Being in the Food and Beverage industry almost 26 years, what I have discovered is that the success of the restaurant isn’t just the food served, its more than that. I am really passionate about my line of work, so much so I am constantly scouring the media for anything new related to the food and beverage industry. I am always searching for fresh strategies to promote my product as well as services. The internet provides you with tons of ideas and tips.
I started this Restaurant Promo Ideas blog in 2011 as a avenue to write out some of my ideas (tried as well as untried), hoping that it will help someone out there as other blogs have helped me in promoting my restaurant. Here’s a summary of my earlier post. Some might or might not be feasible to your outlet or business. Use whatever you feel is workable. Here is the continuation of my previous posting in A Summary of my Restaurant Promo Ideas through the years.
I searched the World Wide Web for addresses of the surrounding schools. I send out promotional letters with different types of menus to these potential customers and followed up with a visit where possible. I dropped in a couple of my business cards into the envelope together with the letters and menus. We got a few calls enquiring about doing their dinners from this schools, of which we told them that we can also tailor make their menus to suit their guest. I didn’t get all the schools but I managed to secure some dinners from some of the schools
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Did you know that kids choose 50% of restaurant visits and according to a recent study 75% of parents consider their kids preference when choosing a restaurant. This is the main reason why most fast food restaurants target their advertising at children and students. One excelent example is the McDonald’s “Happy Meals”. Their gifts are much sought after by the young and the young at heart. Promotions targeted at kids don’t have to be expensive, there are a lot of cheaper ways to promote through the kids and you don’t need to give them a toy too. Below are some of my suggestions and a few that I have tried.
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Recently I joined a family resort as the head of the Food and Beverage Department. As with most businesses, we are always looking for ways to enhance our customers experience thus bringing in repeat business. In my previous post
“Restaurant Promo Idea #13-Promote through Kids”, I’ve mentioned that kids choose 50% of restaurant visits and according to a recent study 75% of parents consider their kids preference when choosing a restaurant.
So we added a few things like a corner in the breakfast buffet, food ideal for kids like oatmeal porridge, fish fingers. All kids love balloons, so we have incorporated some balloon giveaways in our restaurant. Below are two ways we used balloons to enhance our customers experience, thus bringing in repeat business.
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Halloween like Valentine’s Day and Mother’s Day is another festival that is currently being commerlized by businesses especially those related to Food and Beverage. Instead of doing it on the Halloween day like most establishments, we held our ipromotion for a week and on the Halloween’s Day we made it really grand. As with most of my promotions in this blog, below is a simple account on how we organised our Halloween Week. Hope if it will be of some help for your establishment.
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I have in my many years in the restaurant industry learnt that there are some simple methods you can use to bring customers into your restaurant. One of them is where you seat your first few customers. People will normally shy away from a restaurant that looks empty or is very quiet. They usually have the impression that the food there is not very good, that’s why its empty. So a busy restaurant will give the customer a feeling that this place is really good. For me what I normally do is to seat my first few customers towards the front of the restaurant. This will give the impression that the restaurant is quite full.
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/In my previous guest post by Amanda Cusack
“8 Tips for Successful Restaurant Marketing, one of the things she mentioned was that most successful restaurants have at least one signature dish. Take Madam Kwan’s for instance. When you mention Nasi Bojari, the first thing thats comes to most people’s mind is Madam Kwan Restaurant. In the 90′s in Singapore when you mention Chicken Rice, most people will say Chatterz at the Singapore Mandarin Hotel. Their Chicken Rice was the talk of Singapore at that time, so much so it was a signature dish in every Singapore Mandarin Hotel..
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One way you can promote your new menu is to publish a recipe book of your
signature dishes. Famous chefs have been doing this to promote themselves and their creations for quite some time. Those that had the chance to market their recipe books abroad also attracted tourist to venture to their outlet from afar. Most restaurants don’t like giving out their recipes fearing that people will open another food outlet close by using their recipes or their guest will be able to cook the dish at home so they won’t be dining in your outlet. So what if you lose a few customers, but cooking is not about exactly following the recipe, its about passion.
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Whenever you say “Happy Hour Specials”, the very first thing that comes into everyone’s mind is usually Happy Hour at Bars or Pubs. My boss mentioned that there was a Wet Market in Selayang, Malaysia which has all sorts of seafood. Some which is imported. He was going on and on about the how fresh the seafood was, so much so that a few Chinese Restaurant opened around the wet market. You can acquire whatever seafood you like bring it to the restaurant and they will| prepare it to your preference with some charges. My boss said that this wet market even had Happy Hours Specials when seafood is sold at a certain time at discounted prices. So that got me thinking if a seafood market can do Happy Hour Specials, why not do this for my coffeehouse.
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I pointed out in one of my article in my blog, Restaurant Promo Ideas in which during one episode of Apprentice with Donald Trump, how a team utilized sandwich boards to get the message to the public. I discovered that if I put up one banner, how strategic the location may be. I will only capture a certain amount of coverage. Nevertheless if I were to put up buntings around I most certainly will capture much more people. They might overlook one however if there is a lot around town they will sure to notice a few. And if your buntings leads the guest to your restaurant, that’s even better. And I have also discovered that the overhead for putting up 30 buntings is the same as putting up a single banner. Therefore now I put up much more buntings.
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Each year in the event that the hotel occupancy is high particularly during school holiday season, we usually set up a buffet for dinner. This is to entice some families to dine in as well as reduce the strain on the kitchen with ala carte orders. However recently with the ever increasing cost associated with raw ingredients and also the decreased spending of customers, we have noticed a decrease in our buffet crowd. Families were a lot more calculative in their spending and we couldn’t reduce selling prices. So this year during the high occupancy we created a food bazaar. We had stalls offering dishes from our various kitchens. We had| local favorites such as Char Koay Teow, Chicken Rice, Murtabak and so forth. From our western kitchen we had Roasted Chicken, Burgers as well as Roasted Beef. From the Pastries there were Waffles, Ice Cream as well as Cakes. All items were individually priced.
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My boss liked to use this quote often. He used to say “
A Customer is a Person who has Our MONEY in his Pocket“. Then he goes on to say how we are going to take our money from him. If you think that this quote is dishonesty, then you are in the wrong line of business. You have spend thousands on advertising and promotions, you need to get the returns right. Once a customer steps into your restaurant he has set his mind that he is going to eat here. Most of the time the customer has already decided what to eats. In my restaurants I use certain tactics to get the customer to spend more. The methods are simple task that you and your staff can do in order to increase your sales from the existing customers.
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Mother’s Day is just a few weeks away. It is one of the most popular occasion of the year to dine out and celebrate according to the National Restaurant Association in America. This year its celebrated on the 11th May 2014. Most family restaurants will be planning special buffets or hi tea for that Special Lady in Our Life. Mother’s Day like Valentine’s Day and Christmas offers you an opportunity to come out with special promotions thus increasing revenue.
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The FIFA World Cup is played once every four years and this year in 2014 the World Cup will be in Brazil beginning 13th June 2014. There will be millions of fans in every country on the planet following their favorite teams. These people, the fans will also be seeking venues to watch their favorite team in action along with their buddies. Reason being its more enjoyable watching as well as cheering along with others than just watching in your own home by yourself. So screening The World Cup in your restaurant or bar will definitely boost your revenue.
You can add numerous television and also a large screen however you still need to do things differently from the rest in order to bring the masses in. Here are some methods on how you can market the World Cup as well as run specials that are lined up with the game schedules.
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