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

It’s 5 AM on February first. A Sunday - Super Bowl Sunday, in fact. Yesterday we set a new restaurant sales record for a single day since opening of almost $2800. That’s great news, but getting a handle on how our sales each day keep growing is just as important for continued growth.

Based on initial customer conversations, the vast majority of our guests are coming for the first time as the result of referrals to the restaurant. Someone visits us and tells their neighbors, family and friends. You can’t buy advertising, run promotions or offer coupons that would be this productive.

Studies have shown that people react sooner and more often to a word of mouth recommendation of a restaurant than any other single motivating factor. Customers take the assurances of someone they know before relying on the hype in an ad, coupon or promotional device, no matter how attractive.

The fact that we are getting personal recommendations tells me several things:

• Our message of quality food is getting out. Our prices are 20% higher than our competitors, but we sell our ingredients and quality to each guest.
• We must be meeting and/or exceeding what the customer expected when they walked in the door.
• Our consistency must be better than I expected in these early stages (three weeks).
• Our location is as good as we expected with plenty of parking, road exposure and good ingress and egress.

While pleased with the initial sales and response, we still have a lot of work to do. Our break-even number is about $1500 per day and we need $10,500 per week (without owner compensation). This will be our second straight week of hitting those numbers, but other costs are involved as we buy more smallwares, small equipment and other items to support the growth. Break-even is great, but profits are why we are ultimately in business.

On the very positive side, we are meeting our sales goals. On the other hand, we clearly need to work on staff training, kitchen routines and turning tables. On the proverbial ten scale, we are an eight and very pleased.