3 Sure-Fire Tips To Promote Your Restaurant Brand Without Spending A Fortune

Tough competition has forced restaurants to advertise. There are more restaurants than most customers could afford dine in, especially in major cities. So what’s a restaurant owner to do? Advertise, of course, to get the lion’s share of the market. But when restaurant owners think of advertising they think about getting an effective message out and mass appeal. Then they think about expenses, expenses, expenses.

There are simpler, cost-effective ways to market your restaurant. You don’t always have to spend millions to advertise on Super Bowl. Sometimes all you need is a little creativity and a techie friend working at your side.

Here are some tips.

1.    Distribute business cards and leaflets
The restaurant owner must work “on” the restaurant, not “in” it. While your waiters are busy serving tables, you should be monitoring your restaurant and figuring out who your target customers are. In time you’ll form a better picture of your regular clients. These are who should focus on. Reach out to them by distributing menu fliers, leaflets and sample cards.

2.    Stay in the public eye for all the right reasons
It’s important to have locals talking about you, but make sure it’s for all the right reasons. Do this by promoting your restaurant locally. Offer discounts, coupons, and even sponsor charity events. Make sure your restaurant’s presence is heard during festive seasons.

3.    Get into social networking
This is where your techie friend comes in. Social networking is advertising on the 21st century. And the best thing about it is, it’s FREE – or mostly free. Get your restaurant’s name out through Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, or by blogging, what KogiBBQ did for its franchise. Social networking is the best way to get your name out without spending a fortune.

Tell me what you think about these cost-effective means of marketing your restaurant by leaving a comment below.

The Untold Secrets To Running A Restaurant Business Like A Real Pro

Managing a restaurant is no walk in the park. Even before you declare your restaurant “open for business”, there are a lot of things that needs to be done and needs to be taken care of. There’s no denying that restaurant owners are hardworking and very knowledgeable individuals.

But any successful restaurant owner will tell you that knowing how to manage a restaurant isn’t enough. Thing is, most restaurant owners have no idea what their role is in running a restaurant business.

Here are some tips from a master restaurant entrepreneur, Ray Kroc, creator of the McDonald’s empire.

1. Work “on” the business and not “in” it
The problem with most restaurant owners is they work “in” the business and not “on” it. They confuse participation with good management. Just because you’re willing to roll up your sleeves and get your hands dirty doesn’t mean you’re doing a good job managing the business.

Fact is you’re doing the opposite.

The primary role of a restaurant owner is to take a step back and analyze. Think. Figure out what needs to be done to improve operations, to hasten speed of service, to improve the menu, etc. If you’re working “in” the restaurant, there’s no way you’ll accomplish any of these.

2. Success is in the system
Anyone who’s ever lived in the 20th century will tell you that McDonald’s is the biggest fast food chain in the world. How did Ray Kroc manage to build thousands of restaurants around the world exactly the same way?

It’s in the system, Ray believes. Ray believes, restaurants can’t afford extraordinary people, but they can make ordinary people produce extraordinary results with the help of an excellent system. He also believes consistent quality is only possible with a good system.

You may or may not be thinking about starting a franchise restaurant business. But you definitely need a good system to run your restaurant. Take my word for it. Take Ray’s word for it.

The full article can be found here.

Check back on Online Marketing for Restaurants next week for more restaurant marketing tips.

Here’s A Quick Way To Send Restaurant Tweets Using Your Mobile Phone Or Blackberry

2009 was a good year for Twitter. It was the year when Twitter finally took off and got the attention of many businesses owners, including restaurant operators. A couple of months later, advertising and marketing your restaurant on Twitter have become essential for any aspiring restaurant owner looking to make a good business.

Thing is, I’ve been receiving calls from my friends saying how difficult it is to use Twitter. They tweet on the move using their mobile phone or Blackberries. I’ll tell right now, you’re really going to have a hard time tweeting if you’re going to do it like that.

Enter TwitterBerry and TweetDeck.

TwitterBerry
TwitterBerry is exactly what its name suggests – Twitter on your Blackberry. But the thing about TwitterBerry is that it makes tweeting extremely easy (as if it weren’t easy enough).

First you need to download the application on your Blackberry. Once downloaded, you’ll be greeted with a simpler interface compared to the usual one on your desktop. Everything is pretty much self-explanatory from here. If you’re using a Blackberry to tweet your restaurant, why not give TwitterBerry a try.

TweetDeck
Do you normally see the message, “about 1 hour ago from TweetDeck” underneath your friend’s tweets? That’s it – TweetDeck. TweetDeck allows you to send tweets faster and more efficiently using your mobile phone.

TweetDeck has a default white font on black background theme, but I think other themes are available online. Unlike regular Twitter, TweetDeck lets you organize your followers under different groups—friends, staff, patrons, partners, etc.—and view them in separate columns. This makes it much easier to browse what group is doing what, and to send tweets to specific groups.

If you’re always on the move and you need to send out a message to your restaurant patrons—special offers, a new event—then TweetDeck is no doubt your best friend.

Share your insights on tweeting for your restaurant by leaving a message after this post.

You Don’t Have To Be An Award-Winning Novelist To Write An Effective Restaurant Newsletter

I once sat down with a relative of mine over coffee to talk about restaurant marketing. We talked about a lot of things, but mainly about her restaurant newsletters. She said she’s had great success as a restaurant owner thanks to her newsletters, which brought her more clients and patrons than she could ever imagine.

Here’s a brief excerpt of our conversation.

Q: Where did you get the idea to start a newsletter?
A: I’m a restaurant owner. I’m a business woman, you could say that, but I also love to write. I guess it’s this love of writing that urged me to sit down and write an “experimental” newsletter for my restaurant. Before I knew it, I was getting calls out of nowhere—take-outs, events, etc.—mostly from people who’ve read the newsletter and had become interested in my restaurant.

I said to myself, I might be on to something good here…

Q: I told you there was something special about newsletters. When done right, of course. How many years has it been?
A: Yeah. When I realized newsletters were actually effective in marketing my restaurant, I remembered your advice about them when I was first starting out. I’ve been writing newsletters for about three years now.

Q: I remember you sending me an email one time about how you were shocked when you stopped sending them for a month or two?
A: I did. I remember that. I think it was about a year ago, when something suddenly came up in my life that I needed to fix, and I couldn’t find the time to write newsletters. So I stopped sending them out for about two months. You wouldn’t believe how much business we lost during those two months. I didn’t expect my newsletters had this much impact on our sales until that time.

I guess you really need to try it out and see things for yourself before you jump to conclusions, especially when it comes to newsletters.

Q: What’s your style in getting more subscribers?
A: I’ve tried lots of approaches. But a really effective one is to tempt them with a promo—say, free wine for three. If they come in and make a reservation for three people, they get to sign up for our in-house wine event and receive the free wine. Right now I have 1,500 subscribers, give or take a few.

Q: Did you think about what I wrote you about putting ads in your newsletters to cut down on costs?
A: There was a time when I did consider the option. But I didn’t follow through. You see, I was too busy managing the restaurant and I simply didn’t have the time to shop around for advertisers trying to pick out the best deal. I could hire someone to do that job, but that would just defeat the purpose, don’t you think?

I guess it depends on how much attention you’re willing to put into your restaurant newsletter. Hiring that sales person could still offset the cost of having to shoulder the entire thing yourself. All you need is time to balance the figures out. Anyway, successful as I’ve been with my restaurant newsletters, I’m not spending too much on them, so in my case I didn’t think it was worth the hassle.

Check back on Restaurant Marketing Zone next week for more restaurant marketing tips.

Discover The Insider Strategies That Make Your Restaurant Menu An Important Part Of Your Marketing Scheme

A friend of mine once asked, “I recently hired a restaurant consultant. What else can I get him to teach me other than how to manage my business?” I raised the coffee to my lips and gave it some thought. Then I said, “The second most important thing you could get a consultant to teach you is how to design your restaurant menu.” I looked at my friend. “Yes, that’s about right,” I said.

Most people think the point of a menu is to show the customer what’s available in your restaurant. But here is the thing. The restaurant menu can also be designed in such a way as to steer the customer away from the unprofitable (but cheap) dishes and draw their attention towards the more profitable (but more expensive) offerings. This is where the restaurant consultant comes in.

But you don’t always need a restaurant consultant to tell you what to do. Here are a few basic tips on how to design an effective restaurant menu that works.

1. Look up, and then to the right
The upper right corner of the restaurant menu is crucial because the customer’s eyes instinctively float to this area upon sitting down at the table and opening the menu. Place a delicious, high-quality photograph of one of your most profitable dishes in this section.

2. No Man’s Land
This is where unprofitable menu items go. No Man’s Land is the most inconspicuous section of your restaurant menu.

3. Menu price anchor
Below the photograph is the restaurant’s menu price anchor. Here you can strategically list expensive dishes alongside menu items with high profit. The aim is to create the illusion of your high-profit offerings being “cheap” compared to your most expensive—but low-profit—dishes, whose main purpose is to create that illusion.

4. Special boxes
Dishes, or beverages, in boxes draw the customer’s attention. What’s so special about that seafood dish that they put it in a box and not in a list alongside everything else? Your customers will find the answer when they order it.

5. No columns, please
Most restaurant owners do this. But top restaurant operators know better than to design their menu items in an ordered list and encourage customers to choose from the cheapest dishes available. If it can’t be helped, at least stay away from leader dots connecting the names of the dishes to their respective prizes.

The restaurant menu is an important part of your – or any other restaurant owner’s – marketing scheme. Design it carefully. If you have to, hire a restaurant consultant just for that purpose. You won’t be disappointed when customers are ordering your most profitable dish offerings.

8 Sure-Fire Tips To Improve Your Pizza Menu Design For Your Restaurant

I have a friend who is a marketing major. He drives a car to work every day. But every so often his car breaks down—the engine won’t start or else one of the tires gave out overnight—and he has to commute on his way to work. I have never seen my friend try and fix the car himself. And I bet neither would you. My friend knows something most restaurant owners don’t – just because you own a car doesn’t make you an auto specialist.

The same is true for pizza restaurant owners. Owning a restaurant doesn’t make you a business advertising specialist.

Thing is pizza menus are critical to the success of a pizza restaurant business. Pizza menus help find new customers. They advertise your menu items, the quality of your ingredients, the history of your establishment, and help keep loyal patrons in place.

Here are 10 tips for creating and designing an effective pizza menu for your restaurant:

1. Don’t force yourself to design a pizza menu. Hire a graphic designer to do that job.

2. Put some other purpose on your pizza menu, such as making it a monthly calendar.

3. Remember to include your brand name and contact information (contact nos., address, etc.).

4. Make sure to highlight the company or restaurant logo.

5. Choose your distribution method carefully. Keep in mind your budget for this one. Are you going to distribute it as handouts in high traffic areas? Or are you going to put it in a popular local magazine?

6. Slip in a coupon or two to come along with the pizza menu.

7. Keep the design clean and easy to read. Cluttered and messy designs aren’t very attractive.

8. Use high-quality pictures of your pizzas and menu items. Also use high-quality, glossy paper.

Simply put, a pizza menu is a must for every pizza restaurant establishment. It’s guaranteed to bring a lot of good things on your table. That is, when done right.

Share your tips on pizza menus by leaving a comment below.

Finally Revealed! What Makes A Solid Restaurant Business Plan?

Everybody wants to start a nice business. Easy to manage, a steady flow of profit, gives a sense of accomplishment at the end of the day. Most people want their first business to be a restaurant. It’s possible, but before you sit down and begin imagining your menu, first you need to imagine your business plan.

A business plan is essential in starting a business – any business. If you’re looking to start your own restaurant, here are some tips on what to include in your business plan.

1.    Executive Summary
The executive summary opens the vision of your restaurant to possible investors. It is the opening paragraph in a novel. So you need to make it interesting, and grab their attention by the balls.

Discuss your choice of theme, the style of the restaurant, and other ideas for the business. Explain why opening a restaurant is best and not a hardware store or a computer cafe.

2.    Business analysis
This section explains the technical side of the restaurant in greater detail—location, style of interior decoration, legal name—as well as a brief overview of the market study, including the local competition.

3.    Marketing Strategy
This section is divided into three parts: Industry, Competition, and Marketing.

Industry. What is your target market? Are you going to be serving fine dining to adults? Or cheeseburgers and chocolate milkshake to young kids?

Competition. This is pretty much self-explanatory. Here is where you go into detail about the competition in your local area of business.

Marketing. How are you planning to promote your restaurant?

4.    Products and Services
This section discusses the operational flow of the restaurant. For example, how many hours you plan to open for business and how many employees you intend to hire.

5.    Ownership and Management
Who gets to take the director’s chair, or the helm as captain of the ship? Who’s in charge of bookkeeping, general management, human resources, etc.? Explain it in this section.

6.    Funding
When all is said and done, the last part of your business plan – Funding – should get down and dirty and discuss who is going to shoulder what expense? How well you write and plan this section might very well spell the difference between multiple investors and sole proprietorship.

When it comes to opening a restaurant, before you become a restaurant owner, first you are a businessman or business woman. Don’t let your hopes and dreams get ahead of you. Think objectively, how you’re going to go about this and that thing, before approaching your friends for business partnership. You need to write a solid restaurant business plan to convince them your dream restaurant is worth turning into a reality.

Tell me what you think by leaving a comment below.

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 An Instant 20-30% Increase In Restaurant Sales By Following These Year-End Tips

The New Year is almost here. I can smell sweet ham cooking in the kitchen, and at the same time I’m writing down the ways I figured to make 2010 the most profitable year for your restaurant.

But let’s get one thing straight. Looking forward to a prospective new year doesn’t mean you won’t learn anything from the one you’re leaving behind. New opportunities are a result of careful observation of your experiences.

Here are some of my tips for 2010.

1. Where’s your profit coming from
Where’s your money coming from? Do most of your customers order take-out? Do you have delivery? Is it booming?

What you should do is list down on a spreadsheet which of your services generate how many dollars as well as the percentage of your total sales. This is how you’re going to plan what you’re going to do in the coming months. If 65% of your earnings come from lunch, then you’d do well to allocate 60% of your budget to advertise your lunchtime offers.

2. Establish a marketing calendar
One of the most painful mistakes you could make as a restaurant owner is to bite into every single marketing gimmick your ad rep throws your way. That is—and believe me on this—a complete waste of money.

But like I said earlier, it pays to look back once in a while. Which is why you should put up a marketing calendar. Make notes on your calendar which advertising gimmicks worked and which ones blew. The idea is to weed out the gimmicks that failed and keep the ones that succeeded.

3. Talk with your customers
So okay. This one doesn’t really apply to a specific year, and it is pretty much self-explanatory. Talking to your customers allows you to build a relationship with your most important resource. I wonder how most restaurant owners would react if I tell them that it’s six times easier to sell to a long-time patron than it is to find a new customer.

4. Explore niche restaurant marketing
Niche marketing is the future of restaurant advertising. Period.

Fact is many restaurants are already doing it. Why not attend a local bridal show to promote your Asian dishes and diet-friendly cuisines? Take note of Valentine’s Day and advertise your dinner specials as early as January. Before summer vacation, why not promote an event where graduating high school students get as much as 20% discount if they bring in their parents?

Niche marketing will really boost your sales, if done right.

My last piece of advice: stick to your plan, put it into action. A new year is an opportunity to begin with a clean slate. In your case, take what you can from the previous year, turn it into a learning experience, and then use that as leverage to bring your restaurant to new heights.

For comments and feedback, please leave a message below.

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