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

In the March 5th post, we wrote about the sales numbers being up and down. With overall revenue generally good, there were trends we didn’t like and decided to address those with some additional marketing programs that may fill in some of the valleys.

Some of the things we did were:

• Highlighted “Early Riser” specials to try to get more early morning traffic.
• Ran a new add in the two local neighborhood papers.
• Started to make calls on local businesses to increase take out sales.
• Used email to feature St. Patrick’s Day Specials (sent two days in advance).

The sales numbers are encouraging in the early stages. Our biggest Tuesday since opening was yesterday. Our second biggest Monday was the day before. Saturday and Sunday’s numbers were better than the previous week.

Are the restaurant’s new marketing programs working? Maybe!

Sometimes you don’t have conclusive answers to all the questions. We know some customers saw the ads. We sold out of our St. Patrick’s corned beef specials. Was that the emails? We have seen a couple of people from the personal visits.

Restaurant marketing programs generally take hold over a longer period of time that create measurable data trends. The results we are seeing seem a little quick, but we will be satisfied with the respectable sales numbers, even if it is an early coincidence or just the combination of things that are just starting to come together.