Awesome Restaurant Marketing Ideas!

Are your desserts a little ordinary? Island Way Sorbet may offer to give your restaurant marketing boost. In the summer or if you want to create a summer event in the middle of winter, Island Way Sorbet is a treat.  Creating events is a fun way for the staff to get engaged.

Anyone can serve a slice of cake with a candle.  Restaurants should not miss an opportunity to include a celebration whenever possible.  A restaurant offering a flaming candle sushi, special writing with sauce over a plate or Panda Bear oranges, this is a restaurant going above and beyond expectations.

A true story. Watch the video:

Everybody is a critic and if you are a restaurant owner, you have a target on your business.  Restaurant review sites are growing and there is more than just Yelp to consider.

Each day can be spent chasing comments on the Internet to protect your restaurant reputation.  While this article is not about restaurant reputation management, the long list below may make you nervous enough to look for a solution.

Reminder:  When someone makes a comment online, you will not feel it or hear about it anymore than you would in the old days when people would talk.  The difference is in the permanance of the comment and the whole world is watching and listening.

Turn the comments and restaurant reviews online into a restaurant marketing opportunity.  Instead of waiting for something to happen and wonder "Will it be ok?", be pro-active and influence your destiny.

New restaurant marketing idea:  Email Newsletters. Email marketing is not a new idea.  How many restaurateurs have an email list of at least 5,000?  Even in the days of dial-up Internet (1997), I already had an email list of about 5,000. How many have 20,000?  How many have 100,000?

True story of how restaurant marketing success happens when you least expect it and appear as if it were magic marketing.

Twenty years ago or so...   
Table to table, family to family, I walked through the dining room.

I love this aspect of the dining room cruise and look at:

• The things.  Are they as expected?
• The people.  Are they in happy mode, more than satisfied, do they want for nothing?

To test the second, it is necessary to capture a glance and maybe even a few words need to be exchanged.  Those words can’t be canned.  They must be sincere.  The body language must scream “I care”. 

Table by table I walked the dining room cruise.  

This will be a simple restaurant marketing idea.  The goal is to keep you on top of your game, connect you with your guests, do something to add to their experience, and capture an email address so you can stay in each person's inner circle.

Who makes a difference?  A restaurant owner can.  Specifically Tom Douglas "Super Chef" Restaurateur.  The video will tell the story about how a local business owner connects to his community.

Free restaurant marketing is my preference. However, if you understand the importance of investing in a restaurant marketing strategy, here are a few tips on where to look for funds.  The goal is to ear-mark dollars which can then be invested and re-cycled as each marketing campaign pays off.  If your restaurant has a sales issue and is short cash then investing in anything, especially marketing, seems an impossibility.

What daily & weekly non-negotiable tasks are included on a restaurant checklist? 

Its never too late to create a new restaurant marketing calendar. Today can be that day you tell your team "We are no longer going to buy advertising based on what salespeople have to offer and will instead become pro-active."

A Christmas restaurant marketing idea never came to you? You can use this idea next year of if you are scrambling at the last minute, this may be perfect.

I received a personal invite from a friend about this fundraiser to give support to families of fallen officers from Lakewood, WA.