Awesome Restaurant Marketing Ideas!

Perplexities begin when a restaurant marketing planning session begins.  This is because too many restaurant owners and managers have forgotten to pause and watch people eat their bacon.

A restaurant marketing plan can easily fail due to inaction or resistance of the restaurant manager.  No alarm bells will ring and no flashing lights will tell you the restaurant manager may be a problem.  Visiting a restaurant during peak times will many times reflect success... or failure.

Function food restaurant marketing requires high local traffic, big signs, speedy service and the basics in place for execution.  Large portions doesn't hurt for customers who worry more about volume than flavor.  (Sad but true.)

Function food is for people who eat simply to refuel the body and think very little about what they are spooning into their mouths.

Just make sure it's not terrible"

"As long as you aren't rude"

"Short lines are better because I am in a hurry"

... are thoughts that hurry-up guests may have rambling around in their heads. 

Excuses.  You hear them daily. Excuses can become a habit, an instant response or a "profound reason" as to why there is no time, no money or no understanding for how to do restaurant marketing.

Here is a prediction, one of two scenarios will occur:

• Next month restaurant sales will be up. There will be reasons.
• Next month restaurant sales will be down.  Excuses will be heard.

Both are a symptom of restaurant marketing activities. Both can be influenced.

A restaurant marketing strategy will consider opportunities for the short term while laying a foundation for long term growth. 

For example...

This true story should help you understand why the dishwashers in your restaurant do such a bad job. 

The restaurant business seems like a circus to an outsider.  To a rookie manager, the restaurant is an obstacle course with no easy answers.

To understand reality and get better results, here are example questions to ask in a daily restaurant checklist:

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.

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.