Friday, April 13, 2007

California Tortilla is opening its 25th location this week, this one in Columbia, MD. The grand opening promo is free specialty burritos.

The burrito giveaway will take place during the lunch and dinner rush. The first 10 customers in line Wednesday will get one free burrito per week for one year.

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Thursday, April 12, 2007

I was on a Southwest Airlines flight the other day. The flight attendant gave this certificate to the young passengers on board. Their eyes lit up, as did their parents’ eyes when they got this surprise.

Guess what the kids are talking about and showing their friends? Guess which airline those kids are in love with? It’s Restaurant Marketing with a buzz!

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Saturday, April 07, 2007

** WOW! I last showed you this in September 2006. It’s time to re-visit it. With gas prices soaring, there’s no better time than to do this program NOW! 

** Click on http://www.restaurantconsulting.com/gas-money.pdf and customize this to your restaurant and implement this program now.

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Saturday, March 31, 2007

To a lot of people, running a restaurant or any business in a chaotic state—one where you’re constantly fire-fighting, struggling and most importantly—not growing, is completely normal. How did it get to be like this?

Because a lot of us saw our parents and grandparents struggling and struggling. So, we grew up learning that this is the normal way of life and the normal way to run a business. We knew nothing else. So, how does get out of this state and grow? The first thing needed is a plan.

Why Do We Spend More Time Planning Our Vacation, Than We Do Planning Our Business?

It’s true! We spend more time making our vacations plans than we do on planning the success of our restaurant. Follow me on this scenario—Your wife asks you if you’ve planned the family vacation yet. You say no! So, you end up taking your family vacation, with no plans. You don’t know where you’re going, so you end up going anywhere just to get away. Sound familiar?

And you drive to Orlando’s DisneyWorld, only to find out that every hotel is booked. You can’t get a room because you didn’t plan ahead to make reservations. Your wife gets on you. Multiply this by a few more times and your vacation ends up being a disaster.

On the flip side of the coin, what if you did plan your vacation—and you’re wife made sure you did? You would then end up with a plan on paper—an itinerary. You would know where you were going and how to get there. On your vacation, everything would go smoothly and trip and quality time spent with your family would be a success. Isn’t that the way you would want it?

How did this successful journey happen? Here’s the answer—You made a plan on paper and you had someone hold you accountable for doing it. You knew when you were starting and where you were ending up. And the events in between—the “getting there” was all planned ahead of time. There were no roadblocks.

Planning & Accountability: You Can’t Have One Without The Other

It’s easy to run a promotion. It’s easy to write a plan. But without someone holding your feet to the fire and making sure you keep your focus, you’ll get distracted and you’ll fall back into the normal state of chaos. Yes, chaos is comfortable. Chaos leads to being average. Is being average what you want?

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Saturday, March 24, 2007

Last Thursday, Starbucks ran a nationwide “free cup of coffee” promotion. It was a stroke of genius. Free coffee between the hours of 10am and 12 noon. But most restaurant people would probably say one of two things ... I can’t afford to do that ... or ... I couldn’t do that because I would lose money giving away cups of coffee.

The fact is that Starbucks doesn’t do advertising. Have you ever seen them on TV, radio, billboard? The free cup of joe IS their advertising. And it’s the type of advertising everyone ends up talking about ... for days. Trust me—there was a real strategy here and much more to this than just giving away coffee for 2 hours.

I call this “Invest In Your Guest Marketing" ... a strategy where you’ll get a huge return on your investment.

And here’s another example—Dunkin Donuts celebrated the first day of spring yesterday (Wed. March 21) by running a day-long, free iced coffee giveaway. Objective? Get more people into their units to try their product and see their large selection of coffee drinks, both iced and hot.

You can run a similar promotion! Maybe not on the same vast scale, but what about using your customer list? Invite those on your list into your restaurant for a special offer. Encourage them to invite their friends. “Invest In Your Guest Marketing” is a great investment.

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