Is Email Marketing Dead? During the holiday season, I get so many emails from everybody. Friends, retailers, charities and so much more are using email marketing to get me to visit their restaurant or website. They are all competing for the same dollars that a restaurant does. Unfortunately, I don’t get many emails from restaurants. […]
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 […]
Restaurant leadership is like being the head coach of a professional football team. Depending on your business, you team may be large or it could be a small handful of players. Either way, it takes a leader to get all the parts functioning independently and producing a product as a team. Think of the football team. You have the […]
Most restaurant owners are faced with problems every week. There are a lot of balls juggling in the air every day. Some are handled flawlessly; some balls are dropped. The question remains how can you become a better juggler. The best jugglers practice a lot and have coaches to help them perfect their act. If […]
The year has come to a close and the industry sources show that the final quarter of 2015 had the worst traffic growth since the first quarter of 2014. Where have the my restaurant customers gone? Some specific markets are doing well such as California but others have experienced significant declines. Industry sources site such […]
Over the past few years, many restaurant owners I have met with have been very skeptical of review sites such as Yelp or TripAdvisor. They contended that the reviews are false, misleading or competitors just writing bad reviews about them. In some cases they claim that Yelp was misleading in its representation of reviews. Recently […]
Restaurant Margins are tight, we all know that. Rising food cost, minimum wage increases, and competitive pressures make a day to day impact. It’s a tough business, every penny counts, but are you getting every penny your restaurant is earning? I’m sure your distributor is passing along all of the allowances that they get from […]
November is upon us and the holiday planning is set in place for most restaurants. Gift card promotions in place and holiday parties are booked. Fortunately gasoline prices are dropping which will free up discretionary spending. The challenge is to drive traffic into your restaurant and away from the big box stores. Promotions on social […]
When was the last time your restaurant’s website made you money? The majority of restaurant websites that I take a look at are not really helping restaurant owners increase revenue. Yes, a website is designed to create awareness and promote a professional image, but it can also drive new traffic and create new revenue streams for […]
Where has the customer traffic gone? In recent meetings with clients, the focus has really shifted on how do we build customer traffic counts. The NRA data confirms that customer traffic counts have been declining steadily for several years. Restaurant sales have shown minor increases largely due to price increases. The question still remains the […]
Every week I speak with restaurant owners in many parts of the country. In each conversation, they tell me of their concerns in running their restaurant business. In each of these conversations they all expressed many of the same concerns and they revolve around these five issues: Growing sales and reducing cost. Rising food cost […]
With food costs rising every week are your restaurants profits taking a hit? Almost every day there is something in the news about the price of something going up. Beef, pork, dairy, and coffee are all going up. As a restaurant owner, what is your strategy to handling these increases? Some chains will be raising […]
How do restaurant operators look at the cost of marketing? The NRA’s guidelines for restaurant marketing says that restaurants should allocate anywhere between two and four percent on restaurant marketing. Do restaurant owners follow this model when budgeting for their business? Like many families, the budget sometimes goes out the window when juggling expenses. The […]
Is reputation management part of your restaurant marketing strategy? Recently, I was on an extensive road trip for the better part of the past month. Many nights in hotels and most of my meals in restaurants. Ah the glamour of business travel! One thing I have seen in most markets that I visit is that […]
As we go into a new year, restaurant owners should be developing their restaurant business plan for operational efficiency and marketing strategies to increase sales. A recent study of restaurant owners in Columbus Ohio cited the top five concerns to be dealt with in 2014. Outlined below are their thoughts. How will I increase sales and […]
