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

Opening a new restaurant is never easy. If you are fortunate, as we have been, sales start strong as you settle into a an operations pattern. Your assumptions about the demographics, consumer habits and menu choices for your area of influence are either confirmed or confused.

The economy adds additional question marks about the long term mission of the operation. Being a new restaurant operation in a “normal” economy means some stable factors can be used to adjust your marketing efforts, menu, pricing and consumer demands. In a recession, you just learn as you go and keep a close watch on historical data from previous experiences, if you have any.

The new restaurant has seen a pleasant steady increase of sales from week to week, even though there is a plateau forming in certain day parts (10 AM to 1 PM). Here are issues we are watching as, perhaps, early warning signs of either incorrect assumptions about consumers in our demographic or ineffective planning to reach certain segments of the market:

• If there is any disappointment, it is in our take out sales. The numbers are flat and well below our projections.
• On the other hand, lunch sales have been exceptional.
• Early morning sales are less than expected which leads to these questions:
  • Have we over projected the early morning crowd?
  • Are we over priced in this segment?
  • Is our location traffic pattern hindering ease of ingress and egress?
  • Have we missed the mark for what the early riser wants?
• Why do sales patterns differ from our other location less than 5 miles away?

After just six weeks, is it too early to even worry about these questions? Some may say yes, but if not now, when do you start looking at trends that begin to develop? After it is too late to easily correct any mis-cues in your restaurant marketing plan? My response is an easy one - React now! It can’t hurt your business and can only help. Waiting is the inexperienced restaurant owner’s nemesis.

For those following our path, sales this week for our 70 seat breakfast and lunch operation will be about $16,000. Fortunate, pleasing, rewarding and pleasantly surprised are all terms that come to mind - satisfied doesn’t come to mind!

The actions and plan to address the issues raised above will be discussed in the next post.