your next big marketing campaign.

Hire A Restaurant Manager You Can Be Proud Of

A restaurant can be big or small, fine-dining or casual, Italian- or Japanese-themed – it doesn’t matter. If you’re a restaurant owner, you need a restaurant manager to take care of things for you. You need someone who has personality and is in the business of running a restaurant, every day, from opening time to closing hours.

A restaurant without a manager is like a ship without a captain. There’s really no other way than down.

Sometimes the restaurant owner also functions as a manager. But unless you’ve got some managerial experience to back you up, I suggest you hire one who satisfies the qualifications of a restaurant manager. The expense of hiring and keeping the real thing, a truly experienced restaurant manager, is worth the investment.

Here are some responsibilities of a restaurant manager.

1. Hiring and Firing Employees
You hired the restaurant manager. Now it becomes his duty to hire the rest of the staff. A restaurant manager should have a good eye for spotting genuine workers. On the other hand, kitchen positions should be commissioned by the head chef.

2. Scheduling
The restaurant manager is in charge of scheduling the staff and making sure all the positions are covered for every minute the restaurant is open for business. Request for days off and undertime should also be taken up with the restaurant manager and not the owner.

3. Inventory
The owner pays for the ingredients and other items needed in the restaurant, but it’s the restaurant manager who prepares reports on what to buy and where to buy it from, if he knows a good place. The restaurant manager is in charge of ordering house items such as cleaning supplies, paper napkins, etc. while the head chef may take care of the ordering of food items.

4. Events
Small events are overseen by the restaurant manager. For example, scheduling of the event and filling the positions of the staff needed for the event.

For large events, the restaurant owner may consider hiring a catering manager for the occasion.

5. restaurant marketing
No one knows the capabilities of the restaurant more than its manager. So it only makes sense that he, or she, should be in charge of its marketing.

The restaurant manager is responsible for overseeing the budget for advertising, as well as update social networks on the status and current offers of the establishment. Marketing the restaurant online only requires an internet connection and can be done at home.

When hiring a restaurant manager, make sure he or she is fit to fulfill all these duties. As a restaurant owner it’s up to you how much you want pay your manager, but make sure to compensate accordingly. Restaurant managers aren’t paid by the hour, but instead receive a steady salary. Find an able manager, pay him well, and you’re halfway to establishing a strong and successful restaurant brand.

Did I miss anything? Share your opinions by leaving a comment after this post.

Learn How To Effectively Market Holiday Items And Other Restaurant Specialty Treats

The holidays are always an interesting time for a restaurant entrepreneur. The month of December means more people are going to be eating out, but it also means you’ll have to step up your game if you don’t want your competitors gobbling up all the customers.

Christmas, it’s a time to be bold with your restaurant marketing strategies.

For example, you have a particular product – say sweet ham or specialty holiday sweets – you want to market to customers this Christmas. How do you do it? How do you go about marketing aggressively without offending customers?

Here are some tips:

1.    Use signages
Position signages in the bathroom, at the entrance, inside the restaurant, or any other place that could accommodate them. Make sure the signages are tasteful and communicates the message effectively. Bathrooms are my favorite places to put up these signages, especially at the back of the stall or on the mirror.

2.    Website
After bathroom stalls, the second best way to communicate with customers is through the restaurant’s website. So make sure to put it up there as well. On the website you can explain everything about the product in detail and even entertain questions posted by visitors.

3.    Email newsletters
Website marketing and emails go hand-in-hand. Instruct your email marketer to create a series of emails that keep the product highlighted with every newsletter that goes out to your members. In the email, provide a link that sends users back to your restaurant’s website…

4.    In-house contest
A contest is always a nice way to attract attention.

Organize a contest where the main prize is the product you are promoting. The whole time the contest is going on put up a big sign that exposes your holiday product. Afterwards, for runner ups, send them a discount coupon or another offer that works for the product you’re promoting.

5.    Bag stuffer
Sneak a bag stuffer in every take-out and delivery bag that goes out your doors. Put one in every tray or in-house order as well. You’ll be surprised just how much this kind of exposure will affect your year-end product sales.

In the end there’s no such thing as a magic trick to help you make a good sale of your holiday product. All I can say is it takes pretty much the same what it takes to sell any other product – action and aggressive advertising.

If you can do this, if you can find the perfect balance between aggressive restaurant marketing and a favorable customer feedback of that marketing approach, you’ll be successful not just during the holidays, but you’ll be good to go all year round.

A Guide To Identifying Restaurant Branding From Restaurant Marketing

Many small business owners think restaurant branding and restaurant marketing naturally go hand-in-hand. I used to think that way too when I first started out. When you market your brand, you are branding it, too. That isn’t always the case.

Most restaurants—or every small business, just about—practice business marketing by identifying key markets, attracting new customers and keeping the loyal patrons in. They put in a lot of time and effort establishing a connection between the product and customer. But once a certain comfort level is reached, when people seem to be aware of the product, amateur restaurant owners think the best move is to drop their marketing activities to start saving money, and rely on word-of-mouth and loyalty of existing patrons to sustain the business.

This is marketing in its classic sense. But is it branding? Short answer is No.

Not all products become brands. Restaurant branding and restaurant marketing are two different things. Don’t let it confuse you or it might end up hurting your business.

Every restaurant goes by a name. Okay. All of them encourage consumption to sustain the business. Sure. But the main difference between restaurant branding and restaurant marketing is that restaurant marketing is short-term, while restaurant branding is a long-term effort to imprint, or engrave, the restaurant’s name into the customer’s mind. A restaurant brand transcends generations.

But what do brands have that commodity products and services don’t? Kevin Lane Keller, author of Strategic Brand Management, believes the following traits characterize a strong brand.

Brand awareness. Most restaurants never achieve a cult following. You don’t have to either. As long as your restaurant enjoys a certain familiarity among customers, if they could remember your name or logo simply by mention of a particular food, that’s a strong sense of brand awareness you got right there.

Brand loyalty. Here is the thing. Customers should be able to look at your restaurant brand as an extension of themselves. That’s true brand loyalty. If your restaurant were a person, he or she’d be everyone’s pal.

Perceived quality. I can’t remember a single brand that doesn’t offer quality. If you want to attract patrons, you need to be able to provide them more than just average food service they could easily find at the convenience store.

Brands should have strong, positive associations. Customers should only have positive, unique associations with your restaurant brand. Anything else means you are entering the dangerous territory of commodity service, and that’s a place you don’t want to be in.

Brands have patents and trademarks. Enough said.

Take Jollibee for example. Jollibee started out as an ice cream parlor in the Philippines in 1975. Then it decided to play its best card and positioned itself as a full-blown fast food chain restaurant against the global giant, McDonald’s. Thirty years later, Jollibee Corporation has more than 650 chain outlets operating under its trademark slogan “Langhap Sarap,” which pretty much underlines the Filipino belief that good food smells good.

Build your restaurant brand on a foundation of long-term goals and efforts, not on temporary marketing efforts intended to make a quick buck and then dissolve like ice on a frying pan. It isn’t worth it. In the end, you lose more than you gain. Invest on a real marketing philosophy that is restaurant branding.

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.

Three Steps To Improving Your Restaurant Marketing During Slow Economy

Last year was a hard year for restaurant operators thanks to the recession. I should know. I have friends who are thinking about throwing down the apron for good, or else cut back significantly on their budget. “This business is getting nowhere,” my friends tell me. They all sing the same tune.

Experts are saying it’s okay to cut back during down times. But if there’s one thing you shouldn’t shy away from, they say, it’s marketing. This video explains the critical points of why you shouldn’t cut back on marketing and how to steer it so it works to your advantage… even during a recession.

Here’s a brief summary of the pointers discussed in the video.

• Step up your online marketing
• Determine what works, what doesn’t
• Invest on the right campaigns

Step up your online marketing
The logic is that recession is a time when most businesses pull their shutters down for good, or else cut back on their advertising campaigns. This creates the perfect opportunity for your business to take center stage. So step up and increase your online marketing campaigns. I say online marketing because, in most cases, advertising on the Internet is free or cheap at the very least.

Determine what works, what doesn’t
There’s a saying that goes, “You’ll never know whether you succeed or failed if you don’t measure your efforts.”

So okay. I’m not sure if there’s a saying that goes like that – sorry! But I definitely heard that from somewhere, and I want you to see the value of that phrase here. Organize your marketing campaigns, and then by the end of the month, try to figure out which ones work and which ones don’t. What comes next ought to be self-explanatory: slash those campaigns that don’t work.

Invest on the right campaigns
Repeat the same marketing strategy of whichever campaign works. For example, if you paid 20 cents to advertise on Google and got $600 worth of catering business out of it, you’d do well to tell yourself, “Hey, this actually works. Maybe I’ll keep advertising here instead of that other website.”

In the previous pointer, I told you to cut back on failed campaigns. Here I’m telling you to start investing more especially on those that pay for themselves.

The video talks about business in general. But it sure works wonders for restaurant marketing, too.

Four More Tips To Increase Revenue With Proper Food Merchandising

In the last article, we talked about five effective ways to improve sales through proper food merchandising, a restaurant marketing strategy advocated by foodservice specialist Diane Chiasson. But the list doesn’t end there. Here are four more tips from the expert.

1. Use merchandising and cross-merchandising to boost sales
Here’s a good question to get you going. Did you know that food sampling and cross-merchandising increases the average consumer’s transaction by more than 75%? Make sure your products are visible from every possible angle. Pair relevant food items together, such as sandwiches and potato chips and soups together, or cheese and yoghurt and fresh fruits.

Diane says,

Customers often enter an eating area with no clear choice of what they want to eat, so by selling paired add-on items, you stimulate the appetite, increase impulse sales, and boost sales, as well as enhance your diner’s experience.

2. Use signage and point-of-sale materials to reinforce your brand
So you finished designing your display areas. Now you need to create the appropriate POS materials and signage to complement your theme and promotion. Simply put, restaurants with proper merchandising and POS materials have higher sales and perform better overall than those without.

3. Stimulate the customer’s appetite with good lighting
Diane says about good lighting,

Lights are not used to just illuminate a space, but must also be used to focus on food items, displays and merchandising areas, and used to create a specific mood or theme within your space

Anyone will tell you that the eyes have as much to do with stimulating the appetite as the tongue. Which is why lighting is right up there as one of the most essential elements of designing the interiors of a restaurant. More than anything, the food should always dominate the displays in and around the restaurant.

4. Be consistent with branding
The last thing to remember is that you need to be consistent with your branding, and one way to do that is by understanding your brand and the message you want to put out there. Think long term. Refrain from making sudden changes to your messages and brands. If you do this, you might even get the chance to start your own private label line.

These tips should put you in the right path to being a successful restaurant entrepreneur. I’ll end the article with a final quote from Diane,

I really believe that you, as a restaurant operator, can create the opportunity to add or sell something extra to your customers not only in the eating area, but for customers to take home such as homemade specialty desserts, sauces, etc.