80/20 vs. 4: Restaurant Marketing By The Numbers

By Greg McGuire

The Pareto Principle has long been hailed as the Holy Grail of marketing, the one rule by which all marketing efforts succeed or fail. The principle itself is pretty simple: 20% of your customers drive 80% of your sales. There’s always a core group of loyal customers who not only spend money in your restaurant, they bring their friends, give glowing reviews at dinner parties, and otherwise provide a vital linchpin in your money making machine.

Figuring out who those 20% are can be a full time job, and the logic has long held that if you find them, and target them effectively, you’ll be well on your way. But as the Information Age has matured, so has the wealth of tools available to marketers, and therefore the size of the groups you can target has gotten much smaller. Some marketers have even begun to parse groups of customers down to what some are calling the 4% factor, or specific offers that have a high conversion rate among 4% of your customers.

So how does this apply to restaurants? Well, for starters, restaurants are a business, just like any other. And as a business, restaurants have products that need to be sold to the right customer. Every day your restaurant has the opportunity to learn more about your customers: how often they come in, how much they spend, what they order, etc.

The more you know, the better you can target your promotions and marketing. Too often restaurants take a shotgun approach to their marketing campaigns – blanket advertising in local media outlets and generalized coupons (20% off your order, etc.). That strategy used to be enough. But as more restaurants compete for the same customers, aging marketing approaches are simply not going to work anymore.

Here are some tips to bring your restaurant marketing strategy into the 21st century:

Know thy customer. You’ve probably heard this one before, but it has never been more true. The main difference is that you have many more ways to get to know your customer today that simply didn’t exist before. For restaurants specifically, consider some strategies to learn more about your customers:

• Hold a raffle/door prize event.Customers who enter must fill out a card with their email address, favorite menu item, really anything you want to know about them.
  
  
• Use an email marketing campaign to engage customers and collect information about them.
  
  
• Conduct surveys, either electronically or on paper in your restaurant.

Use coupons to learn more about your customers – if you can collect an email when a customer redeems a coupon for a specific menu item, then you can use that information to target them for specific types of future promotions

Leverage thy knowledge. Now that you’ve put some effort into collecting information about your customers, you need to leverage that information to your advantage. Use the 4% factor to separate customers into specific groups with particular tastes. Then hit those groups with specially tailored promotions made just for them. The goal is to get your response rate (i.e. conversion rate) through the roof.

Engage thy followers. Targeting small groups of loyal customers should generate an enthusiastic response. And when customers respond, you should be poised to engage them and solidify your rightful place as one of their favorite brands. The tools you have available to you today make customer engagement even easier. Experiment with different avenues until you find the social media that works for you.

Gauge and repeat. The idea is that these small groups you find through your marketing campaign will respond at much higher rates than a traditional (and usually more expensive) marketing campaign. You’ll only know for sure if you gauge response. Use coupon codes and other ways to measure who’s biting on what, and then modify and improve your campaign until you have it honed down to a high performance machine.

The good news is that running a 4% campaign will probably be much cheaper than a traditional shotgun blitz. The bad news is that it takes some significant time investments and more than a little trial and error. For those willing to put the time in however, the gains can be huge.

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Greg McGuire blogs about the foodservice industry at The Back Burner, which is written by the employees of Tundra Specialties, a company specializing in restaurant equipment and food service supplies.

Restaurant Email Marketing or Restaurant Social Media?

Last week I've posted a blog in FohBoh titled Restaurant Email Marketing and to be honest, I was surprised about how many heated comments it got.

You can read it here:

http://www.fohboh.com/profiles/blog/show?id=1411008:BlogPost:338824&page=1

Obviously restaurant Email marketing obviously strikes a chord equally with marketing experts and restaurateurs. One of the comments was very interesting. Brett mentioned that "True interaction and exchanges of information happen on social networks."

His point is that email is intrusive while in social network media people chose to follow other people (or a business) and therefore the information is shared voluntarily.

This is not totally right since people can also unsubscribe easily from email lists if the content is not to their liking.

The difference between email marketing and social media marketing is that email marketing is a push marketing (people receive your communication) while social media is a pull marketing (people need to connect and check what's going on).

So which one is best? The answer is both:

Email marketing is really appropriated to send a message to your customers that you want to make sure they receive (like an important event or announcement).

Social media marketing, on the other hand, is better for posting general news, photos of your restaurant, staff or dishes, etc. and in general for keeping your restaurant fresh in your customers' memory.

Use both with moderation and always post interesting information and you will accomplish to keep your customers happy and informed.

Happy meals,

Jose L Riesco

www.myrestaurantmarketing.com

PD: I've updated my website with a ton of free marketing information, resources and ideas. Check it out!

The Best Restaurant Marketing In the World

Restaurant owners and managers often spend quite a lot of money in marketing, trying to bring new customers to their restaurant with mixed results.

However, that obsession with bringing new customers often diverts the attention from their core business.

Let’s face it; before you start spending hundreds (or thousands) of dollars a month trying to bring new customers to your restaurant, you should focus on your core competences, making sure that you can deliver an excellent dining experience to your clients.

Restaurants should show their commitment to excellence in four basic parameters:

√ Quality of their food

√ Excellence of their service

√ Cleanliness of their place

√ Agreeable, beautiful, unique, and/or attractive ambience

If you can’t deliver in all these categories, then perhaps you can still bring new customers to your restaurant using smart and targeted marketing. However, many of these people won’t come back to eat at your place, so you will have to keep on investing over and over in new marketing vehicles to always attract new customers.

Instead, try to take a hard look at your current offering. Do you deliver great food with excellent customer service in a clean and attractive place? If so, great, you are ready now to promote your business.

However, if you think that you are missing in one or more of the four categories, you should focus your energies on improving them.

These are some basic things you can do to improve your core business:

√ Changing or simplifying your menus. Sometimes less is more and your kitchen staff can focus all their energies on your signature dishes and your servers will know better the menus. If your cooks can deliver great quality food, then it’s time to hire new more skilled cooks.

√ Training your staff by switching all the emphases to customer service and satisfaction. Setup clear guidelines about how to deal with unhappy clients.

√ Making sure that your restaurant is spotless. There is not excuse for less than a clean place where people go to eat. If your place is not clean enough, change your cleaning service (if you hire one), or ask your in-house people to clean better and review thoroughly after they clean to make sure that the place is spotless.

√ Creating a nice ambiance. Sometimes, a fresh coat of paint and some accessories is all you need to give your place a fresh and pleasant look.

But the most important aspect of all, is a total commitment from the management to deliver to your clients a great dining experience. This is what separates the great restaurants from the mediocre ones.

I encourage you now to go to the main restaurant review sites (www.yelp.com, www.citysearch.com www.metaflavor.com, www.menusnearu.com, etc.) and read the reviews that people wrote about your restaurant.

Sometimes this is a revelation because as the proud owner, you think that everything is fine with your place, and then you read some nasty reviews from disgruntled customers. I know that these reviews are hard to swallow but you must think about these reviews as a great opportunity for you to know your weak spots and improve your business.

Do they mainly complain about your food? Your service? Do you have tables that people really don’t like (perhaps no very well located…)?

These should be clues for you about what are your restaurant’s weaknesses and try to improve upon them.

Many times, the problems are related to consistency. A great review from one day becomes a horrible review the next because the dish was wrong, or the service poor. This is also a clue that you must set up processes that everybody should follow to make sure that things work as expected.

Of course, all the processes and safeguards in the world won’t assure you that mistakes won’t be made; after all, the restaurant business is a people’s business and people will make mistakes, count on it. So, what can you do to make your clients happy? You should make sure that people are adequately compensated for any wrongdoing that spoils their dining experience.

Having a compensation plan for your clients is the best marketing strategy that you can implement in your restaurant. After all, happy clients will write enthusiastic reviews about your place. These glowing reviews will be read by many prospects in the many restaurant review sites, and they will bring you many more happy clients.

Also, once you have solid systems in place to assure your customer's satisfaction, you can implement a formalized restaurant referral systems to bring back over and over your increasingly happy crowd.

If you focus on your core business and you always exceed your customers’ expectations, you won’t have to worry about marketing anymore.

Your clients will become your best marketing and sales force. Their testimonials will have ten times more credibility and power than any fancy advertisement or marketing campaign that your restaurant can run.

Happy meals,
Jose L Riesco
www.myrestaurantmarketing.com

People Are Searching Online to Find Restaurants

How important is your restaurant's web presence?



According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, in 2008 over 72.5% of the U.S. population was online (that’s OVER 220 MILLION Americans), and 70% of them use the Internet everyday. This means that most of your customers are looking for restaurants online, and many of them use Google to find a good place to eat.



I don't know if you are aware that Google has recently introduced a local search feature that detects your location and shows local results instead of global ones. What this means is that, for example, if somebody wants to find a Mexican restaurant near their home, they just have to type "Mexican restaurant" in the Google bar...

...and Google will show them a list with the top 10 Mexican restaurants nearby. No need for them to even tell Google where they are located. Google knows.



Now, if you happen to own the ONLY Mexican restaurant in town, you probably don't need to worry about showing up in the top-ten list. However, chances are that your restaurant is not the only one in your category so you better start working on your web presence or people won't find you online!



In addition of showing the list with the names of the top 10 restaurants, Google also displays their websites, their phone numbers, and the number of reviews that people made. It is just one click away to read what people have to say about your restaurant:

So, OK now you get that you should show up in the Google searches when somebody looks for your restaurant’s cuisine, now what should you do to make sure that your restaurant shows up in the top-ten list?



To start, you should make sure that your restaurant has a decent website. This is a basic requirement. It is not enough to show up in Citysearch, Metaflavor or Yelp. If you’ve noticed, all the restaurants in my search have their own websites.



Also, your website should be informative and very easy to navigate. It should contain the following components:



✔ Your complete menu with prices



✔ Photos of your dishes



✔ Your location: address (with a map), and phone number



✔ Hours of operations



✔ Information about other services: catering, special events, cooking classes, etc.



✔ The option of making online reservations directly from your site (very important for many people)



✔ An online form to capture your prospect's name, email, birthdays and anniversaries (essential requirement to email them promotions and attract them to your place)



✔ Press releases, testimonials of happy clients



✔ etc.


In addition, you should promote your site so that it scores high in the Google natural search results. How do you do that? This is a whole new topic (it is called SEO) but basically you should have as many cross references to your site as possible from other sites and social networks: blogs, reviews, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, etc.

You can sign for a free account in Wordpress.com or Blogger.com and start blogging about your place. You can write about your dishes, your staff, your wines, or beers, about geography (country, region) and culture of your restaurant’s food or any other information that could be interesting for your clients.

Of course this blog will have links to your website. You can even link this blog so that it also publishes to your website at the same time…

Also, open a free Facebook account and populate it with content. Link it to your website. Open another one in MySpace. Do the same with Twitter and tweet away information, discounts, timely coupons, etc. Don’t forget to point people to your website as well in Twitter.

There are many other ways to promote your website. I will cover some in future blogs.

In the meantime, get to work.

✔ Google your restaurant’s cuisine and check if your website shows up in the top 10.

✔ Review your current site and start improving it with all the necessary requirements to make it attractive, useful and easy to navigate.

✔ Open an account in Wordpress.com or Blogger.com and start a blog. Link it to your website.

✔ If you don’t already have, open accounts in the various social networks and create your restaurant page.

✔ Open an account in Twitter (or tweet away if you have one).

Link all of your offerings back to your website and in a few weeks, check again. You should start showing up in the top 10 restaurants for your category. This is what you want. This will attract you new customers.

Happy meals,

Jose L Riesco

http://www.myrestaurantmarketing.com

Simplify Your Life: Optimize Your Restaurant Operations (1st part)

This is the second blog of the Simplify Your Life series. The main concept behind these series is to give you some ideas to help you simplify your workload (and your life!) AND in the process, improve your business.

I my previous blog, I mentioned that you need to reduce the number of items in your menu. In this one, I will talk about simplifying your operations.

Operations in a restaurant are all the actions that happen from the moment that you open your doors in the morning, until the moment when you close them at night.

For simplicity purposes, I will split the operations in two separate components:

1. Your front of the house: whatever is visible to your customers.

2. You back of the house operations: what happens behind your restaurant doors that your customers are unaware of, but that it is essential for the smooth working of your restaurant.

In this blog, I will focus only on number one: the front of the house operations that covers from the moment than a customer makes a reservation (online, on the phone or in person) to the moment that they leave your place and everything between.

Every single aspect of your operations should work like a well-oiled machine; without hiccups and without your staff needing to wait and think how to act in each moment that something unexpected happens.

Often, restaurant owners and managers spend an incredible amount of time troubleshooting problems and dealing with customers complains and issues.

So what can you do to avoid this trap?

First, you must document all your current processes. I know that this may sound like a tedious task but trust me; it is important. You can’t improve your current processes if you don’t know what they are.

Just sit at your computer start writing down how do you currently handle your bookings:

✔ Online from your site: do you have an easy and efficient way to manage online bookings? If not you should consider one. You should check www.bookingangel.com or some other online reservation system.

✔ On the phone: Does your staff have a consistent and polite way to answer the phone?

Create a nice message and write it down. Make sure that you include the following points:

☛ “Hello, this is restaurant XXXXX” (Pronounce clearly the name of your restaurant), “How can WE help you?” (It is better to use we than I since it creates a sense of community)

☛ Make sure that you capture their name (ask to spell to make sure it is correct), contact's phone number, AND ask the reason of the visit and if they are coming for any special occasion.

This is very important. Most of the times when I make a reservation, the host(ess) don’t ask me why I am visiting the restaurant. If this is a special occasion, (birthday, anniversary, some celebration, etc.) make sure to write it down in the reservations book or online system so that you can greet and compensate your clients as appropriate.

☛ Repeat back to the clients the booking information: their names and phone numbers, the date and time and the reason for their visit. Not only this will avoid you misunderstandings, but your prospects will be happy to know that you are acknowledging the reservation, and you paid attention to them.

✔ In person: Basically, follow the same rules than on the phone.

NOTE: Make sure that the person answering the phone or taking the reservation in person is smiling to the prospects. Even thought the phone, one can detect when somebody is genuinely happy and it makes the whole experience more pleasant.

In my next blog I will continue with the operations and talk about what to do when people arrive to your place.

Happy meals,
Jose L Riesco

© Riesco Consulting Inc.

www.myrestaurantmarketing.com

Follow me in Twitter:www.twitter.com/jlriesco

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Simplify Your Life: Reduce Your Restaurant Menu Items

In these times of economic uncertainty, it is easy to get lost in trying to do many things all at once. A good example is restaurateurs trying to manage their inventories, their staff, their operations, their books, their sales, their marketing...

Do you know anybody like that? I thought so.

This is the first of a series of blogs covering simplification. You need to simplify your life and focus on just a few basic core competences to make your restaurant the best it can be to stand out from your competitors.

So let's start with your menu: do you have many menu items? If so, perhaps you should think about reducing the number of dishes that you offer.

Frequently restaurateurs think that having many choices is better for their customers, when the opposite is often true. The best restaurants in the world have limited selections with all around excellent offerings.

With large menu choices, the quality is often uneven since it is almost impossible to equally master all the dishes. It also becomes a nightmare to manage the inventory, probably your servers struggle to remember all the dishes (and components), and your customers get often confused with so many choices.

Perhaps you should take a hard look at your menu and reduce the items to just your basic signature dishes. Not only you will avoid that your clients order menu items that are less than exceptional, but fewer dishes mean that they will be easier to remember (making them; thus, memorable) the next time that your clients come over for lunch or dinner.

Having a short and exquisite menu allows your kitchen to focus on providing exceptional quality, reduces your inventory (and perhaps you can even get a volume discount since you will be ordering more of the same items), and makes it easier for your servers and your clients to remember.

There are other secondary advantages such as less programming in your computer or point of sale, better track of what items are selling the best, easier to create the paper menus (with larger font), etc., but the essential point is that your restaurant will be associated in your customer's mind to a few exceptional dishes. And this is what you want.

If you agree with me, I would suggest that you meet with your Chef (or cook) and go over your menu, eliminating dishes that are less than great until you focus on a few appetizers, salads, entrees, and desserts. Cut down everything else.

Believe me when I tell you that people, your customers, will love to go to your restaurant to eat just a few great dishes. The best restaurants in the wold are famous for one or two dishes that they cook to perfection. No need to reinvent the wheel and try to please everybody.

It is better to have faithful clients that come to your place continually looking for your signature dishes, than trying to please everybody by increasing the number of dishes that you offer, just to have everybody leaving your place with just an OK experience. The world is full of mediocre restaurants; you don't want to belong to this category. You want to make yours exceptional.

This is the only way to stand out from your competitors.

We will cover other aspects of simplification (operations, sales, marketing, etc.) in later blogs.

Happy meals,
Jose L Riesco
©Riesco Consulting Inc.

www.myrestaurantmarketing.com

Follow me in Twitter:www.twitter.com/jlriesco

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Restaurant Marketing Strategies: Surprise Your Clients Today

When your clients go to your restaurant, they are looking forward to enjoy good food, good service, and usually to share a good conversation with friends, colleagues, or family members.



They expect to be taken care of, and to have a pleasant experience; what they don’t expect is to be surprised.



Usually, people like consistency when they are eating out, but this can play in your favor if you can provide them with an unexpected and enjoyable surprise.



It doesn’t have to be something amazing or expensive. It is more about the “wow” factor of a pleasant non-expected act from you that will make the eating experience memorable for your clients.

I will give you an example. A friend of mine, manager of an Italian restaurant located in Seattle bought a prosciutto to eat at home. He paid with his own money but asked the providers to deliver it to him at the restaurant.

Since he loves prosciutto, he started cutting the ham to get a taste of it. Then he though that it will be a good idea to share it with the people eating at the restaurant, so he asked one of the cooks to cut fine slices of prosciutto. He then offered it to the clients with compliments from the house.

Needless to say, his idea was a success and welcomed with open arms (or I guess mouths in this case). People were really happy to get a sample of prosciutto that they didn’t order, and specially didn’t have to pay for.

To make a long story short, this restaurant gives away now regularly complementary prosciutto to their best clients, and they just love it!

This is just an example of the many things that you can do to surprise your clients. Here you have some other ideas:

• Buy some flowers and give a flower to each woman in your restaurant.

• Buy very small bottles and fill them with extra virgin olive oil (you can buy it bulk at a very good price), then make a hole in one of your restaurant’s business cards and tie it with a ribbon (or ask one person from your staff to do it) around the neck o the bottle. Give one to your best customers for them to take home. They will love it.

By the way, you can also do this with any nice container filled with a special sauce that you use in your restaurant or some spices, etc. You get the idea.

• Create little snacks made with olives, dried fruits, nuts, or some other appetizer that your restaurant may serve. Give them to people who order a wine or a cocktail. They will happily eat them and will order more drinks from you.

• Print copies of two or three of your best recipes in a nice paper and give them to people ordering the dish. Put the name of your restaurant, your website, and the phone number. They will love it and keep it. And don’t worry about giving away your secrets. Most people are too lazy (or afraid) to cook even if they have the directions so you won’t be losing any business.

• Etc.

These are just a few ideas of things that you can do for little money to surprise your clients. You and your staff should come up with many more…

To conclude: here is an idea for you: Why don’t you establish the “Best idea for a surprise” weekly context and promote it among your employees? You can offer the winner a complementary meal, a movie ticket, or any other small reward. On exchange, you will get your staff involved in the process and very motivated to help you out.

It is a win-win situation for you, your business, your employees and most important, your clients. They will leave your place very happy and will be coming to your place again and again, looking forward to get surprised. As a bonus they will tell everybody how great it is to have dinner at your place!



Happy surprises,

Jose L Riesco

© Riesco Consulting Inc.

www.myrestaurantmarketing.com

Follow me in Twitter:www.twitter.com/jlriesco

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My Book is for Sale in Amazon Now

Today was a very intense day.

First, I had a very interesting interview/conversation with Jenna Lloyd. She is an online marketing consultant and copywriter who just launched a very interesting offer for restaurant owners and managers. It is is called My Internet Manager and it is basically a hands off approach to online marketing aimed to restaurant owners and managers.

So we talk for 1 hour and 15 minutes about online marketing, how to use social media to promote your restaurant and know what people are talking about your business, etc.

You can listen for free to the complete audio interview here: http://www.myrestaurantmarketing.com/Audio/JennaLloydInterview.html

At the end of the recording, she made a very generous offer to all my readers. You can find more information about her product and a very generous discount offer here: www.myinternetmanager.com/Jose

If you would like to subscribe to her restaurant online marketing offering, you can enter the following discount code (when you are in the shopping cart): 88F8D2 and you'll receive a discount of $200!!

But that's not all; while I was talking to Jenna, the UPS truck came and dropped off 30 author copies of my new Restaurant Marketing Strategies book. To my surprise, a friend told me that it is already available in Amazon. com and Barnes & Noble online.

You can find (and hopefully purchase) the book here:

http://www.amazon.com/Restaurant-Marketing-Strategies-Dramatically-Spending/dp/0981935117/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1252113817&sr=8-5

and here:

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Restaurant-Marketing-Strategies/Jose-Luis-Riesco/e/9780981935119/?itm=1

The book came out pretty good. It contains really valuable and logical marketing strategies to help you improve your restaurant marketing (and business!). Check it out.

Now, I need a rest to enjoy the long (and rainy) weekend.

Happy meals,
Jose L Riesco
©Riesco Consulting Inc.

www.myrestaurantmarketing.com

Follow me in Twitter:www.twitter.com/jlriesco

CLICK HERE TO TWEET!

How much should you invest to market your restaurant?

As a restaurant marketing and consulting expert, I get often this question: How much should an independent restaurant spend in marketing? The answer is... it depends. There is not a hard rule or fixed amount that a restaurateur must expend.

When I bought my first restaurant, I remember that the previous owner told me "You should invest at least 10% of your gross income in marketing if you want to be successful." So for a while I complied. Although 10% sounded very high to me, I knew nothing about the restaurant industry so whom was I to question the opinion of an expert restaurateur?

Very soon, however, I started realizing that I was wasting my money in marketing vehicles that just didn't work (many inherited from him). After lots of trial and error, I reduced the amount that I was expending in marketing; but even more important, I started investing in marketing that worked and brought me lots of customers.

So, let me ask you this question. Would you invest $1,000 in marketing if I told you that it will bring you $2,000 in profits? Of course you would, it would be silly no to.

However, many times, when I recommend some marketing investments to restaurateurs, they complain that they are expensive and can't afford them; even if I tell them that they will bring back many times their investment. This is specially true when these marketing investments are not the usual ads, flyers, coupons, etc. that restaurateurs are so used to, and love to hate.

Recently, I recommended to my list a great hands-off online marketing package from Online Reputation Management Expert Jenna Lloyd. This new program is specifically designed just for restaurants, nightclubs, and bars.

Yes, the price is $497 per month (soon to be raised to $697 per month), but the idea is that they will take care of everything, from writing newsletter articles customized to the restaurant, to take care of capturing customer's information, email them with personalized emails, etc. This is a hands off approach.

You can check the details here: www.MyInternetManager.com

After I suggested this online package to my list, I received many emails from restaurateurs complaining that they can't afford $497 a month. They get the wrong message. It is not a matter of if they can't afford it or not (they all can, $500 is not that high of a budget for a restaurant), it is about how much more business they will get if they invest this $497 a month!


They (and you) need to start thinking about marketing as an investment. If they get enough extra business to cover for their marketing expenses, then it is just a smart investment. If, on the other hand, after a few months, they see that there is not enough growth in their business brought by the marketing to justify the expenses, then this investment is obviously not working for them and they should cancel it.

At worst, they will expend only a few hundred dollars. At best they could improve their business dramatically. Isn't worth it a try?

Oh, and let's not forget all the hours that restaurateurs will save trying to market their restaurant online. How valuable is their time? Probably quite more than the $497 a month...

So should they cut any of their existing marketing and replace it all by this online system? Again, it depends. If it's working for them (and they can measure it and track it), then they should keep it. If not, they should just cut it and save their money.

It is as simple as that.

I hope that this blog put some sound ideas about investing wisely in your marketing. I surely hope so.

Happy meals,
Jose L Riesco

©Riesco Consulting Inc.

www.myrestaurantmarketing.com

Follow me in Twitter:www.twitter.com/jlriesco

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Dear Restaurateurs: Your Servers Are Your Sales Force, Are You Training Them?

Based onpersonal experience, many restaurateurs underestimate the importance of having servers trained in sales in their restaurant. Although most of the people serving food are pleasant enough, and can do their jobs, the best servers are always also the best sales people. Not only the get the highest tips, but they also increase the restaurant's profit.

Both, sales and marketing skills are key elements to make any business profitable. Usually (but not always), the restaurant owners and/or managers take the helm of the marketing while most of the sales rest on the shoulders of the servers. And this is probably where the problem lies since often, the servers just learn the operations and dishes. They never get any training in sales.

It happened to me more times that I can think of: I finished a very satisfactory meal just to be presented with the check, before anybody bothered to ask me whether I want dessert, coffee, or perhaps just an after-dinner drink. When a server brings the check, customers usually pay and leave the place, missing extra sales for very little extra effort.

Same thing with the water; offering your client’s mineral (or just bottled) water is an easy upsell that very few servers even consider.

There are many other examples where a trained server can increase the check amount without being pushy or bothering the clients. A client won't order (or very seldom will take the initiative to do it) an item that doesn't know of, or it's not blatantly displayed in the menu. However, many of them will appreciate an informed suggestion by a professional waiter.

Customer engagement is also another important element of the overall dining satisfaction

Don't underestimate the importance that your servers have in your business? After all, they are the main contact that the customers have with your restaurant. They are your image, your sales force and represent (for good or bad) your restaurant and the opinion that people dinning at your place have about it.


If you are not doing so now, implementing a formalized sales training for your servers should be very high in your priorities list.

Happy meals,

Jose L Riesco

©Riesco Consulting Inc.

www.myrestaurantmarketing.com

twitter.com/jlriesco


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