Wednesday, July 04, 2007

Restaurant Marketing: I have to be honest with you. I am troubled at the number of restaurant people who I come into contact with who are missing out on greatness. Missing out on greatness because they’re stumbling over minutia, afraid to deal with real issues, and afraid to look at their business as a hospitality-experience venue because they’re too comfortable being a discounter of food.

If you discount, as many systems encourage you to do, you will attract only those who love to take advantage of discounts. Discounting does not forge restaurant-guest partnerships and loyalties. Hopefully, I’ve saved you $500 with that advice.

Having owned an ad agency for 20 years, I saw many agencies give away their product at a discount. Result was they had a short term boost in sales, but their profits declined and declined until bankruptcy became a threat. And, (guess what!) it’s profits you take to the bank. Our agency on the other hand, didn’t give anything away. We didn’t discount our marketing services. We forged trusting relationships with clients and future clients. Now we may not have had huge sales increases, but we made a pretty good profit every year.

But let me get back to greatness. Those that know me, understand I have a tough time dealing with mediocrity. My expectations are high ... and I hope yours are also. The point here is that everyone has a choice ... to be average or to be great. Average doesn’t make it in today’s world. What are you doing to be great? Do you have a plan to be great? Probably not, because most restaurants don’t have a plan. So, being average means just doing the same ole thing every day, waiting for guests to come in, putting out fires, struggling and ... not having any fun.

You see, you really do have a choice. You can be like everyone else, or you can excel. And the bad news is that today’s guests are smarter than ever and are spurning average restaurants in favor of those restaurants that show greatness in being different and in treating guests like royalty. And no Virginia, treating guests like royalty doesn’t mean saying, “Is everything okay.”

Posted by jcohen in
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