Secret Sauce - The Restaurant Marketing Podcast

We talk about a Restaurant in Perth who had been struggling for years and years now.  He had a Restaurant that had very poor SEO, was quite hard to find in Google.  He had a purple website with no images and no online bookings.  It seems that the Restaurant wasn't too bad, but the marketing was just awful.  The marketing mistakes that he made over the last 4 years could have easily cost him an extra $200,000.  What could he have done with an extra $200K?  Or should he have closed the restaurant 4 years ago? Either way he would have been better off if he had made a choice 4 years ago to either change something fundamental with the way that the Restaurant was run. We also look at the tragic story of Esquire.  Head Chef, Ryan Squires, had worked at elBulli, French Laundry.  A great chef who has worked his guts out running a great Restaurant and he has closed it and he views it as a waste of time.   The food was immaculate at Esquire, great sommelier, eclectic mix of food and drinks.  I thought the pricing was on

We look at what we learnt from Dinner by Heston. Firstly, have a think about the photos that you've got.  I will put some images up in the show notes to give you an idea about the kind of photos that you can take with an entry level camera or a decent mobile phone. Dinner by Heston has a unifying story throughout the menu - cooking food for centuries ago and reinterpreting them in a way that is interesting and compelling for customers. Every dish had a story and they tell the story really well.  There was Savoury Porridge.  This was green and gives everyone something to talk about.  Green Porridge.  For Dinner.  Savoury Porridge.  Lots of interesting components to the dish to get people talking about the Restaurant. I was lucky enough that my wife had booked the Chef's table for us.  A great high value experience that gives you a close up view of the workings of the kitchen.  Our tea came with an hour glass to tell us when the tea was properly steeped.  A small thing that signals the value of the experience t

What if you ran your Restaurant like Princess Cruises? I spoke to a Restaurant owner and he said why think about cruises?   We look at operational efficiencies and how looking outside the Restaurant industry can give you ideas about innovation for your Restaurant.  We discuss Southwest Airlines and how they redefined industry best practice in turning around the aircraft.  It is a great story about culture and innovation that you can use in your Restaurant. We look at our time from on the Sapphire Princess.  We look at the food with Princess Cruises.  It is amazing the quality of the food that is produced out of a floating kitchen. We talk about what it is that your customers buy from you.  Often it is not the food, sometimes it is, but there are other products that customers are looking at. The chefs did a great job in the descriptions of the food.  There were theme nights.  These are things that can drive more customers on quiet nights.  What if you swapped chefs with another chef to create unique events? We

We discuss products and services.  What is it that you do?  Many restaurants that we speak to who have been running restaurants for 10 years still do not know what it is that they do and what it is that their customers buy from them. For the numbers for your Restaurant, make sure you have pessimistic numbers in there.  Too much optimism in your P+L spreadsheet makes it very hard to be long term viable. What is your pricing strategy? How do you put a restaurant under management? Innovation - what is your approach to Research and Development.  R + D can be a clear differentiator for your restaurant.  Restaurants are designed for innovation, but too many don't innovate. Insurance, the costs and what is covered? Are you designing your customer for high throughput?  Is your kitchen limiting the number of customers that you can manage? What is your strategy around supplier choice - this can make a big difference for your story, your margin, and your success. Fit out costs for your Restaurant.  How can you get a che

We talk about creating a Restaurant Business Plan as a living document to help you better run your business. We have a copy of blank Business Plan Template and we go through the process of filling it in, and give you some ideas and guidance around the kind of information that you need to put in there. Why is it important to create a Restaurant Business Plan? We look at some of the resources that you can use to fill in some of the gaps that you have. We discuss ownership structures, with the positive and the negatives that can coming from the varying structures. We look at some sources for funding for your Restaurant, there are some sources of funding that most business don't think about. What are the considerations for the domain name and the business name.  We look at the considerations that you need to think about and some of the ways that you can protect your business and your intellectual property. Business location.  There is a lot to think about in the location of where your business will be.  We talk a

Carrie is owner of Restaurant HR and company that specifically deals with Restaurant HR issues.  She also runs CarrieLuxem.com which helps Restaurants with the broader HR issues, like leadership and culture. We discuss the definition of Leadership and how it is so important in Restaurants.   What are some of the steps that people can take to be a better Restaurant Leader? We also look at the relationship between culture and leadership. Can anyone be a leader? We talk about some books that you can read: Rework - By Jason Fried Start with why - Simon Synek What are the first steps to take when you are trying to turn a restaurant around as a leader? You need to hold people accountable to what they need to do. At what size Restaurant is it important to create a vision? Carrie has created   resources to assist Restaurant owners to create and execute on your Restaurant's Vision, Mission and Purpose. We talk about Linkedin and how Carrie uses it to grow her profile. Have a look at Carrie's excellent book - Restauran

We finish off place.  Have you thought of running your Restaurant like a franchise?  Get the economies of scale in purchases and economies of scales in activities in your restaurants.  Create an operations manual so that everyone knows what needs to be done in the restaurant. We look at dine-in, take out and delivery.   We finish off with promotion.  Promotion is not about the promotions that you run, but the channels that you use to promote your restaurant. We look at some of the ways that you can increase the effectiveness of your promotion. You don't want to be the best restaurant that no one has ever heard of. For more information on this podcast, check out our show notes. If you liked this episode, please leave a review in iTunes.  It really helps us to get the word out and share it on our Facebook page. For Free Tools  to build your Restaurant business, check out our free tools page.  We've helped restaurants around the world build the Restaurant that they always wanted with our tools.  Our free booking

Price Setting - How do you set the price?  Price Leader, a Premium Price?  How does that impact your customers and how does it impact your profitability? We look at M Y China and one of their amazing dessert item - the Sugar Egg Puffs.  These are awesome. How does Menu Engineering fit in with your pricing?  We look at the Dogs, Stars, Puzzles and Plow Horses. Revenue Per Available Seat Hour.  What is this metric, where did it come from and how important is it to your business model.  How can you influence it? Getting the balance between your fixed and variable costs is critical.  How can you increase the number of hours that your restaurant is open without increasing the number of hours that you are working? Loyalty discounts can make a big difference in increasing customer loyalty.  This increases the Long Term Customer Value for each customer and increases the Return on Investment for each new customer that you find. Payment Terms.  Restaurants Love Cash!  Prebookings can decrease your no show rates.  Prebo

What are the 4Ps and the Restaurant Marking Mix? We look at Product.  It may be something that you eat or it could be something else, or a mix of both.   When you fundamentally understand the product that your customers want, you will be able to price it appropriately.   What are the demographics of people that you want to target and what is it they they want to buy?  Should you change the products that you sell through the duration of the day. What is the competitor analysis look like?  If there are 8 local pizza shops, you probably don't want to be the 9th. What do you do and do you specialise in it? How does the length of the menu impact the time your customers take to decide. Packaging is a part of your product.  You want to avoid using other brands packaging for your food.  Use the packaging to reinforce your USP. How does Nick Sarello at Nicks Pizza and Pub use monthly customer pizza recipes to build a community. Too many restaurants don't use just noticeable  differences in their pricing strategy. Is P

Firstly, make sure you check you Google My Business account for your Restaurant.  Incorrect information could be costing you thousands or tens of thousands of dollars! We talk about Jamie's Italian.  A restaurant chain over $100 million in debt with stories of poor food, poor team culture and poor experiences for diner's.  A Sydney Jamie's Italian was filmed using packet Gnocci when they advertise making their own pasta.  I am not a food lawyer, and technically, yes gnocchi is not pasta, but it highlights some of the concerns about the chain.  Jamie Oliver has done an amazing amount of work, particularly with school kids, to improve the diet of millions of people and to try and limit the power of food and drink manufacturers who create unhealthy food, but it looks like a licensing deal for his name.  Building scale and keeping the quality is very difficult, it comes done to leadership and procedures. We went to Lagnaa Bare Foot Dining.  This is a great Indian Restaurant in Singapore.  Chef Kaesavan has done a

What is the Boost Juice way of marketing?  How can they get PR coverage for an app update?  Another example of how being a little bit out there can get you some great results.   We managed to fly to Singapore in Business Class with @qantas, which was super awesome.  Make sure you are looking into your credit cards and the points you collect!  We got the upgrade with points which was super cool. We talk about the Tourist Traps.  These restaurants rely on tourists, sting them and know that people will never come back.  It was hideously expensive for what it was and we got tricked by the happy hour deals. We found Tokyo $5 Izakaya.  This was a great restaurant.  There was no website, only a hungrygowhere listing.  This was clearly not enough because they are now closed :(.  They had great food, great value and provided a great experience, but it is no good being the best restaurant that no one has ever heard of.  Not having a website meant no Google places entry and less customers. Avocado Espresso smoothie - th

This podcast started with an article in the Sydney Morning Herald that described Menulog as "the business partner he never wanted". We look at Restaurant Brandjacking and websites set up by online aggregators which look like the web Adwords Arbitrage.  We discuss how restaurants can advertise on Google Adwords and get clicks to their platforms, not your website.  We talked about this with Kyle Welter who used to work at Google and understands how big companies use this practice. We discuss how the margins that restaurants are charged by online aggregators and how some restaurants are dealing with the large fees that they are charged.   How does the restaurant circle of life work and how can you avoid being of the restaurants that fails. Domain squatting - We have issues with big companies like Menulog registering domains 'on behalf' of restaurants.  This becomes their property and they will build one of their websites, which don't have your phone number and don't havedirect contact details for your Restaura

Oohbah Butler is a journalist who writes for Vice.  He used to be employed to write fake reviews on Tripadvisor, getting paid £10 for each review.  He had concerns about the impact that the fake reviews were having, so he created a crappy website for the Shed at Dulwich, a restaurant that only existed on the High Street of his mind and started getting his friends to write reviews for it. In April 2017 - he set up the Restaurant and it is appointment only.  His menu was based on emotions.  He went from  being ranked 18,000 to the top 1,500 restaurants in a couple of months. The phone starts to ring (he bought a burner phone for the restaurants).  He often didn't answer the phone, so people were thinking that they were very successful.  Nothing gets a queue like a queue!  If he did answer the phone, he said they were booked out for 6 weeks and hang up, August - number 156.  The restaurant is getting job applications. Gets the restaurant to number 30.  There are people looking in the street for where it is. Trip

Woo Hoo! You've just done a weeks' worth of Restaurant Marketing.

Find out what works and what doesn't with your Restaurant Marketing plan.

Email Marketing - The simplest and cheapest way to fill a Restaurant on a Midwinter's Tuesday night

Facebook is pay to play now. This is a great thing. The budgets are low, the returns are high.

Some sites change every week, some haven't changed since 2002

When did you last post to your Restaurant's Facebook page?

The Menu is the critical in most restaurants, it is part sales, part marketing, part art, part science, and part soul and part passion - yet so few people work to improve it.