Starting, Owning and Marketing A Restaurant Blog|Starting and Owning a Restaurant - Construction, Planning, Marketing, Opening and Managing a New Restaurant

Every restaurant owner and manager knows that food prices can sneak upward. In fact, in 2008 prices were rising so fast on eggs, grain products and plastics that by the time you could change your menu, it was already outdated. Most of us would have paid dearly for a crystal ball that could forecast the future to stay ahead of the upward spiral.

Fortunately prices have begun to moderate. Many have come down and others fluctuate more frequently than ever before. It is a balancing act to keep reasonable menu pricing that allows a profit margin. Below are a few things that may help with your costs for re-sale items;

• Many major suppliers have a weekly or monthly commodity report that shows trends and predictions for the immediate future. Ask to be placed on the mailing list for these regular communications.
• Key item prices must be watched closely. Do you know what 20 items you spend the most money on? If not, you should! Take that list and create a spreadsheet that lists the items and change your cost weekly or monthly for all 20 items as your invoices come in. At the bottom of the spreadsheet have a total for each week or month. Is that total going up or down? This is a simple, but effective way to view immediate price trends and alarms for your major ingredients.
• If you are in the middle of a menu change, factor in the seasonal and regional price fluctuations of your restaurant’s biggest selling items. If you are steak house you know that beef is going to increase around the holidays and come back down in the early spring. Vegetables cost more (in general) during the winter than in late spring. Restaurant menu pricing is an art, not based on just today, but the life of your menu.
• Crude oil prices affect a major part of your overall costs of doing business. If crude is high, so is the cost of gasoline and diesel fuels that lead to higher delivery costs (surcharges, too!). Delivery costs filter through the entire restaurant industry, since trucking is the major source of product moving. Oil prices also affect the costs associated with plastics and packaging materials.

Projecting costs as you revise your restaurant menu can also be moderated by adjusting portions, garnishes and side dish offerings. Creativity can keep your margins in check between menu adjustments.

Find a system that works for you. It can make the difference between a profit or loss. The other option, doing nothing, won’t work in this economy and perhaps ever again in the future.

Of course, there is always that magic crystal ball that may someday appear on Ebay or Craig’s List - but I am not going to wait on it!!

A welcome reward was received on Wednesday this week when we were informed we were chosen as runner-up for the Best Breakfast in Tampa Bay in a local reader’s poll. The magazine has an annual Best of the Bay for all different types of restaurants and entertainment venues. First place went to a chain competitor called First Watch which operates in about 11 states with numerous locations in the area.

While the competition had the usual nominees like IHOP, Denny’s and other big guys, we were most pleased that we had made an impact by being ranked over many local independents that have a great product and long history.

If there is a message here, it shows that in our 9 month operating history, you can compete and make an impact. The second lesson is that email marketing helped us achieve this award. It is a powerful tool to communicate with your guests. In our case, we merely made our email subscribers aware of our nomination and asked them to vote for us. We didn’t really believe that we could beat out all the chains in such a broad market, but we did!

If you are starting a restaurant now or next week or next year, start your email list now. Restaurant marketing is a challenge that is rarely planned on a long term basis, but here is an opportunity for your marketing to begin now. If you are a seasoned veteran of the business and struggling through this economy, how is your email restaurant marketing plan working? Don’t have one - begin it today.

A couple of months ago we began building a blog. The purpose was to become a central place in the community to find information about events, reliable suppliers of products and services, important municipal contacts and a format for the restaurant to be interactive with all segments of the business and residential target market. After much procrastination, we have launched the blog. The result can be seen at www.maggiescitycenter.com.

Pretty or fancy the blog may not be, but relatively easy to construct, simple to edit and functional it is. As a tool to market our restaurant we are trying to achieve:

• a communication vehicle with all parts of our demographic from residential to commercial elements.
• interaction with our guests that can provide feedback on our food product, service and experience.
• customer loyalty instilled by use of the site, traffic building as businesses and groups bring their news to us.

Above all, we are building our brand to become a key component of the community. Our competitors may choose coupons, newspaper advertising and lowering prices, but we want to focus on value that extends beyond just a price and a product.

We will report the responses and experiences as the blog ages and content is built. Blog followers of Starting a Restaurant Blog are encouraged to offer comments.

OK, I have decided to be a tall, dark, handsome, virile, young, intelligent, rich, witty man! I can do that on the Internet. I might even steal a picture of one of the football quarterback brothers in the Manning family and use that on any profiles I fill out. I can do that too - on the Internet. Of all this flattery, I am tall and a male……

Of course, I can also be a nasty competitor, a disgruntled employee well disguised,  a jealous suitor of one of my employees or even someone I have offended in some way over the years. All of these are possible, while totally concealing my identity - on the Internet.

The freedom the Internet allows can have a dark side. A restaurant owner friend recently relayed a story to me about an experience on Twitter. He had a growing following for his four south Florida restaurants. The hype about “social restaurant marketing” motivated him to commit to building a presence and encourage feedback “tweats” about his operations. In the beginning he was encouraged while gaining several hundred friends.

Then it started. Negative comments started to come in. At first the restaurant owner responded with apologies and forthright answers. The nasty comments increased. He started to suspect one person was responsible for most, if not all, the bad reflections on his operations, staff and food. The “tweats” were strangely similar in use of terms, language and mis-spellings. Each used email addresses from one of the  free services such as gmail, yahoo and hotmail and others.

After a month he felt like a bear swatting bees while raiding the honeycomb. The time and effort trying to not only respond, but figure out who was creating this havoc wasn’t worth the effort. He abandoned Twitter. It could have been Facebook, MySpace or any of the other social marketing sites.

The Internet has a dark side, just like real life. The only difference is anonymity.

Even after removing his Twitter account, he had another problem from customers who enjoyed the good aspects of the communication. They wanted to know why he stopped and why they couldn’t “tweat” with the restaurant any more. Explaining wasn’t easy.

Remember the chains can have a few negative comments (they always do), but they use the social sites for coupons and promotions. Negative issues are discussed, but they are used to a few disgruntled guests. Independent restaurants have a much smaller following and rarely have to deal with a lot of negative comments unless you irritate an Internet terrorist who floods the social marketing sites, restaurant review sites and anywhere they can make a small business respond to false, derogatory references. Small restaurant owners don’t have an IT staff to handle Internet restaurant marketing.

Bottom line is if you own a new restaurant and are looking for ways to market your product, be careful about committing to the time and effort Internet social restaurant marketing requires to maintain your presence. The revelations about the horrors of social sites are beginning to emerge. Do your research to make certain you have the time to keep up with your communications. Is it worth the effort? In my opinion, there are much more productive ways to communicate with your guests without the risk and time commitment.