.png)
Generate interest
It all starts with generating interest in your restaurant and turning websurfers into contacts.
Convert interest into sales
Through engaging and personalized messages, contacts become paying guests.
Turn sales into SUPERFANS
Being able to follow up on a guests experience and continuing to develop a relationship builds a network of SUPERFANS.
Opening a restaurant is a dream for many people. Then there are those people who have the guts to make that dream a reality. You believe you can make a better plate of food and give better service, or you have those secret recipes that all your friends love, so the rest of the world is surly to love them too.
But as you open the doors, you realize it's not as easy as having friends over for dinner. You have people to manage, equipment to maintain and bills to pay.
So how do you stay on top of it? You need to create a system. You develop opening checklists, recipes, cleaning procedures and accounting measures, but the one "system" that never gets taken care of is the marketing system.
See, marketing, just like that fantastic plate of food, works best when it's consistent.
The best way to be consistent in your marketing is by creating a plan, systemizing the plan and breaking it down to small steps that can be consistently completed.
The E-Myth by Michael E. Gerber, is a great read and inspiration on creating systems so that you can focus on the important things, taking care of the guest.
But don't just take our word for it; read the book.
Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don't Work and What to Do About It
Many restaurants take marketing dollars and consider it just an expense.
They spend money and time on "doing" marketing because everyone tells them they need to.
There is no strategy, no measurement of a return on your investment.
This is how marketing gets a bad name. There is no connection with how marketing relates to sales.
At the very least, you need to measure how many NEW GUESTS are dining-in or taking-out with your restaurant due to your marketing.
You need to know the cost of guest acquisition, home much money you need to spend to get one new guest.
Then you work from that base to increase your ROI by
Got 60 seconds? Check out this video.
Long has there been an argument with which is more important, the cost of a menu item relative to its sale price or the dollar value that's leftover after the item cost.
Well, they are both important but both very different.
You need to watch your costs, and you need to make sure that your menu is producing enough money from sales to cover all of the other variable expenses.
If you sell a prime rib sandwich for $20 @ 25% cost, you have $15 leftover.
However, if you sell a prime rib dinner for $30 @ 35% cost, you have $19.5 leftover.
Just because the prime rib dinner has a higher food cost still makes it a profitable menu item.
So how much should you invest in your marketing?
Well, it's not the cost of the marketing; it's the contribution.
Spending $100 on marketing that brings in 5 new guests is a lower cost than $1000 on marketing that brings in 100 new guests, but your marketing dollar contribution has doubled.
A marketing system is an investment into your restaurant's future, do it well, and it will pay dividends for years to come.
