Is Your Restaurant Ready for More Customers (Part 1)?

Every restaurateur wants to drive more customers to his or her restaurant. Ask most any restaurateur what the one thing they need is and they will tell you “more customers.” Many of those restaurants may not be ready for more business. One often overlooked aspect of driving more business is making sure your restaurant is ready for the new customers your zippy new marketing program will no doubt deliver. In this two part blog entry, we talk about making sure your restaurant is ready for new customers before you spend the money trying to attract them.

Preparing to Drive Business (Part 1)

Before you spend time and money on marketing programs designed to convince your target customers to visit your restaurant, make sure you are ready to deliver on your value proposition. The worst thing you can do is spend money to get people to your restaurant and then deliver a sub par experience. You not only wasted your marketing dollars by not creating a repeat customer but you also may have created some negative word of mouth that may prevent some of your customers’ friends from trying you out. So before you spend marketing dollars, pay attention to your value proposition.

Product – It goes without saying that your food must be good, but have you considered your menu mix. You may want to perform a periodic menu analysis, say every 6 to 12 months, and consider what is selling, how profitable it is, and what the competition is offering. Your goal should be to keep your menu responsive, up to date, and profitable. I have heard it explained that you should think of each menu item as a tenant in your menu “office building” and the tenant has to justify the space in your office building during each review.

As a restaurant, you are delivering a dining experience. Even if you are a take out or drive through restaurant, your product is the whole dining experience, not just the food. Take care to ensure that you are delivering a quality dining experience.

How is your service staff? Are they pleasant, presentable, and well trained? Do they up sell? Are guests met and seated as promptly as possible? Is your kitchen efficient? Marketing, training, and operations are intertwined. You have probably heard it said that good marketing will just hasten the demise of a bad operation. Make sure all parts of your restaurant are running well, and training is a key part of that. Don’t forget to train your wait staff on the finer parts of restaurant selling and marketing, as well.

Price – Price is not only how you harvest value from the marketplace. It is also what your customer gives you in return for you delivering them a dining experience. In addition, to the money your customer pays you, they are giving you their time and forgoing the opportunity to dine somewhere else. Keep this all in mind and make sure your price reinforces your chosen position in the marketplace.

Place – Traditionally, “place” with regard to a marketing mix, means distribution channel, such as a sales force or shelf space. With regard to a restaurant, it typically means the location where you provide your dining experience. Again, before you spend money driving customers to your restaurant, view it with a critical eye. Is it ready to reinforce your market position and value proposition? Could your restaurant use some improvements? A deck or patio? An expanded bar area? If so, you are probably better off spending that money you had earmarked for marketing on improving the appearance or expanding your restaurant.

Promotion – Promotion covers all of the communication tools that can deliver a message to the target segment. Generally, promotion encompasses 5 broad classes of communication: advertising; direct marketing, sales promotion; sales force; and public relations.

Before discussing specific promotional tactics, let’s briefly touch on messaging, since all of these tactics involve messaging. When constructing a marketing message, it is always good to take a step back and ask yourself the following questions:

• With whom am I trying to communicate
• What am I trying to communicate
• What am I trying to accomplish, and
• Is this the best communication medium with which to accomplish my goal?

Once you have established the answer to those 4 questions firmly in your mind, your job is 3 fold:

1. Get the prospect to notice your marketing communication
2. Get the prospect to actually read (view or listen to) your marketing communication, and
3. Get the prospect to act on your marketing communication

(End of Part 1 – Preparing to Drive Business)

If you need extra financing to increase marketing or to prepare your restaurant to receive more customers, consider a restaurant loan from ARF. ARF had been making restaurant loans for almost a decade. Whether you need short term restaurant financing or a line of credit, complete ARF’s short, online application and explore our restaurant financing options.

© 2008 Advance Restaurant Finance, all rights reserved