Restaurant Marketing

Marketing your Restaurant during the Holiday Season

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For retail businesses, the holiday season is pure gold – an opportunity to make nearly all of the profit that the retail company will see throughout the year. Restaurants have historically had a much different relationship with the holidays though – since it is difficult to market to people during the Christmas season when they are traveling or spending time with friends and family. For restaurants that are willing to put a little extra effort into their holiday marketing plans, Christmas can be one of the best times to create special restaurant dinners or to offer delivery and take-out.

Holiday Specials

Between Thanksgiving, Christmas, and the other “end of year” holidays, you have a substantial opportunity to create dinners and special events at your restaurant that will bring in all kinds of new customers. Not everyone is able to travel home for the holidays, and many people don’t celebrate the holidays in any meaningful way, so your restaurant could be one of the only restaurants that is open during the day.

Added to this, holidays are the best time to start people on traditions – and a good restaurant creates an atmosphere and environment that lends itself to the formation of new traditions. Whether you choose to offer a fixed-price “off menu” production during the holidays, or you go all out with your decorations and your advertising, you can turn your holiday meals into a complete “production” that makes people feel comfortable and happy – and that brings them back the next year with their family and their friends.

Gift Cards and Holiday Promotions

Christmas is a great time to advertise your business to a new audience using gift cards.  Gift cards not only allow you to pre-sell your food and services (thus helping you start the next year with a bang), but they are usually given to people that haven’t been to your restaurant before – and people with gift cards almost always spend more than the value of their cards when they come in to redeem them.

If you want to encourage your patrons to purchase gift cards as stocking stuffers and presents for their loved ones, consider offering some kind of promotion where the person purchasing the gift card also gets a small gift card (or a discount on their food order) in exchange for their gift card order. It is virtually guaranteed that you will get more of a return on your gift card sales than you will spend on the promotion to encourage people to buy them.

Charity and “Giving Back”

The holidays are a time of generosity, and you can tap into that spirit in a way that will be good for your restaurant’s image and will help some people that need it.  Many restaurants sponsor some kind of charity dinner – whether to raise money, or to give food directly to the people in your community that can’t afford it. Consider opening your doors on Thanksgiving to provide a Thanksgiving dinner to your community’s poor or to a retirement home.  Not only will you be making some people very happy over the holidays, but you can also use your charity events as an opportunity to get some publicity in local newspapers and with your civic leaders.

Allowing Restaurant Customers to Order Online Increases Sales

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Hungry customers are now provided the option from many innovative and sales-conscious restaurants of placing their meal orders online through their computers or cell phones. Marketing studies have determined that this usually results in larger sales. Restaurant owners and managers have long known that making it easy for customers to order is one of the keys to optimizing food sales, and it doesn’t get much easier than pointing and clicking on an item on a restaurant’s website.

Those who take advantage of convenient online ordering are often busy, time-pressed professionals. Others might be active families with several mouths to feed, couples looking for takeout for a picnic in the park or single people wanting a meal on their way home from work. Whether they’re ordering for dine-in or food to be consumed in-house, those with time constraints especially value the convenience of being able to order easily in advance. This eliminates frustrated wait times at tables in crowded restaurants or standing in long lines at takeout counters.

All of these types of consumers have one thing in common — they’re hungry. Just like how hungry people fill grocery carts fuller, they also purchase more restaurant items. Providing them with an online venue where they can click on pictures of desired entrees and ala-carte offerings creates a situation where they’re ordering more than they actually need. Human beings are visually hard-wired when it comes to primary needs such as food, so looking at tempting photographs will create more desire to eat than reading the descriptive text of even well-written menus.

Restaurant owners can even cut costs on staff by providing customers with an online ordering option. Because the customer is essentially putting in his or her order directly to the kitchen, serving staff can be reduced in establishments where online ordering is a substantial part of how they do business. It also significantly reduces chances of server error in ordering, therefore decreasing costs accrued by food waste and ordering mistakes.

There are three major factors that make online ordering systems beneficial for restaurants, delis and takeout facilities. Convenience is the first; most people like being able to click on a desired item and have it ready for them by the time they arrive at the establishment. Because most people are closely connected to their online electronic devices throughout the course of the day, offering online ordering options simply makes sense for restaurants that want to successfully compete in today’s tough marketplace.

The second factor is hunger. When people are hungry, they want the quickest available option. Hungry people are often also tired or winding down after a busy day. Hungry and tired people love the convenience of clicking on a tempting culinary photograph and having it quickly available for consumption.

The visual element is the third factor involved concerning why this strategy increases food sales. As mentioned before, the senses of most human beings are stimulated by pleasing images, and people are likely to order more food when they’ve got a visual reference.

Many busy restaurants have already increased sales by giving their customers an online ordering option. If you own or manage an eating establishment, you’ll find that implementing such a system will be well worth your time.

High-Tech Restaurant Marketing

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If any business wants to remain relevant and profitable there is a need to understand that the customer is the most important part of the whole equation. Without customers, there is no business! Therefore it is vital keep your customers happy.

A restaurant or any other business cannot continue with the most basic of operations without customers. In order to bring customers into a restaurant, marketing is vital and not just any kind of marketing but targeted marketing. Most restaurants fail with their marketing because of the way they go about doing it.

Restaurants are known to mail out their menus blindly to zip codes or go around dropping them off in neighborhoods and businesses. They don’t know how effective this is or whether those people are even interested in their type of food. The result of this is lots of energy & money wasted on marketing that doesn’t help the restaurant at all.

For a restaurant that has been in business for a while there are a signification amount of their business from repeat customers. Some of these restaurants fail to take advantage of targeting these existing customers in their marketing and instead spend all their resources in finding new ones. In any business, it is cheaper to market to your existing customers compared with finding new ones.

An advantage of marketing to existing restaurant customers is that they already approve of your food, so when marketing you just have to give them an enticing offer to bring them back for more. Customers become loyal when they see how they are valued and appreciated; on top of that, a satisfied customer will spread the word about the restaurant and soon enough, new customers will come as well.

Marketing to existing customers becomes a lot easier by embracing technology. Restaurant managers need to understand that if they use an online ordering system and over time build a list of their customers then they can start marketing directly to those customers through mail and email. 247Waiter’s online ordering software gives restaurants access to all their customers’ data which means you can market to them directly. For more information, click on the links above to see other features of our restaurant online ordering platform.

Facebook and Restaurant Marketing

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Social media, specifically Facebook, is a common way to get your business’ name out to the public. There are many benefits for a restaurant having its own Facebook page. All restaurants should have a Facebook page. A Facebook page allows customers and potential customers to get updates on special promotions and events at the restaurant. In addition, it’s also a great way to share menu updates and job opportunities. Making a Facebook page for your restaurant is free and does not need much time to get it up and running. The benefits & rewards gained from having a Facebook page you’re your restaurant is well worth the few minutes invested in getting one up and running.

When creating your Facebook page, make sure to add your restaurants essentials such as business hours, phone numbers, address (any specific directions) and menu information along with specials and customer favorites or special dishes. You shouldn’t add any personal information such as your home address/personal phone numbers or any other personal info that might be misused. It’s also a great idea to add pictures of your menu items and restaurant on your Facebook page. Let customers see & feel the environment and “taste” the food before they come. This will not only encourage them to visit, but visit more often.

People spend a great deal of time on Facebook. Hours are spent searching for people, updates, events and potential deals. People stumbling onto your restaurant page could mean potentially more business for your restaurant. Having a Facebook page for your restaurant is also great for people who use the “check-in” option. Customers visiting your restaurant can “check-in” and add reviews and along with other people with them. The reviews and “check-ins” will show up on both your Facebook and theirs which allows their connections & friends becoming aware of your restaurant.

Special events or promotions, new menu introductions can be displayed on your page’s wall. Your wall is a place to communicate to your customers and also get their feedback.  When you first make your Facebook page, it’s a good idea to promote it. Add it to your business cards; put a sign on the wall at your restaurant to let customers know you are now on Facebook.