Developing a Plan For Restaurant Success

Day in a day out you work at your passion of building your restaurant business. You have a vision and a dream of what success is like etched in your mind. You work hard every day to make it happen. Then you wake up and look around you. Reality sets in, you are running from fire to fire trying to keep the business going. For many restaurant owners, this is their life. Putting out the fires and trying to keep the cash flow going.

A common thread I see with restaurant owners is that they do not take the time to assess what works and doesn’t and plan a strategy to move forward for the next quarter or year. It’s not because they are lazy. They just don’t allocate the time to do this important function for their businessRestaurant Marketing Assessment

Most all restaurants have the challenges of generating sales and are running from special to special to try to get cash flow. Not many take a step back and take an analytical look at the business. Outlined below are some of the topics that should be taken into consideration:

  • Do you have a weekly or monthly sales goal for sales and traffic? Can you measure the data?
  • Do you know your prime cost?
  • Why would customer’s want to come to your restaurant? What is your point of difference from the competition?
  • Does your staff help you reach your goals? Do they understand you point of difference?
  • Do you have a quarterly marketing plan set in advance of the quarter? Do you execute against it?
  • Are you generating off premise sales to meet the demands of consumers?
  • Do you have a marketing budget? What percentage of sales is it?
  • Do customers come back? How do you measure that?

Working with many restaurants over the years, we see the overwhelming majority do not take a step back and look at their business objectively and develop a plan for success.  This is where the help of an outsider comes in as a valuable resource. Not only can they help you develop that restaurant MAP, but they can bring years of experience and knowledge based on working with others in similar situations. Their knowledge can bring incredible value to your business and help you reach your goals faster.

With over 30 years of experience in the food industry, CORE Restaurant Marketing’s mission is helping restaurants improve their revenues.  To learn more about how CORE Restaurant Marketing can bring value to the restaurant industry visit our website or contact us at info@corerestaurantmarketing.com

2 responses to “Developing a Plan For Restaurant Success”

  1. Such an excellent blog, Joe! Just wanted to throw into the mix the idea of incorporating wifi marketing? It’s a way to build an email list within a brick and mortar restaurant by simply offering free wifi. Impressive stuff imo.

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