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

Prior to the recession, restaurant guests seemed to be a happy lot. They ventured into just about any food purveyor that opened their doors partly for exploration, curiosity and culinary adventure. In the last two years wallets closed up like the strings on a beggar’s purse. Consumers with less discretionary dollars to spend wanted value and “comfort”.

If you look the word comfort up in the dictionary, the common definitions include to “soothe, console, reassure, support, encourage and make physically comfortable”. That seems to sum up the average diner who walks into a full service restaurant in today’s new world. The term comfort has to be your goal for the purposes of restaurant marketing.

In the restaurant world we have bantered around the word comfort primarily to describe a particular type of food that made people feel good or brought back memories from earlier days. In fact most restaurants who changed their menu philosophy in the last year or two will tell you that “comfort” foods sell better than they ever have. That is one blessing this financial hurricane has made clear - you can be creative using lower center of the plate proteins and give the guest what they want at the same time.

However, comfort must extend beyond the plate to get more frequent visits from your guests and keep the buzz about your restaurant going. To extend your comfort factor consider these tips;

• Are you offering a comfortable atmosphere that matches your concept and guest’s expectations? Is your restaurant too loud, too quiet, too bright, too dark, too fancy, too casual?
• Physical comforts are just as important. Are your chairs too hard, too high, too soft? Is the temperature too cold, too warm? Do you smell of pleasant food odors or stale carpets and bleach cleaned floors?
• There is comforting service standards to consider. The old days of hard hitting up-selling professed by out of work “consultants” is over. You and your servers need to be less formal and more personal with the guest. Names are important. Smiles are like gold. Haste is unforgiving. Manager visits are expected. Greetings on entering and exiting should be part of every staff member’s vocabulary. The days of the pompous waiter in the tux are over.
• Value IS comfort. People want to know they are making good buying decisions. That applies to buying a car or a meal. Highlight the things that make the guest’s experience at your restaurant a value. Can you rattle those things off right now - this minute? Is it portions, prices, entertainment, friendly servers, exceptional chef, fun, easy to park and enter, quick service? Embed those comforting aspects of your restaurant in your server’s mind, your POS materials and advertising as part of your marketing plan.

As predicted, Sunday sales levels exceeded Saturday, but not without pointing out a few weaknesses in our system. Below is a list of things that need attention to keep growing:

• Ticket times exceeded acceptable levels at several points in the day. A green kitchen crew was part of the problem, but too many options on the menu also created some confusion for servers and kitchen staff.
• Our new hostess is an exceptionally hard worker, but needs additional training. On several occasions she sat multiple parties in the same server’s section at the same time. This means the server cannot give each table the time and attention they deserve. Multiple seatings also mean the food is rung in at the same time and ready at the same time. This leads to food dieing in the window and longer waits for the guest.
• Kitchen preparation was fairly good except for a few items like Hollandaise sauce, sliced fresh home fries and portioned condiments. Our prep station was constantly putting out fires at this level of business.

Overall, the restaurant is growing daily and we are extremely pleased. We can’t rest yet (or ever in reality), but must focus on our weaknesses to improve the customer experience and our ability to turn tables. It is great to be on a wait at this early stage, but faster service will increase our sales capacity.

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.