Restaurant Marketing
« Previous Entries5 Key Principles Of Restaurant Marketing
Tuesday, January 6th, 20091. Marketing has to pay for itself (it’s never an expense, it’s an investment)
The whole idea of a “marketing budget” is wrong. Most restaurants define it as a percentage of their sales. Wrong, wrong, wrong!
If you had a reliable and proven way of investing $20 and getting back $30, how many of these $20 bills [...]
Marketing A Restaurant In December (So As It’d Stay Busy Through January)
Tuesday, December 2nd, 2008You know how it typically goes…
You get a swarm of people before the holidays. They come in, they celebrate the jolly festivities, they eat and drink and swipe their credit cards.
Then the dreadful January rolls in. Customers retreat to their caves and roll a big stone to block the entrance. They are gone and there [...]
Stupid Restaurant Marketing: Shift Happens
Tuesday, October 28th, 2008Unless you’ve spent the last year or so in a cave, you know there are some major economic changes underway that are making restaurant business — or almost any business for that matter — a lot harder. Shift happens, you know.
One way where this shift is apparent is TV. Did you notice how many infomercial-type [...]
Recession-Proof Restaurant Marketing Plan (Musings On How To Drive Restaurant Sales When Food Is A Little Hard To Sell)
Tuesday, October 21st, 2008Whenever you talk to a restaurant owner these days, it’s almost invariably a story of how hard it is to be in the restaurant business. And after a while, it may seem like restaurateurs have been dealt the worst possible deal.
Yet I’m here to say (and this may offend some restaurant owners reading this) that [...]
Little Johnny, Restaurant Marketing, and Fed Bailout Package
Tuesday, October 14th, 2008Our educational system does a poor job of preparing Little Johnny to become a successful restaurant owner.
Little Johnny gets a good mark every time he gives a memorized answer (the only possible “correct” answer) to the teacher’s question.
Little Johnny doesn’t get a good mark for asking the right question in the first place. The kind [...]
Marketing A Restaurant In A Slow Economy (part deux)
Saturday, September 27th, 2008This is the second article in the series on how to market a restaurant during the economic slow-down and what a successful concept like Olive Garden does to grow when almost everybody else is shrinking. Loosely based on the information revealed in their Q1 2009 conference call.
4. Expand into new markets.
Olive Garden has seen a [...]
Marketing A Restaurant During The Economic Slow-Down: 5 Surprising Restaurant Marketing Lessons From Olive Garden (Darden Restaurants)
Wednesday, September 24th, 2008A quick story today with a critical take-away for your restaurant business, and an important announcement at the end.
Onwards to a story…
Last week I decided to pop in on the Darden Restaurants shareholder conference call. When a company like this is sharing what they do and why, and what they see going on in the [...]
Protected: How Well-Meaning Restaurant Owners Deprive Themselves Of Time, Profits, and Success… and How To Avoid Making Their Mistakes
Tuesday, September 16th, 2008There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.
Grand Opening? Soft Opening?
Tuesday, September 9th, 2008Lori, a reader from Florida, says she’s opening a restaurant (congratulations!) and asks this:
“What is the best to open this restaurant? Grand opening or soft? Have heard arguments for both…”
Well, let’s see…
The arguments for either one are missing the point. It’s not one versus the other.
Doing just the soft opening is silly. It like saying, [...]
Higher Menu Prices and Congruency
Tuesday, August 26th, 2008A fresh restaurant marketing story for you with a wee bit of a moral in the end.
In order to be able to set and maintain higher menu prices than those of your competition, you need to carefully “choreograph” all elements of your customer’s experience. And in that, no detail is too small.
Onwards to a story.
We [...]
