In This Chapter
- Traditional restaurant marketing practices
- Why word of mouth is the best kind of marketing
- How event marketing can work for you
- Using social media to promote your concept
- Handling success and managing wait lines
Now that your restaurant is open and running successfully, we’re going to talk about growing your business. If you’ve followed the suggestions throughout this book, you’ve had a strong opening. Now you want to keep your first customers coming back, and bring in their friends and friends of friends.
In this chapter, we’ll talk about how you can use word-of-mouth marketing, event marketing, and social media to keep your restaurant in the public eye. We’ll also talk about how to handle your success, and the best ways to manage those long waiting lines. Getting more people into your restaurant on busy evenings is the goal, and hospitality is the key.
Growing Your Business
Take off like a rocket and keep climbing. For the first 60 days, focus on making friends rather than money. You can always fix a food cost overage or adjust your labor schedule later, but you can’t change consumer opinion easily when their first opinion of your restaurant isn’t a great one.
When your restaurant opens and becomes the place everyone wants to go, it’s even more important to be good to your waiting guests and those who can’t get a seat. Success is no excuse for arrogance. Your focus at this point should be on hospitality.
Marketing Milestones
There are a series of marketing milestones by which you can gauge your success. The major milestones are three months, six months, and nine months.
Three months’ success is almost assured by virtue of curiosity in the marketplace. That’s great, right? Well, yes, but don’t mistake this wave of business as any measure of long-term success. Think of it as an introduction, an opportunity percolating, a getting-to-know-each-other experience for your guests.
The six months milestone will tell you if the folks who came earlier came back and brought along their friends. Everyone loves to turn their friends on to new discoveries, so seeing guests show off their newest restaurant find is a good sign. When those friends come back with their friends, you’re off to a great start.
The nine months milestone is when the first economic reality takes hold. A new business can make it through its first three quarters coasting on initial credit terms, constantly rationalizing and making excuses, and hoping things will work out the way you want them to. The nine-month window is usually the face-to-face meeting with economic reality. It’s the time when you learn whether or not your restaurant is really successful.
Traditional Marketing
Jody has never known traditional marketing to work—hiring someone to send out press releases or eblasts about his restaurants. Marketing isn’t what most people think it is. It isn’t a promotional postcard. Marketing is everything about your restaurant that people are going to talk about, the décor, the hospitality, and the food.
But if your restaurant isn’t pulling in guests and you’re feeling desperate to get more people in the door, should you throw dollars into traditional marketing?
Say your aspiration is to do $40,000 a week in sales, but you’re landing at $30,000. Don’t count on traditional marketing to increase sales that much.
You can’t push people into coming to your restaurant. With hard work, maybe you can get your sales up to $32,000. It’s better to recalibrate your model to $32,000 a week in sales with a decent profit margin factor than to keep pushing for and failing to reach $40,000.
SMART MOVE
To get buzz circulating about your restaurant, try introducing a unique and theatrical element to it. At Jody’s Mexican restaurant, waiters welcomed guests with complimentary grapefruit granitas in bowls of steaming dry ice. It was a theatrical presentation that got people talking. The guests loved it.
Word of mouth is the greatest form of marketing for your restaurant. People love to talk about restaurants. They want to know about the newest places. They love reliving the pleasure by telling other people about it. Can you believe it was once considered bad manners to talk about food? Now it’s central to cultural discourse. Exceeding customer expectations is the foundation of word-of-mouth marketing.
You may not have the time to devote to blogging or Facebook, and you shouldn’t have to. If your restaurant is exciting and the food is presented beautifully, your guests will take photos and post them on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Guests putting photos of dishes from your restaurant on social media will elicit immediate questions from their friends and followers: “Where are you?!” “That looks great!” “Yum!”
Websites
Very few restaurants create good websites. The best websites Jody has had for his restaurants had great music. People would say they put on headphones and listened to it all day in their office.
Your restaurant’s website should be like a little commercial. Think less information and more attitude. One of the best websites we’ve seen was for the restaurant Casa Tua in South Beach, Miami. There are evocative photos of a beautiful young Latin family and their kids that make you want to step through the screen and take a seat in the candlelit garden. The website’s bossa nova music offsets the mood to relax and enjoy.
Websites that work well utilize association. So many websites are literal with many clicks and categories. A restaurant’s website shouldn’t unveil all the restaurant’s nuances. It should pique people’s curiosity and encourage them to visit.
Your website should evoke the same mood as your restaurant. The website is a teaser to intrigue, provoke, and seduce customers.
People who look up your restaurant’s website are looking for a few basics:
- What your restaurant looks like
- What kind of food you serve
- What your price range is
- What people are saying about you
- What days and hours you’re open
- Your address
- Additional services (catering, takeout, etc.)
- Upcoming events (wine or beer tastings, live music, etc.)
You should post your prices on your website. It’s difficult to understand when restaurants don’t do this. It can’t be because they’re concerned about raising prices, as they don’t change their prices that often. Market price can be used if the main protein’s price varies significantly.
DEFINITION
Market price is the daily menu price of an item, typically fish or lobster, that changes because the purchase price fluctuates daily in a material manner.
The new restaurant owner is better off creating a simple website and Facebook page that can be managed consistently. If you feel comfortable with what your restaurant is, then your customers will feel comfortable. It’s the inconsistent message that scares people away.
Many restaurants use Facebook rather than websites to keep their customers up-to-date. It’s a vital tool these days to help you stay in touch with your family of customers. A photo of the chef’s chocolate soufflé, with crème Anglaise pouring into it, will get your customers thinking about coming in for a taste.
If you don’t want to manage your Facebook page, find someone on your staff who is excited about updating the restaurant’s page often. Many restaurants start a page with verve and vitality, and then it goes stale as managers underestimate the amount of work it takes to keep it fresh. If you don’t want to deal with that work, you should calculate whether it’s worth hiring a social media person to regularly update your Facebook page. If you hire someone, make sure they understand your restaurant’s needs and they are grounded in your restaurant’s concept. If they do what you want them to do, it’s worth paying for.
Blogger/Press Dinners
Often when a restaurant isn’t doing well, the owner hires a restaurant marketer to invite local press and bloggers to a complimentary tasting dinner, which often results in a rush of fawning blog posts. Many restaurateurs have told us it increases business for about two weeks.
The thing is, if your restaurant doesn’t live up to bloggers’ praise, the first-time guests who follow their “likes” and “loves” won’t return; nor will their friends. If you asked someone how a restaurant was and the reply was, “Ummmm, it was okay,” would you rush to spend your money there?
Charity Events
Restaurants are often asked to participate in charity or business events put on by the Chamber of Commerce, Downtown Merchant Association, or media entities. At these events, guests pay an admission fee and restaurants set up stations where they offer tastes of their food. These events can help spread the word about your restaurant and they can create goodwill. However, they’re also a lot of work and expensive.
When you’re new on the scene, it’s all about market penetration. But you need to be careful to align yourself with like-minded events. You’re still establishing an identity. If you have an elegant French café, it doesn’t make sense to participate in a blue-collar rock festival. If you have an organic vegan kitchen, it doesn’t make sense to participate in a Blues and BBQ event. Align your restaurant with the appropriate events to reap the most correct kind of exposure.
It’s good to help causes that mean a lot to you, but until your business is stable, don’t leverage your promotional budget to a charity that doesn’t fit with your business. If there are causes that are important to you that don’t fit with your restaurant’s concept, donate personally rather than through your business.
Warning: you can get a lot of requests to participate in events and to donate food. How do you say no? Tell them you love the idea and would love to participate, but you’re new and you already went beyond your budget for events this year. Then add, “Please don’t forget me next year.” And say “Hey, have you tried the cornbread we make here? I haven’t seen you in for dinner yet.” Flip the tables, and sell the seller.
Learn to take your success in stride. Even when all the seats in your restaurant are filled, remind your staff not to gloat about it to the customers waiting or seated. Six months from now it could be a different story. Never act self-satisfied about not having a seat available for a potential guest.
If there’s absolutely no way your hostess can get potential guests a seat tonight, train her to empathize: “I’m so sorry, but I could book you a great table in the corner—it’s very cozy—for tomorrow. I’ll be here; my name is Mary, and I’ll take care of you.” Now, instead of the potential guest feeling completely dejected, his spirits have been buoyed by the pleasant encounter with your hostess.
POTENTIAL PITFALL
Even if your restaurant has a strong point of view—loud music and low lighting—you never want your staff to brush off complaints with a flippant “Sorry, that’s how the owner wants it.” Train your staff to empathize with your guests (even if they don’t get what your restaurant is all about).
Reservations
The number of tables you book by reservation has an effect on the dining room’s energy. Boxing out the entire dining room with reservations creates a variety of problems. It annoys people to be told there are no tables when they see empty tables in the room. Empty tables are a cash-register drain as well as an energy drain. Taking too many reservations makes it more difficult to seat the walk-ins.
How long should you hold a reserved table for a late party? Once again, it’s not what you do but how you do it. If you give away a reserved table and the party arrives afterwards, it must be handled carefully and tactfully, not as a punitive measure.
Managing Waiting Guests
People want to go to the hot new place, and they’re willing to wait. Waiting, as much as it creates anxiety, can confer status. Customers feel this really must be The Place if all these people want to get in. Yet a restaurant owner always needs to manage lines and waiting times.
When giving estimates on waiting times, always speak in a general sense—around 15 to 20 minutes … should be less than half an hour. Don’t quote exact times for a table since it’s impossible to have that exact a schedule. Don’t apologize about wait times, either.
Offering the guest the option of beginning their meal with shared appetizers at the bar is also a way to diffuse their wait anxiety. When a guest is asked to wait in the bar, casually synch your watch with theirs. What you’re really doing is confirming what time it is. Make a note on the seating chart that helps you remember a guest. Make sure your descriptor is something they can see such as “green sweater” rather than “red face,” in case they demand to see where they are in line. You can also get their cellphone number to text them when their table is ready. That’s much nicer than handing them a glowing, buzzing orb beeper.
Escort the guest to the bar area, after alerting the bartender that you’re bringing this party to the bar. When you bring the guests to the bar, tell the bartender, “This is the Johnson party, and they’re going to enjoy the bar for about 15 to 20 minutes until their table is set.” This engages them, and they don’t feel like cattle being told to wait in the field.
When the guest table is almost ready, checkin with those guests to say, “We’re preparing your table, and I’ll come get you in a few minutes, if you would like to close out your bar tab.”
If you’ve guessed the waiting time incorrectly and the wait turns out to be much longer than quoted, the first thing to do is to approach the guests waiting in the bar with an appetizer-style shared plate. Say, “I figured you were getting hungry, and I thought this might take the edge off, as the diners are taking a little longer than we anticipated.” Don’t buy them another drink. They’re hungry, and another drink might pour fuel on the fire.
The important thing is to communicate. Don’t hide from a waiting table. When a member of a four-top leaves his group to see about their table, he needs to return to his group with a win. Make that happen. Apologizing is worn thin when guests are a little buzzed and hungry, and things can turn ugly. It’s best to be honest and direct.
You need to be mindful of how you’re putting tables together for your strategy. Only one host can run the show. Otherwise, it would be like picking up where someone else started in a chess game. The hand-off technique doesn’t work.
If you have a four-top waiting and there are no two-tops waiting, and you have a deuce open next to a deuce that’s on dessert, you need to be careful not to seat a walk-in two-top at that open table. Wait until the deuce has finished dessert and paid their bill, and then push the two tables together to make room for the four-top. That’s why only one person can run the show.
DEFINITION
A deuce is a two-top table. Restaurants use shorthand terms such as eight-top, four-top, and deuce to refer to how many people can be seated at a table.
Before service, the staff gathers for a 5- to 10-minute meeting. These meetings are designed to align the group as a team just like a sports team huddles right before the game.
This is the time to pump up the staff to meet the evening and week’s goals; discuss selling specials, wine, and desserts; and talk up new holiday promotions. The chef can offer the servers tastes of the specials. A server’s firsthand knowledge of the food makes a favorable impression on the guests. You don’t want your servers telling the guests about their “favorite dishes.” That information isn’t helpful. Staff instead should know how to describe the dishes. During the pre-service meeting, give your staff the key words to describe the night’s specials. Train them to respond to a question to which they don’t know the answer. “I don’t know” is useless; “Let me find out” is the right response.
After service, some restaurateurs and managers hold a five-minute post-mortem meeting. Jody never found them effective. It’s tedious listening to a critique of the day’s performance while you’re still in a sweaty uniform, tired, and achy. Plus, it doesn’t boost morale to lay criticism on a tired staff. As an owner and manager, your job is to figure out the solutions to what went wrong and present that information to your staff when they’re fresh and energetic.
Online Coupons
Companies like Groupon and Amazon sell consumers online coupons for a discounted meal at restaurants. For example, the customer will pay $30 for a $50 coupon good for dinner. Groupon can bring new customers, but often they bring in bargain hunters, who will use another coupon next week for another restaurant.
POTENTIAL PITFALL
Make sure your staff treats customers who are using discounted coupons with the same hospitality with which they treat all customers. If your goal is to expose more people to your restaurant by using coupons from organizations such as Groupon, make sure these new customers have a great experience they’ll want to tell their friends about.
Online coupons can bring in incremental income, but they’re dangerous for first-year operators. You have too many unknown elements to consider before you can effectively incorporate this form of marketing into a budget.
Jody knew a man who started a restaurant that was struggling. The restaurant was across the street from where Jody lived, so he went there often. Every two weeks the owner was rearranging things. He’d put a new rug in the dining room. He’d buy a lot of palm trees and accent pieces. One evening, the owner had brought in three big Chinese screens. It was difficult for customers to commit to a restaurant the owner was always changing.
We’re not in favor of putting out a “work-in-progress” message. We believe in laying it out there, and proudly saying, “This is it. I love it. I hope you do, too.” When you show tentativeness, people are afraid to like it. People are afraid of liking something that’s not complete. So our final words to you, the future restaurant owner, are to have the courage and conviction to pick a strong point of view. People will respect that. Waffling doesn’t make anyone feel good. Say you’ve taken over a space that used to be a traditional, classic high-end French restaurant, the kind of place that does the table-side duck à l’orange. You create a contemporary French bistro, serving a rustic roasted chicken in a vintage copper pan. It’s an excellent dish, but the old customers say they don’t like it.
This is the moment of truth—the moment not to retreat. You should empathize with the old customers about how great that old dish was. Show them how wonderful the new dish is, the quality it shares with the classic dish, and how it has been updated. It’s like when you go to a concert and the band is excited to play their new album, but they’ll throw in a beloved hit between the new songs. A restaurant has to do the same thing. Keep enough of the familiar flavor, but strongly execute the new stuff. Before long, the new dishes will become old favorites.
The desire to entertain, nurture, satisfy, and indulge others is a special calling. When a small team of renegades (otherwise known as restaurant people) band together to create and execute a unique restaurant plan that pleases and takes good care of customers, the reward transcends money. When you perform well enough to make a profit, then you can call it a business. Running a successful restaurant business—well, there’s just nothing else like it. That’s why we chose this path and never looked back, and we hope you will, too—with the help of the tools you’ve obtained from this book.
- Keep focusing on hospitality, even after you’ve become successful, especially when you’re trying to seat waiting customers on a busy night.
- Train your staff to empathize with your customers when something goes wrong or they’re complaining, and to provide a solution to the problem.
- Promote your restaurant in the community by participating in charity tasting events that align with your concept and are attended by potential customers.
- Stay true to your restaurant’s concept, and don’t change just because one or two customers don’t like it. Your conviction and belief in your restaurant will have a strong influence on the majority of your customers.