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I've just read a short article in the Orlando Business Journal (Yes, this is the beauty of the Internet, you can read about local news globally!) about two entrepreneurs that came up with an idea to create customized lists for hotels that cite restaurants by category with brief descriptions, addresses, phone numbers and maps, all updated on a monthly basis.
The Restaurant List Co. started in Nashville, Tennessee about a year ago and wants to include more than 100,000 restaurants and 12,000 hotels.
Their business model is to offer the list to hotels for free and make money in the back end from the restaurants that pay between $10 to $300 per month to be included.
So you think this a good idea? Should you advertise in this list if you city happens to be already included in their database?
My short answer is No, I don't think so. I will explain why I think that this is a waste of money (your money) and why this is an almost obsolete idea in these Internet times:
- The list will be distributed in hotels. This means that it will capture ONLY people who are traveling and therefore may go to your restaurant once in a blue moon. And this is assuming that they go to your place; remember, there will be hundreds of restaurant listed there! Now, if you are familiar with my restaurant marketing strategies, you know that I recommend cultivating your best existing clients and promoting for them to come more often and bring their friends and family versus expending lots of money trying to attract new customers. This initiative focuses exclusively in this expensive strategy.
- People who frequent hotels, (at least that your restaurant is located in a turistic area) are usually business travelers. These are technical savvy people who will use the Internet to find good places to eat. With the proliferation of free user-rated sites such as www.citysearch.com, www.yelp.com, and other more prestigious sites such as www.zagat.com, www.restaurant.com, etc. who needs a printed list to chose a restaurant?
- Since this list is on a per-pay model, any restaurant will be included, mixing high quality expensive restaurants with fast food places and making the clients confused about their choices.
- Finally, if you really want to attract people who stay in hotels near your place, the best way to do it is to "bribe" the concierges. Offer them a complimentary meal once in a while and they will refer lots of people to your place for much less money than the monthly fee that you'll have to pay to be included in this list
So there, this is my opinion of the whole idea. If you think that this would work for you, then at least try to track how many people will come to your place because of the list. Make the ad in the list so that the clients coming give you a code or something on exchange for some freebie. This is the only way to track the success of this marketing investment.
Remember, never invest in marketing if you can't track its results! If you do nothing else and follow this golden rule, you will be way ahead of your competitors and invest wisely your marketing dollars.
Happy Sailing,
Jose L Riesco
© Riesco Consulting Inc.
www.twitter.com/jlriescohttp://www.myrestaurantmarketing.com
Do restaurant owners and managers need a Restaurant Marketing Plan?
The answer is, ABSOLUTELY. Without a marketing plan you are just investing money blindly hoping for the best and trying to get lucky.
Would you build a house without first having a blueprint? Probably not a good idea since you could end up spending hundreds of thousands of dollars to get, at best, a questionable house.
However, many restaurateurs spend thousands of dollars in marketing (placing ads in weekly papers and magazines, printing and mailing coupons, accepting programs like Passport, etc.) without having, or even ever considering a marketing plan.
A restaurant marketing plan is a blueprint of your marketing strategy. It tells you where and how to spend your marketing dollars so that you can maximize your investment and get the results that you want. In other words, it is your plan for a successful restaurant.
Restaurateurs are busy people. There are so many things that they need to take care of on a daily bases (inventory, appliances, staff, schedules, finances, cleaning, maintaining, etc.) that they can always find excuses for no sitting down and do some upfront planning that it could save them thousands of dollars in marketing investments and additional thousands in increased revenues and sales.
If you don't have a restaurant marketing plan, you will be pray of the persistent sales people who will come to your restaurant (because they will come, count on it) trying to persuade you to place ads in their yellow pages, their billboards, their newspapers (that, they will tell you reaches thousands of readers, like if this was any measure of your success advertising there!), etc.
Think for a moment how do you want to position your restaurant. Do you have something obviously special that you offer to your clients? (this is called a Unique Selling Proposition or USP). If so, you should use this USP in your advertising, if not, you should come up with one.
All restaurants are different from each other and all have something unique about them that their regulars clients like. If you don't now what's special about your place, ask your regular clients. Approach them after a good meal and ask them what's that they like about your place that they come again and again. Is it your great food? or your excellent service? Is it perhaps your location or your ambience? There are many variables and your job, as owner/manager is to identify what makes your place special and different from other places.
Once you have your USP, use it in all your marketing materials.
Then think about your clients. What's your average client? If you are a medium/upper scale restaurant, they are probably professionals or retired people with money, perhaps couples with no kids, etc. If you are a family restaurant, your clients are families with kids, etc.
This is very important when you create your marketing campaigns. For example, why should you advertise in a weekly newspaper mainly aimed to youth if most of your customers are middle age couples with higher income? You would be wasting your marketing dollars. Or the opposite: If you have a family restaurant, should you send coupons in an area where most of the population are retired senior people? I don't think that this is a great idea.
You see where I am going? Before you spend ANY dollars in your marketing, try to think about your place:what's unique with it?, and about your clients: what kind of clients do you have and what kind of clients do you want? this will set up the tone and channels for all your marketing.
Think always strategically. Know what your plan is and where do you want to take your business before you spend your hard earned dollars in marketing that doesn't work for you.
Jose L Riesco
© Riesco Consulting Inc.
www.twitter.com/jlriescohttp://www.myrestaurantmarketing.com
How many times do you get one of these surveys, specially after buying a new car (see my previous blog titled Surveys and Car Dealers where they expect you to fill them always with the top score? (Meaning that they’ve exceeded all your expectations).
If we followed the car dealers’ standards, “Exceeding Expectations” would mean OK service…
Or did they delivered the car to your door at work or at home? Did they give you an incredible discount or did something so out of the ordinary that you were in shock and awe (and not in a negative way!) because it greatly surprised you?
These would be cases of exceeding expectations. Giving you a free pot coffee while you wait for the salesman or just going for a test car ride are not. All the dealers do this, so we expect this from them.
They never impressed me much so I guess that I should rate them with 3 stars (average) although they always demand 5 (exceeded expectations) for some unfounded reason.
Perhaps their expectations are lower than normal after you spend more than $25,000 on their product?
But I digress.
Going back to the restaurant business, how many times do think your clients believe that you’ve exceeded their expectations? Sometimes, seldom, never?
How many times did you go to another restaurant where they’ve exceeded your expectations?
It didn’t happen too many times to me.
Perhaps because this industry is very predictable and it’s difficult to be original, or perhaps because we are too conservative to try anything new, dinning at most restaurants is a totally prdictive experience.
Sure you expect good food and good service at reasonable prices. Every restaurant should give you at least that, but what about surprising your clients with some unpredicted extras? They don’t need to be expensive, it is more a matter of thinking than of spending money.
For example, you could tell your chef to prepare some small appetizers that you could give, on the house, to your clients when they order their drinks. Or you can ask your waiters to replace napkins when somebody leaves the table to go to the bathroom or to make a phone call, etc. You could, for example, one night buy flowers and give one rose (or some other flower) to each woman in the restaurant, give a little sack to each guest (or table) with some spices that you’ve used in the dishes… The sky is the limit!
These are very cheap things for you to do that will pleasantly surprise your clients. These little things will exceed their expectations because they don’t get it anywhere else and therefore they are not expecting it.
But don’t do always the same things or they will become routine. Come up with new ideas, always new, always fresh and unexpected. Setup an idea context among your employees and give a price to the ones that give you the best ideas.
Not only your clients will love your place, but you will also make your restaurant unique and invite your clients to repeat their visits looking forward to be “surprised” and enjoy their dinning experience.
Thanks for reading and happy sailing,
Jose L Riesco
© Riesco Consulting Inc.
www.twitter.com/jlriescohttp://www.myrestaurantmarketing.com
What constitutes great service when you go to a restaurant?
This is one of these things that are difficult to describe, but you know it when you see it, or better yet, when you experience it.
Some times we go to a restaurant where the service is so obviously poor that there is no question about it: long delays, rude or inattentive waiters, mistakes with the food or drinks orders that don’t get compensated, apologized, etc.
However, other times, although everything seems OK, we have the impression that something is missing. Yes, the waiters were on time and yes, they delivered the food and drinks that we ordered in a reasonable time and yet, however, something is missing: I will call it the WOW factor.
You see? We humans are very tuned, although many times, in a subconscious level, to the feelings and moods of other people. If a waiter is unhappy, or just has a bad day, you will notice. That mood, that unhappiness will be transmitted to the people who their customers.
The reverse is also true. A happy, sincerely smiling waiter, transmits their happiness to their clients, chatting with them and making them feel good. It doesn’t matter that much if they make a mistake or forget some food item because their tables will feel connected with them and understand and forgive their mistakes.
This seems unfair, after all, every person has the right to be moody or unhappy. So how does the waiters mood or disposition relate to the restaurant owners or managers? What can you do if they have unhappy faces or unhappy lives?
Well, to start with, many of the unhappiness of your employees could probably be related to your work environment.
You should ask yourself. Are your employees happy to work for your restaurant? Happy to work for you? If you try to squeeze as much as you can from them, they will resent you and transmit this resentment to their tables, to your clients!
I mention in my online seminar that the quality of your restaurant is as good as the quality of your weakest link. If your employees are not happy working for you, your clients will suffer the consequences.
I am not saying that you need to bend backwards to please your employees. After all, they are also human and therefore always want the best for themselves, even if they are not being fair with their fellow coworkers.
What I am saying is that you should provide your employees with the best work environment that you can (of course while still running a profitable business). Trying to take advantage of your employees by having unreasonable working hours, treating them with disrespect, paying them late, etc. will make them unhappy and will make you lose a lot of money in the long term with your clients.
Happy employees make happy clients. Period.
Thanks for reading and happy sailing,
Jose L Riesco
© Riesco Consulting Inc.
www.twitter.com/jlriescohttp://www.myrestaurantmarketing.com
This is a very important question that you need to answer honestly if you want your place to succeed.
Let’s play pretend for a moment. Let’s pretend that you are one of your clients.
What attracts them to your place?
Is it your great food? or perhaps Your convenient location? Are you the cheapest place around? (I hope not or you will have to make your profit in pure volume.) Do you have a signature dish that attracts people? or Live music? or Does your place have great atmosphere and beautiful decoration? Do you have a view? Easy and convenient parking?
Whatever makes your place unique and different is what it’s called in marketing a USP (Unique Selling Proposition) and this is the key factor that differentiates your place from any other place.
All restaurants have (or should have) a USP so if yours doesn’t jump at you right away, just sit down when you have a few free minutes (I know, I know, it’s difficult to find free time for a restaurateur but you own to yourself and your business to do this exercise) and write down a list of things that make your place special.
If you are not able to come up with any, ask your staff or any of your regular clients, they may tell you something that you didn’t even thought of.
If nobody can tell you anything special for your place, then you are in trouble my friend, because if you or your people don’t find anything special, nobody else will do. In this case you need to “create” something special. Make a new dish, a new signature cocktail (if you serve alcohol), bring and hang art (from an art school or local artists) in your walls…
Once you finally have your USP, use it in your advertising, make sure that all your employees know about it. Tell your clients. This will resonate with them and will make your place to stand from 90% of other places that have nothing special to offer.
Thanks for reading and happy sailing,
Jose L Riesco
© Riesco Consulting Inc.
www.twitter.com/jlriescohttp://www.myrestaurantmarketing.com
Bad Service
This weekend I went with my family and some friends to a trip to Long Beach, WA. On the way, we stopped in a Mexican restaurant to get some lunch.
The place was empty (only the 8 of us and another couple) and we were promptly seated in a long table.
Soon enough, our young (in his late teens or early twenties) waiter came with the nachos, no salsa. When after a while we asked him for some salsa, he smiled and brought it a few minutes later. No big deal.
Then we order our foods. Two members of our party didn't get their tortillas for their fajitas. We waited and waited but the waiter never came back to check on us. Another woman in our group ordered a Coke that never made it to the table. We needed to get up and look for the waiter who was talking to another guy by the kitchen. Finally a busboy brought us the tortillas when they were almost at the end of the meal.
In the middle of the meal, a terrible noise startled us all. Somebody dropped a whole tray filled with glasses. It made a terrible ruckus and got all the attention from our waiter (although he wasn't the responsible for the accident). We never saw him again until we had to go again and ask for the check.
They charged us for the coke that we never got but we were ready to leave and didn't want to make a fuss about $1.65 so we paid and left.
Now, we were in our way to Long Beach and it is doubtful that we will stop in that place for a meal any time soon, but even if I was leaving in that town, I don’t think that I would frequent that place. The food, by the way, was pretty good.
I always said that food in a restaurant is important but service is almost as important. If one of the two fails, the dining experience also fails.
I see often restaurateurs hiring very expensive chefs that get lavishly paid, and compensate their expenses by hiring inexperience (and cheap) servers, often teenagers, who are neither interested in the business nor knowledgeable of what a good dining experience entails.
Don't make this mistake. Good food with poor service is as bad as bad food with great service. Both need to be in balance if you want your place to succeed. Select the best servers that you can get, train them continuously (teach them the foods, the wines, what makes your place unique and special) and don't try to squeeze as much money as you can from them. Not only they won't be motivated to offer an excellent service but they may even resent you and pass that resentment along to your clients.
Remember, the weakest link in your business will setup the standard.
Thanks for reading and happy sailing,Jose L Riesco
© Riesco Consulting Inc.
www.twitter.com/jlriescohttp://www.myrestaurantmarketing.com
Paul Arden, famous writer of the best-selling book: “IT’S NOT HOW GOOD YOU ARE, IT’S HOW GOOD YOU WANT TO BE” (highly recommended read, very small and easy to read book) has a whole chapter titled: IT’S ALL MY FAULT. This is his first paragraph:
“If YOU are involved in something that goes wrong, never blame others. Blame no other but yourself.”
This seems to go against human nature. Whenever there is a problem, we human beings, try always to find a responsible to blame (other than ourselves, of course, we are always very understanding with ourselves).
Restaurants are unique businesses because of the incredible number of problems that could arise (see my free newsletter Problems and Crisis for some hands-down solutions and strategies to cope with daily problems).
However, as owners/ managers we are ultimately responsible for any problems and to come up with solutions.
One of the worst things that you can do, as a leader, is blaming your people (or even worse, as I saw with my own eyes a restaurateur to do: blaming your clients) for anything that goes wrong.
If the food arrives cold or late, or the service is lousy or your place is not well located… you need to assume responsibility and think of ways to improve it and make it right.
Restaurant business is a people business and as such, subject to human errors.
Your waiters may trip and spill food over your clients, your chef or cooks may have a bad day when the food doesn’t taste as good as usual, five things break at the same time, somebody gets sick and you are short on personnel…
Your job is no to blame people for these problems, it is to find solutions and make your clients happy regardless of what happened. Your clients are not responsible for your problems so blaming your staff in front of them to excuse the problem doesn’t help you at all.
Your clients are also people and therefore understand that things can go wrong. It is only when the big ego of many restaurant owners gets in the middle that things start going south.
If a clients don’t like their food, don’t argue with them. Instead, offer them a solution: change their food, offer them another dish (if they really don’t like that one), give them a refund if they lost their appetite. If the food arrives late, apologize and offer the clients a compensation. Perhaps a free entree if there is a party (you will still make a profit), or a free dessert if they are not spending much money.
People always appreciate the willingness to fix problems.
If one of your waiters trips over and spills food, don’t get mad at them. Offer your client to pay for their dry cleaning and give them a free meal. They will be happy and you won’t make a scene in front of your clientele. Besides, getting mad at the waiter will only make them more nervous and clumsy and can bring more unfortunate events.
Of course, if you see that one specific person is very clumsy, careless and prone to accidents, you should consider replacing that person (probably they are in the wrong job anyway) but don’t deal with this issue in front of your clients when your place is full of people.
At the end, you are responsible for hiring your employees, for training them and for motivating them. If they don’t perform up to the (high I presume) standards that you’ve setup for your place, you should ask yourself why.
Is there a lack of training, of interest, of skills? If so, they are fixable. You can setup a training program, motivate your employees by explaining your philosophy and rewards system…
If, however, an employee is hopeless or dishonest, get rid of them. The world is full of honest and good people willing to do their best to make your clients happy.
So, assume your problems, deal with them and give your clients the best experience that you can. Be honest and open with them if something goes wrong, and explain that you assume complete responsibility and will deal with the problem to make them happy.
Remember, at the end, it is always your fault so deal with it.
As usual, please let me know what you think. I love to hear from you.
Thanks for reading and happy sailing,
Jose L Riesco
© Riesco Consulting Inc.
www.twitter.com/jlriescohttp://www.myrestaurantmarketing.com
Caroline McCarthy in an article in CNET mentions how restaurant and cafe owners are angry about their customers (or former customers, I guess) complaining about them in Yelp.
Yelp is a business reviews site with a very vocal user base willing to be brutally honest about the quality of their local restaurants and bars (among many other businesses).
Nowadays, only few people go to restaurants after looking at the ads in the Yellow Pages (for more information about the Yellow Pages as a marketing vehicle for your restaurant, please read my previous blog).
So what do web savvy customers these days? They use Yelp (or other websites like Citysearch.com, Zagat.com or Restaurants.com) and read the comments and reviews in these sites from other people’s experiences before deciding to go to a new restaurant. Negative comments from angry customers have a big (negative) impact in local restaurants.
Yelp.com, being a for profit business as it is, doesn’t want to get the business owners alienated and rioting againts it, so they have just launched a new service so that the business owners can interact with the site’s users.
The service is called “Yelp for Business Owners“. This is a special section in Yelp.com site that lets business owners register for special Yelp accounts, which they then need to verify by phone.
Once registered, restaurant owners and managers (just like you), have access to some analytics (namely to see how many people have been viewing your restaurant page), receive e-mail alerts when you have new reviews, update useful information like your hours of operation, contact information, special menus, etc. You can also send messages to the users who have already reviewed your business.
Yelp won’t charge you for these special accounts.
Caroline mentions that this service will likely have its biggest splash in cities like San Francisco, where Yelper is based and where “Yelper” has become a pejorative among some restaurant and cafe owners.
If you are familiar with my thinking (you can read my previous blogs or the Introduction to my Seminar to get some more information), you know by now how much importance I give to a total client satisfaction strategy.
You shouldn’t need to wait for your clients to leave your place disgrunted and write bad reviews about you or your place in Yelp (or any other online site for that matter).
Your job is to make your clients 100% happy with their experience in your place, even if you have to give them a partial refund (or a complete free meal if the situation so requires, to make them happy).
And believe me when I tell you that, although you are doing this to please your clients, there is something on it as well for you. There are several benefits for you if you follow this policy:
- The (now) happy clients won’t write bad things about you in the online forums (no need for you to lose your precious time doing spin control, think how much do you value your time).
- They may even write positive comments about how you turned a bad experience into a good one.
- These clients would probably go back to your place to try again, therefore giving you again your money back (and perhaps if their next experience is excellent, becoming regular clients).
- One negative comment about your place will make you lose tens or even hundreds of potential customers that would’ve (otherwise) decide to give you their patronage. After all, who wants to try a restaurant full of negative comments? Not me for sure.So you see? All of the sudden a full meal refund doesn’t look so bad, does it? Think about it as a small marketing investment that it will pay you many times over instead of a loss.
In these times of free access to information, the customers are in control. There is nothing (or very little) that you can do to mitigate the damage, once the customers leaves your place unhappy. They will tell the whole world about their experience. You can count on it. The only thing that you can do is when they are still in your restaurant.
Offer them a free meal, give them a discount coupon so that they can go back and try again. Do whatever it takes to mitigate their annoyance. Above all, don’t let them walk away unhappy. You will regret it.
Please let me know what you think. I love to hear from you. You can reach me at jose@riescoconsulting.com
Thanks for reading and happy sailing,
Jose L Riesco
Jose L Riesco
© Riesco Consulting Inc.
www.twitter.com/jlriescohttp://www.myrestaurantmarketing.com
Today I stumbled upon a Web site that uses cash rewards to bring people to restaurants.
I won't name it, but if you look in Google for Restaurant Marketing, they show up in the Sponsored links quite high (under the heading: Restaurant Promotions).
Once you go to their web site, they have this Heading: Drive Huge Traffic To Your Restaurant With A Big Prize Offer!
There are so many wrong things with this marketing approach that I don't even know where to start...
Ok, perhaps I do, let's try this:
- You will spend lots of money attracting new customers.
- These customers will go to your place only because of the Prize Offer.
- You will probably fill the restaurant once.
- These are bargain seekers, not quality customers (the kind of clients that you want to attract and cultivate).
- They won't come back again (at least that you give them more prices or freebies).
- You will make little or not money, even with a full restaurant.
- You may alienate your existing clients.
- You will attract the cheapest customers ever.
Do you think that this is worth it? I really don't think so.
Instead, spend your money bringing back your best clients. Give them incentives to come back with their family and friends. (I've talked about this in my previous blog, this strategy is also mentioned in detail in my Restaurant Marketing Strategies Seminar). This is the best way to spend your marketing dollars.
Forget about promotions, forget about ads in newspapers and magazines. Instead, spend your time and your money cultivating your existing clients.
If you do this, your return on investment will be always well spent. You will invest your money wisely and you will attract the best clients. If they don't come, you don't pay! Now this is being strategic!
Thanks for reading and happy sailing,
Jose L Riesco
© Riesco Consulting Inc.
www.twitter.com/jlriescohttp://www.myrestaurantmarketing.com
Many restaurant owners spend an incredible amount of money advertising their restaurant in the Yellow Pages.
It always amazes when I see full pages advertising a restaurant in the Yellow book. Let’s face, do you know anybody who decides to go to a restaurant by looking at the ads of the Yellow pages? I surely don’t.
In these days of ubiquitous internet access, people go online checking for restaurants and they trust more the reviews of other people than whatever marketing materials restaurant owners can put out there.
Personally, I think that the mission of the Yellow Pages is for somebody to find the place’s phone number to call and make a reservation. Yellow Pages are great to find a plumber or a service that you really need, but are really bad to look for a place to eat.
Eating in a restaurant is an emotional experience. You go there with expectations of having a great time, of sharing a meal with your family or friends and it’s not a place that people pick because it has a great name or a good ad (or at least they shouldn’t).
But let’s do a quick math to prove my point. Let’s assume that you spend $3,000 a year in Yellow page ads, and that your average ticket per client is $30. Now, from these $30, you get 50% profit. This means that for each client, you spend $15 in cost and get $15 in profit.
So doing easy math: $3,000 spent / $30 per customer = 100 customers, but since you make 50% profit, you need to bring 50 customers just to break even. (You can do this same exercise using your own numbers).
Do you really think that you are bringing 50 customers because of the Yellow Pages ads?
I sincerely doubt it; but there is a simple way to prove it.
Create a special coupon that people can bring when they come to your place and put it in your Yellow Pages ad. Offer a free dessert or some kind of discount. In this way, you can measure the effectivity of the ad.
If you see that you get more than 50 people coming in with the coupon, great; this means that your ad works and you can feel good about spending the money. If not, well… you know what to do.
However, there is another way, a much more efficient way for you to spend these $3,000 and have guaranteed results. Create a special “Great Clients” coupons with a discount, and offer them to your best clients. You could discount 20% of their next meal, for example. This means that your profit per client with these coupons will still be 30% instead of the usual 50% (50% profit - 20% discount =30% profit).
In this way, not only you increase the odds that these great clients come back to your place, but you don’t waste any money.
If they come back, great, you still make a profit and they will probably bring quality people (like themselves) with them. If they don’t come back, you don’t spend any money. This is a win/win situation for you.
Do you see where I am going?
The best way to market and promote your restaurant is always by spending the money in promoting repeated visits from your existing clients, instead of trying to capture new customers all the time.
Not only you will maximize your investment, but every penny that you spend will be measurable and will contribute to the satisfaction of your existing clients.
In my Restaurant Marketing Strategies Seminar, I dedicate a whole module to the important mission of increasing the frequency of visits from your existing clients.
This is one of the three only ways to increase your business, and perhaps the most important of the three (the other two being: increase the number of new clients and increase the purchase amount per client).
Don’t forget to participate in the forums.
Happy Sailing,
Jose L Riesco
© Riesco Consulting Inc.
www.twitter.com/jlriescohttp://www.myrestaurantmarketing.com
