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

Clearly there is a national “fad” with hamburgers. It seems the fascination with big, juicy hunks of fried ground beef topped with some kind of cheese is trendy. Celebrity chefs are capitalizing on the phenomenon with burger boutiques and the big chains are bucking the health police by offering larger more complex burgers.

Question - Is this bovine craze more about the consumer’s limited pocketbook rather than some new taste? I think so.

The recession has definitely changed the way people are spending their hard earned dollars for eating out in restaurants. Everyone knows there is a limitation on the cost of a hamburger, no matter how big or how good it is. So walking into a trendy burger joint doesn’t mean you will have to shell out $20 to have something you really like that is satisfying. The customer knows they won’t have to search the menu to find a reasonably priced entree and they don’t feel like they are missing the overall restaurant experience by waiting in a drive through line under the golden arches.

Since my childhood days in the sixties, hamburgers have been a staple in the American diet. Good for you or not, few people haven’t longed for that greasy ground concoction topped with anything that tickles your taste buds. Hamburgers aren’t new, but consumer restaurant discretionary spending limitations are new. The combination of the burger and spending conservatively has fueled the biggest restaurant growth segment in history that is totally focused on one simple sandwich.

The lessons for restaurant owners in this economy are simple. Rich or poor, old or young, people want comfort, satisfaction and simplicity in their food choices. They are taking less risks and their willingness to venture a few extra bucks on an unknown is very limited. Where does your menu stack up based on these observations?

Word of mouth is unequaled in the power to get new customers through your doors. Word of mouth marketing is also one of the most universally misunderstood. Just because Aunt Violet made a comment to a neighbor that she visited your operation and the food was “good”, that is not word of mouth restaurant marketing. While it was a positive sign that Aunt Violet made the comment, having “good” food applies to 75% of the independent restaurants in the country.

True word of mouth restaurant marketing includes customer training. That’s right, training the guest to be your ambassador to friends, family and acquaintances. When a customer knows what to say and how to describe your restaurant, the effectiveness of the communication is of far more value. You wouldn’t think of sending a server to a table without training — why would you send your guests into the world without the right things to say?

For instance, if Aunt Violet had told her neighbor, “ Joe’s Restaurant had great food because they used “all local citrus” from farms in the area that reminded her of what “fresh really is”. Where do you think a phrases like that came from? What if Aunt Violet had stated, “Joe’s had rustic bread that tasted like it came from a monastery in France”. Where do you think that description would come from? How about bacon that was “apple cured and thick cut”.

Restaurants communicate with guests in many ways. The common methods are through menus, servers, table POS, signs and advertising. Repetitive phrases that describe your food, your differences and the things that make the dining experience unique can be embedded in your guests mind. I call them “talking points” much like speakers and politicians use in preparation for speeches. Do your servers, menus and signs contain talking points your guests can use when describing their visits to your establishment?

We are in the midst of building our social marketing blog for the new restaurant. The basic structure can be viewed at Maggie’s City Center. While the design, colors and other aesthetics may be slowly tweaked, the elements are pretty much static.

Now is when the marketing begins along with the real value of maintaining the blog. Our plan will include;

• Getting content for the site by discussing it with individual customers as they come in. We want to get business people listed in the reference sections of the blog. The communication builds loyalty and establishes long term connections.
• The second step is to visit the municipal offices of each community listed to get the accurate contact names and numbers of key officials. We also want emergency numbers for services. Each of these visits will include dropping off some of our menus and encouraging the city staffs to join us for lunch or breakfast.
• Next we will target each of the social groups such as Rotary, Sertoma, Optimists and various other business associations to encourage them to get us their event and charitable activities posted to advertise their community efforts. Again, it gives us an opportunity to invite groups of people to our restaurant.
• Concurrent with the steps above we will invite public cultural centers and their members and/or staffs to participate. That includes art centers, marine preserves, wildlife societies and similar facilities to keep their activities in public view by giving us releases on their activities.
• Finally, we will visit individual businesses to encourage them to list their names, addresses and services in our “Yellow Pages” of local business people.

After we have started to collect enough content for the site to have value to our guests, we will begin an advertising campaign to drive traffic to the site. This will include flyers and handouts for each guest and an email to our marketing list of over 1600 opt-in email customers.

This is our answer to the social marketing initiative. It gives us the ability to reach a greater percentage of our customers and prospective customers. We are trying to build long term personal relationships, not just a brand.

With a soft opening behind us and confidence in the kitchen and service staff, it is time to extend our marketing to our radius of influence to get new guests into the new restaurant. As we implement the plan, our focus will be on all the elements of marketing - not just advertising.

Marketing has three components:

1. Getting your message to the prospective guest.
2. Selling your product once your customer responds by coming in the restaurant.
3. Delivering the product in a manner that meets or exceeds the guest’s expectations.

The first step in creating our plan was to evaluate our demographics. Our two mile radius is heavily populated with residences and businesses along the main street. During the week we want to develop the lunch trade and take out business from local offices. Weekends will be busy with residents who eat out on Saturdays and Sundays, but may skip breakfast during the week.

A small part of the business development will include the traffic zipping by on the way to work.

Each segment of the plan is designed to meet the demographic parts listed above.

1. Getting Our Message to the Prospective Guest

The message during the first initial contact will be that a) we are open and b) we serve a country/southern style cuisine like our childhood memories. This theme will be carried in our advertising and customer communications. Below are the plans.

Steps Used to Communicate our Message:

1. Select print media to advertise for the next 30 days. We chose two local weekly newspapers that cover residences and some businesses within our 3 mile radius.
2. Send an email message to a database from our other restaurants to let those customers know of our new location. That list has over 1300 names on it, but may not include our entire radius and very few businesses. Two weeks after the first communication, a second email will highlight a “Grand Opening Weekend” or feature some of our unique menu selections for breakfast and lunch.
3. Prepare and distribute a small flyer to businesses that we have developed a relationship with during construction. Ask them to place on their counter (sample in earlier post).
4. Make personal visits to area businesses with take out menu’s and food samples on a daily basis. Our goal will be to see 5 businesses a day during the week.
5. Purchase an advertising contract with a company that supplies direct communication to every new household in the radius of the restaurant.
6. Added the new location announcement and menu to the existing website for the restaurants.

2. Selling Our Product

Our product is different than competitors in the area. We need to distinguish ourselves because we are slightly more expensive and the concept is a little more upscale.

The steps to selling our differences started with server training before we opened and continue with ongoing reminders of quality. Ingredients we use are exceptional in the breakfast business and we highlight brand names.

Steps to Selling:

1. Server training, server testing and daily reminders explain our food, ingredients and cooking methods. Bulletin board notes and Manager working with servers on weaknesses is a continuous process
2. Table POS stating the differences.
3. Menu’s reflect individual items highlighted by our original creations and special brands and/or products that our competitors can’t duplicate.
4. When possible, samples of various items are sent to tables that may have questions about our menu selections.
5. Our product is more than food. We take a slightly light-hearted approach to the atmosphere of the restaurant. We want it to be fun and funky kind of neighborhood place. The servers, décor and surroundings need to emulate our concept.

3. Delivering Our Product

The marketing process is not complete unless you deliver what you are selling. Many restaurants are experts at advertising and get many customers through their doors, but fail to deliver what they promise. The last step is the way you get customers to return.

Guests become loyal repeat customers one at a time. That means every facet of the delivery process must achieve the overall goal of meeting or exceeding the customer’s expectations. To accomplish the goal;

Steps to Delivering Our Product to Meet the Guest’s Expectations;

1. When the guest walks in the door, they must be greeted by a cheerful staff and a bright dining room with other satisfied guests.
2. The guest must be sat and offered a beverage and menu immediately.
3. Servers must have the knowledge and confidence to explain each menu item, the preparation and ingredients.
4. Little time is spent waiting between server contacts from beverage service to ordering.
5. Food is prepared in a reasonable amount of time and delivered hot and fresh.
6. Each plate must be neat, garnished properly and colorful.
7. Each order is checked as it leaves the kitchen and the server must check the order before delivery to insure accuracy.
8. After delivery of the guest’s order, the server must re-visit the table within two minutes to see if there are condiments or other needs the guest may have.
9. A Manager should visit each table to inquire about their satisfaction.
10. Checks are always in the server’s possession and ready to be delivered to the guest as soon as they seem ready. Tables are never left for the customer to stare at dirty plates.

If for ANY reason a guest appears to be unsatisfied, a Manager must visit the table and see what is necessary to turn a bad experience to a good experience.

Plan Summary

Will the steps we have chosen to take in the initial weeks be enough? Only time can answer that question. Certainly the plan must be managed, modified and expanded as we look for measurable results in the coming days and weeks. The key, for now, is execution. A daily recap of sales, glitches and customer comments will keep us focused.

The entire staff must be involved to make this Marketing Plan a success. Prospective customers become loyal guests one at a time. If we can give each customer the experience they bargained for when they walked in the door, we can win our share of the breakfast and lunch dining crowd in our radius of potential guests.

In earlier posts we have covered costs to start a new restaurant. Of course, they vary based on the number of seats, type of cuisine, location, menu and other factors.

In this case, I have updated the estimated costs for this particular restaurant according to what I know so far. Keep in mind that we are in the construction stages and there will be updates as we go along. The numbers you will see in the estimates are based on quotes and actual payments made or items purchased as of this date.

One of the most significant costs will be the finishing and decorating costs which will be filled in as the actual numbers are calculated. Visit the site in a couple of weeks for another update. Remember, this is a 70 seat inside and 25 seat outside breakfast and lunch restaurant. Dinner could easily be added, but that is not our concept.