Restaurant Marketing Blog

Friday, January 29, 2010

I love the in-store promo piece and the risk to try a new daypart that’s monopolized by other fast food feeders, but does anyone eat breakfast at Chick-fil-A? Is it a top of mind awareness thing? I’m not criticizing them, in fact I love any restaurant that tries something different. I’m going to give them a try for breakfast. If you’ve done breakfast at the Chick, let me know how it was.

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Wednesday, January 27, 2010

Denny’s restaurant chain hopes to score another home run with customers by offering free Grand Slam breakfasts after next month’s Super Bowl. This article is written by Wayne Price of Florida Today.

The 24-hour-restaurant chain will give away its signature breakfasts from 6 a.m. to 2 p.m. Feb. 9 at its outlets across the country. That’s the Tuesday following Super Bowl XLIV.

Last year, Denny’s, with 1,500 locations nationwide, including seven in Brevard, served about 2 million Grand Slams after announcing the offer during the Super Bowl match-up between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Arizona Cardinals.

“Our motto for this year is that we’re going for 3 million,” said Dennis Brady, owner of Denny’s restaurants in Palm Bay and Viera.

A number of marketing experts tend to agree that Denny’s landed a hit with customers with its offer, which they suggest also had the benefit of putting competitors on the defense. The offer came just as people started to feel the real impacts of the recession then gripping the country.

There are several plusses for a company like Denny’s continuing with the free-breakfast promotion, said Richard Lutz, JC Penney professor of marketing at the University of Florida.

Denny’s earns good will among its existing customers, he said. And it’s also a good way for customers who have never dined at Denny’s to try the restaurant, akin to getting a free product sample in the mail.

“Now obviously this isn’t a little tube of toothpaste and there is considerable more expense to the company,” Lutz said. “You weigh that against the extra publicity value from it.”

The chain’s signature breakfast features two each of pancakes, eggs, bacon strips and sausage links.

“It was great,” said Linda Cowart of Cocoa, who took her three children to the free breakfast last year at the Merritt Island Denny’s. “The kids loved it. I’ll have to mark it on my calendar.”

There are no strings attached to the offer. Customers don’t have to purchase a beverage or any other item. They can, however, add certain items for 99 cents.

The offer is good for dine-in only, and customers can’t make substitutions. Those who can’t wait in what is expected to be long lines can get rain checks for the free meal.

From a public relations standpoint, the Denny’s chain earned a lot of good will with customers.

“They thought it was great that during a tough economic period that we gave back something free to the public,” Brady said.

Many students and teachers stopped by the Denny’s prior to morning classes last year and Brady expects that to happen again.

He took an early look at the Denny’s Super Bowl spot that will formally announce the breakfast.

It goes something along the lines of, “It’s a great day to be an American. It’s a bad day to be a chicken,” Brady said.

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Tuesday, January 26, 2010

Los Angeles has taken the ongoing regulation of smoking in public places a step further and banned smoking in the outdoor patio areas of restaurants.  The city council voted unanimously in favor of the ban, despite repeated pleas by local restaurants that the ban would hurt business in an already down economy.  The ban will take effect one year from the time the mayor signs the ordinance.  The city plans to take that time to educate the public on the new ban and the dangers of second hand smoke in general.

It’s an argument the restaurant industry has been using for the last ten years as it attempts to maintain the status quo on smoking.  Unfortunately, a growing body of evidence shows there is no negative effect on business in restaurants when a smoking ban goes into effect, and some areas have even seen a slight rise in revenues after a ban as non-smoking patrons (who make up 75% of the population) stay longer and spend more.  The effects of second-hand smoke are also well documented, and some studies have shown a 40% drop in heart attacks in public places after the implementation of a smoking ban.

The reality is, smoking bans are here to stay, whether they regulate patios, dining areas, or any other area of a restaurant.  The argument that business will suffer also seems to ring more and more hollow as restaurants in areas with comprehensive smoking bans continue to survive, and even thrive, after the passage of the ban.

National public smoking regulation is probably coming in the next five years.  Even dyed-in-the-wool tobacco states like North Carolina and Virginia have passed public smoking bans in recent years.  It’s time for the restaurant industry to accept the reality of the situation and adapt their businesses to change rather than fighting fruitlessly to maintain the status quo.

This post was written by Greg McGuire. Greg blogs about the foodservice industry at The Back Burner, which is written by the employees of Tundra Specialties, a company specializing in restaurant supply and food service equipment.

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Monday, January 25, 2010

When a customer is displeased with the service you’ve promised to provide, whether it be in your restaurant or retail store or any other category that deals with people, why does one think that a simple “I’m sorry” is going to remedy things? If you truly want to convert a bad experience into a memorable WOW experience that creates word of mouth, then you’ve got to take your “apologies” up a notch and do the unexpected.

For example, my Raleigh News & Observer wasn’t delivered to my door on Sunday morning. After numerous phone calls to their over-seas customer call center and promises that the paper would be delivered within an hour, it finally arrived more than 4 hours later! I met the delivery person who gave me the typical “I’m sorry’s” So, did he convert this from a bad experience into a good one? Definitely not and thus missed a huge opportunity to turn a dissatisfied customer into a raving fan. 

What could he have done to turn this around and make this experience truly wonderful? Simply this - “Mr. Cohen, I’m so sorry we didn’t deliver your paper as promised. I’m sure you wanted it to read with your Sunday breakfast, so here’s a bag of fresh Brueggar’s bagels and cream cheese and some hot coffee to go along with your paper.”

Another WOW opportunity gone down the drain because companies haven’t been trained properly in the process of WOWing their customers and still believe that average customer service is the norm. The best ever opportunity for any company to create a raving fan is when something has gone wrong for that customer.

I’d bet you my next Sunday newspaper that Nordstrom wouldn’t have allowed this to happen.

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Sunday, January 24, 2010

Restaurant Marketing: In an earlier post, I praised Burger King’s risky attitude in introducing the Whopper Bar. Actually, BK has always been the first of the fast feeders to introduce a variety of new sandwiches. But here’s the new world reality about taking a risk—Now when you take a risk, you get so much publicity out of it that it’s better to take a risk than do nothing. BK has been the talk of the industry and the traditional media because of this move.

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