Awesome Restaurant Marketing Ideas!

Having a copycat marketing plan in place may beat the waiting game marketing plan but why wait?  With the future looming and studies showing how behaviors are changing, why wait?  Who makes the first move?  Which restaurant manager is willing to raise the bar by changing their reputation?  Who will lead the pack and which business will survive with “same-itis”? 

How many meetings have you attended and heard: 

“What should we do 2^nd quarter? “

 “I’m not sure, what is the restaurant up the street doing?” 

“They have a 20% discount on Wednesdays.” 

“OK, let’s do that for now.” 

Along with:

“Well, what did we do last year?” 

“We did the Gargantuoso.”

“Ok, let’s do that again.”

Have you been to those meetings where the talk is primarily about repeating the past or keeping up with the restaurant competition up the street?

Think about the future and the guests who are waiting for restaurant owners to take action and do something special (vs. the same).  Who will be a leader and step up?  If you were to turn to a recent study about the hotel side of the hospitality industry, you might get a clue.  (Or it might serve as a reminder of what you already know.)

Below is a video interview where Rohit Talwar talks about a recent study of the hotel industry.  Rohit Talwar is the chief executive of Fast Future and one of the directors from Amadeus.

Major global study into the future of the hotel industry

A major new report, Hotels 2020: Beyond Segmentation, reveals the emerging behaviors and demands of the future hotel guest and what this means for the types of hotels we will see in the future.

The study commissioned by the chosen technology partner and transaction processor for the global travel and tourism industry, Amadeus and carried out by Fast Future Research reveals that the industry faces three major impacts in the next decade which it has to respond to:

• The long-term impact of the recession on travelers’ budgets
• The changing demands of an ageing Western population
• The shift of demand from Europe to emerging markets of Asia and beyond

The report also recognizes the industry's need to innovate and paints a picture of a future hotel featuring such innovations as intelligent furniture, personalized nutrition plans and responsive technologies that cater to individual guests needs. It highlights the new hotel models that may emerge such as invitation-only hotels, hotels co-branded with luxury brands, white-label hotels and catch-all hotel chains that will deliver one-star budget to six-star luxury hotel properties.

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Those who have the highest impact on each guest is … the staff.  They are also the best resource for understanding the needs and desires (and complaints) of the guest.  Without a system which enables communication AND empowers the staff to treat each guest, “same-itis” sets in and a business will appear to be the same as all others.

Consider:

Someone near and dear to my heart says:  “If I ever find a restaurant that serves dessert first, they will have my heart.”  Crazy, don’t you think?  Instead of chips or bread, serve dessert? 

What happens when you decide your team will get paid 10% over market, have 3 community events per quarter, 3 restaurant promotions per quarter, and spend more hours with marketing than paperwork?  Will a target of 25% sales increase be out of the question?  How about 50% sales increase?

Unfortunately, those in your community are not very patient and hopeful.  They will not wait.  The next best thing will soon distract them.

Being the same will kill your business and waiting for something grand to happen will leave more dissapointments than success stories.