In the last issue we talked about treating each vender and salesman and order taker as strategic partners in your business development campaign. By demonstrating respect for time, common business courtesy and gracious hospitality to them, these people who are an important part of your business process become walking and talking promotional billboards for your restaurant. Your treatment of them will equal whether or not they care if your restaurant succeeds or fails. Restaurant visitation means relationship. How are your relationships? Do the people who used to attend regularly still visit you?
The next step in Free Marketing for your restaurant is in your procedures. Regardless of whether or you own a Mom & Pop take-out mall store or offer sit in dinning, don’t just only take food orders. Get to know your customers. Remember their name and family situation. Care about their professional successes. Ask about their birthdays, etc. If you want to take your internal marketing campaigns to the next level, learn about your customers’ professions and businesses. Ask for business cards. Post a bulletin board in a thoughtful and tasteful place in your restaurant for customer to pin their business cards. Casual restaurants put these in the front entrance ways or fancier ones put them near the bathrooms. Do your part for the local economy. Growing businesses and professional success of restaurant client usually means greater incomes, which translates into more freedom for the customer to dine out. The freedom to dine out means more restaurants are competing for their consumption dollars. And you want to earn loyal customers and become the client’s first dining out choice. Or at the very least, be in the top 3 regular eating establishments.
Another way to increase your customer base is to learn about the professional/social needs of your consumers. Professional clients will have needs for various contacts or services. Active retired folks will have social groups in which they are involved. Stay at home Moms will may have church or mom’s group connections. A few minutes of listening while delivering food to a table won’t kill your wait staff. The wait person can relay the information to your host or hostess who can keep notes about these conversations for future marketing data. (If staff is too busy to chat, there’s always a thoughtful feedback card that can be left with the bill.)
A wait person has the natural freedom to move about the restaurant. Use it to your advantage. Wait staff can help customers meet other customers. Help people dining alone find one another. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. If the person is not open to sharing a meal with a stranger, then the owner can join them a few minutes. By helping these folks connect, you are also freeing a table for a larger party. More proactive strategies would be to help business professionals connect. Carefully select opportunities to introduce customers to one another. Help them exchange business cards. Being the 30-second commercial for your customer will gain you extra loyalty brownie points. Customers believe you care more about them as people than simply their eating butts in your restaurant seats. And usually when an owner shows genuine interest, the law of reciprocity usually yields that the customer will perform similar kind services outside the restaurant. Patrons remain the most important walking billboards.
Naturally, you want to be careful with this networking approach. If you have not sincerely understood someone’s business, attempting to match a professional in need of a service with possible providers could backfire on you. Therefore, you want first want to be in-tune with the mood and tone of conversations at their table. Make sure that the introduction is unobtrusive. Assess if the person is feeling and appearing sociable. Ensure your mini-marketing tactic doesn’t disrupt serious conversations going on at the respective tables. The exchange should feel natural and unforced, helping the minute conversation to occur quickly. Concerned this could slow food service delivery, at some restaurants, wait staff could also simply act as the biz card carrier and go between. After learning about a business, the waitress asks for a business card with the explanation that there’s someone else in the restaurant who might need their services. The goal is the card of both parties is exchanged with the aid of the waitress. Some small restaurant owners go as far as to invite both customers back for lunch so their businesses get better acquainted.
Another important factor in this process is that by getting people’s business cards, you will be gaining valuable and accurate information for your own marketing campaigns. You will be gaining detailed client demographics. You will be learning accurate names and addresses for use in your marketing strategies. You’ll gain names, positions, street addresses and email address for your own database. Keep track of birthdays and anniversaries as well as who is getting married. Cheap advertising can be done through sending a simple postcard for these occasions. Of course, if your restaurant is growing, at some point you will need outside services. Therefore, you will have a fast list of potential partners to invite in for evaluating their needed services. People who like eating at your restaurant regularly, will care whether or not you grow. These professionals will also be more likely care about quality negotiations and delivering quality service. Hence, its important to respect every business represented in the seats of your restaurant because you never know where the next larger party or event referral will come from.
Savvy restaurant owners generate sales leads by attending breakfasts or lunches of local networking groups. For the cost of a lunch you need to eat anyway, you can meet 10-30 people, depending on your own marketing skill. Other restaurants actually host networking breakfasts by offering their establishment to host local chambers or other networking groups. Typically, it means to have to be a member. But these groups always need a place to gather. For most restaurants breakfast is not a conflict with lunch or dinner service. All you are doing is offering space, tables, lighting and bathrooms at their disposal. If you want to be more generous, offer beverage and coffee service or the use of real tableware. The networking group will bring a continental breakfast or has a relationship with a caterer. The group leaders can also be the one’s responsible for hosting and helping to engage everyone. As with involvement in any networking group, do not expect immediate ROI. Only consistent effort will yield results. Most likely, after a 3-6 months, you will start to see a positive impact on your lunch and dinner crowds. The obvious advantages is time management. You don’t have to go anywhere. You are brining professionals to you. If you’re looking to help a group, The Business Strategy & Technology Forum of Hamilton County is always needing space.
Other ways to create networking events would be to host parties or festivals related to the types of food at your restaurant. Ethnic restaurants have easy marketing tools. Create a “how to” cooking night or culture parties, where people come to learn culture and pay to eat food. The options for these parties are as endless as the culture the restaurant represents. If someone on your staff cannot lead these cultural events, forge a strategic partnership with a local instructor. The instructor will likely tell their students, which will help create a biased base of friendly, paying participants to create cushion for any strangers who can also register for the event. So we Free marketing is about creating a win-win-win relationships.
