HotOperator® Restaurant Menu Builder

Restaurant Promotion: Ideas to Make Your Restaurant Valentine’s Day Ready

Valentine’s Day is one of the biggest occasions for full service restaurant operators and can certainly make a large profit if they plan ahead and do some marketing. Keep in mind there are a number of reasons that couples don’t go out on the big day. The ones that you have the most control over is overcrowding, inflation and, of course, keeping your employees bubbly, but not too bubbly. Here are a few ideas, ranging in complexity, of how to get those Valentine’s Day hermits out of their shell and into your restaurant.

 "The easiest way to create a more intimate meal for a couple is to offer them a more intimate menu."

Simple Insert: Create an insert or small reminder for current customers, which will encourage them to keep the date in mind, and your restaurant. Create a special holiday meal and offer prime rib, lobster or heart-shaped burger and throw in a complimentary dessert or beverage. Then advertise the exclusive Valentine’s meal on Facebook and Twitter, blog about it and direct mail and email blast it, too.

 

Dinner for Two Menu: The easiest way to create a more intimate meal for a couple is to offer them a more intimate menu. This will give your guests fewer options so they don’t have to weed through the cheaper options, because we all know that a cheap V-Day date is not acceptable.

First, pick a couple of appetizers, three entrées and a number of desserts that cover a variation of your products. For example, offer Bang Bang Shrimp and Oysters Rockefeller for a starters, the Steamy Sautéed Chicken and Garlic Pasta or Princess Prime Rib for an entrée.

Keep in mind that the top food aphrodisiacs are honey, oysters, figs and, of course, chocolate. Try to incorporate these ingredients into an appetizer or entrée and save the chocolate covered strawberries for dessert.

Make sure to include a complimentary dessert or glass of champagne to your guests. You could also offer cocktail options like the Be Mine Mojito or Love Potion for purchase.

 Next, create a menu with all of these delectable aphrodisiacs and give it a catchy title like, “A Gourmet Menu for Two.”

 

Intimate Evening Event: Make an event out of Valentine’s Day and promote it to your guests from the previous two weeks.

Book a jazz performer or acoustic soloist and include a free glass of champagne.

You could go public by creating a Facebook event or ad, distribute a press release to local radio stations or place an advertisement in your newspaper, but make sure you have a professional create it.

Use a search engine or phone book to find a nearby florist or jeweler to partner up with on your event. People love raffles and giving away a nice bottle of champagne, a piece of jewelry or a bouquet of flowers would definitely attract a lot of attention.

The biggest complaint about going out on Valentine’s Day is overcrowding; to avoid that, make it exclusive to the first 50 couples to reserve a table. Make it a flat fee of $80 or x amount per couple to attend and send out invitations and menus to your guests via email and treat your guests to roses and chocolate when they arrive.

 

Need special help? Contact HotOperator here…

 

 

Restaurant Marketing: Will a LinkedIn Account Help Your Business?

LinkedIn is the third largest social media platform and has helped connect over 120 million students, graduates and professionals. The question is: where do restaurant operators fit in? After doing a little research, there are two areas where you or your restaurant can be placed on LinkedIn that have the ability to effectively market your business.

 

Connecting as yourself: LinkedIn is a personalized way for you to custom build an online portfolio for others to see who share your common interests. You have the ability to join networks, review companies and update a personal status. The part that is most effective for you as a restaurant operator is the ability to join over 60 groups and interact with professionals regarding anything from food trends, marketing and menu design. You even have the ability to share the latest and greatest news from your restaurant to others in the same industry. Bottom line is that if you are willing to put the time and effort into creating a LinkedIn account, it could be beneficial to you as a restaurant operator to interact with others in the same line of business across the country.

 

Connecting your company: The only way to incorporate your business into the LinkedIn network is to create a company profile where you and your employees can connect and list it under their experience. This will allow your company to appear on your employees profile page. Your company profile can include a photo, website and brief description of your restaurant. A feature that LinkedIn provides that is specific to business professionals is that you are able to tag an industry which can directly target others in the same industry or generate in a search category by other users. This is an easy way to expand your network and the best part is, you don’t have to go on LinkedIn every day to market your restaurant.

"The only way to incorporate your business into the LinkedIn network is to create a company profile"

The great thing about LinkedIn is that there are fewer user-generated updates which makes it a “one and done” way to effectively enhance your social media marketing.

 

Restaurant Menu: Is Professional Design & Engineering Too Expensive?

 

Fewer than half of the restaurant operators who reach out to my company and me actually end up buying anything. Mostly the reason they don’t purchase from us is they think: I can do it for a lot less money someplace else.

 The restaurant operators who do end up buying from us are the ones who realize that while they can make a menu on their own, they also realize they shouldn’t do it on their own. They understand that the menu is too important to screw up. They also know that working with a team of professionals who build menus and have worked on menus for many years may know things about menus that they will overlook.

 My advice: if you want to work on your own menu, go clean the bathroom.

Your menu is the third most important part of your business – right behind your bathrooms and your people. My advice is: if you want to work on your own menu, go clean the bathroom. That or go manage your people. And if you want a great menu, call a pro.

As far as the expense is concerned, that depends on how your look at it.  A well engineered restaurant menu will bring you more money more often. I can't make this any simpler: if your menu is engineered properly you will make more money. So is the menu an investment or an expense? If you still look at it as an expense, then buy it as cheaply as you can. If the menu is an investment in your busienss, then buy a menu that will enhance your brand and help make your restaurant more appealing to your guests.

Hudson's Menu Coaching: Restaurant Menu Design & Engineering

Dear Administrator,

There was an inquiry by Karli Anderson

Please find the details below:

First Name: Karli
 Last Name: Anderson
 Restaurant Name: Hudson's Canadian Tap House
 Phone: XXX-XXX-XXXX
 Email: 
 Best Time To Call: Morning
 Question:

I don't seem to have a file of our in store menu on hand but I have attached our take out menu and I have our sales #s as well but didn't see where to upload them. Would love to talk about your process and cost.

 

Thanks,
 Response Team, Hot Operator.

Dear Karli:

Thank you for your inquiry.

I’d love to talk to you about our services, and have had a chance to look at the menu you sent.

You may attach the sales numbers to a reply to this email and I’ll run a menu matrix. This process helps me better understand how to help you with your menu.

Let me know what time in the morning works for you and I’ll give you a call to follow up.

Thanks again for reaching out to us.

Kindest regards,

Mark

 

Hey Mark!!

Attached is the signed contract and our designers first kick at the menu. He said that the copy hasn't been looked at completely but knew we needed it for layout and design purposes....

And we do not smoke the meat in house. :)

Can you also let me know what you think your time-line will be? I would like to coordinate with the printers when the files will be arriving before xmas...

Karli.

 

Hi Kali:

I’ve attached a PDF of the menu layout for positioning. I’ve also attached a PowerPoint for the artist. It contains information about how to set up a menu properly. Again, if your art director needs to talk to me directly, pass him on to me.

Mark

Hey Mark!

We've noticed that the dessert section is not in the thumbnails?? Is that intentional? We could put them on our table topper holder? But I'm not sure people will know we have them then? Where should we place them now that there is no room? Should we find a spot on the menu or make a separate topper just for desserts?
thanks!!

 

Hi Karli:

No, I didn’t include dessert. In my opinion, you don’t have a dessert category at all. What I would do is develop dessert to have between 6 and 7 items, and place that on a separate dessert menu.

There is very good research on selling dessert. The perfect number of items in a dessert category are 6 or 7 items. A dessert tray works best, and has the highest sales for desserts. Second is a separate dessert menu. After that table talkers work well, and finally on the dinner menu. The problem with having the items on the dinner menu is that they only stay on the table for a short time and after the order is taken the menus are taken away, so when the person is ready to order dessert, they no longer have the menu.

Timing for dessert is very important too. Selling dessert is best after the entrée order is taken, but before the guest has gotten anything to eat. The timing works best here because the guest is still hungry when they order the dessert. It also helps to have a dessert that requires some preparation, or at least seems to require some preparation. It also helps if there is some scarcity issue, that not everyone can have the dessert, or there is only a few pieces left.

Some of the hottest desserts at the moment are pies, anything with chocolate and Barbie dessert (small desserts that have a lot of intricate details).

If you want to put them on the main menu, place them near the appetizer section of they will fit there.

Mark

Hi Karli:

If you have more questions, give me a call on my cell phone.

Here are my thoughts.

First, this is a much better menu already than your old menu. It has more color and visual interest. Your design is very talented. The first design was better than the second, but either will work.

MVP: Let the background color behind the descriptions go white. The text will be easier to read and will stand out more. I like the banners or violators, but you don’t have to use them. Remember though, the menu is a mini vacation for your guests and should celebrate your food.

Everything else on the page is good.

Entrees: This is a nice page. To help enhance this page, choose a salad that you like to sell more than others and make a highlight there. This can work by putting a box around it and letting the background go to the paper color and then making the text in red and black.

Sandwich page: Highlight the “Henry’s Champion”. It’s a nice mental anchor point and will help keep the check averages up.

I think it is a mistake to move away form the “new” violators unless you don’t want to call attention to those items.

The Henry Hudson illustration was cool, did that not make the cut?

You still need a larger mental anchor point:

There is more to the Half Moon than most people know. The original Dutch ship of exploration sailed by Henry Hudson for the Dutch East India Company in 1609 was recreated and now sails as a traveling museum. Building a replica today might cost as much as $4,000,000.00, and that’s if you used volunteer labor.

Something like that would help...

Let me know if you need anything else!

Kindest regards,

Mark

 

Menu Coaching can be found here!

Restaurant Marketing: Relevance Is Critical

Altering the experience: Taco Bell wants to be more than 'food as fuel'

That was the headline for a recent article in the Courier-Journal. Taco Bell will try to go upscale. In the article though, they mention they are partnering with Doritos, which isn't upscale at all. So there is a disconnect already.

They site a person who used to eat there twice per week, but now the customer goes to Qdoba because the food is better. And that may be true, but the real issue is they aren't relevant to this customer, a 58 year old woman by the way, and maybe they shouldn't be trying to attract her anyway.

The Taco Bell brand is really about the young, and it's really about being hip, which is illusive, and lately lost on this brand.

Instead of abandoning their brand, perhaps it would make more sense to leverage it. By making the brand relevant again, they may actually get their customers back in. And while that may not include 58 year old women, they may be better off.

I'd love to have a brand like Taco Bell and go up against Qdoba. Taco Bell is an icon. Qdoba isn't even a word, it's a made up word that means nothing. Changing your brand because something new comes along is like McDonald's changing their menu to face off against Five Guy's. Making some new products is a nice idea. Shifting the brand is business suicide.

Here's What People Look at on Facebook Brand Pages

Here's What People Look at on Facebook Brand Pages.

This sums it up for your business in the restaurant industry:

• Content matters. Facebook brand page visitors almost always saw the wall first, and spent more time looking at it than any other element on the page.
• The exception: Scantily-clad women. Victoria Secret’s page was the only one in which people looked at the profile photo — a busty woman in a brassiere — before they noticed the Facebook wall. When they did move on to the wall, they spent about 25% less time looking at it than they did other brands’ walls.

Here's How People Look at Your Facebook Profile -- Literally

Here's How People Look at Your Facebook Profile -- Literally.

And when they say literally, that is exactly what they mean. Take a look at how a person looks at a Facebook page - it's really very interesting.

Six Social Media Trends for 2012 - David Armano - Harvard Business Review

This is a good read - since this will have an impact on our marketing lives moving forward, and also because the article isn't as much about what will happen, as it is about what we may want to aspire too.

I'll write more about what we might do in marketing to take advantage of the apparent trends here.

Six Social Media Trends for 2012 - David Armano - Harvard Business Review.

Restaurant Marketing: If It's Not About Price, What Is It About?

"Low Prices Fail to Boost Olive Garden" was the headline in a news article about the lack luster performance at Olive Garden. But it's not about low prices. And it's not about food quality so much either. They tried that over the past couple of years, selling the food, with wet, pornographic food images, and still they can't move the needle. So what is happening to their business? If it's not about price or food, then what is it about?

I think there are three things Olive Garden or any full service restaurant can do to boost their sales over the next year with better restaurant marketing.

I think there are three things Olive Garden or any full service restaurant can do to boost their sales over the next year with better restaurant marketing. And I say over the next year because there is really no quick fix for Olive Garden or any other struggling full service restaurant.

1. Slim down the menu - and by that I don't mean offer products with low calories. Instead, get back to the core. Do a matrix and find out what people are willing to pay more for more often and promote that. FInd the few things that drive the business and make them heroes - everything else is an anti-veto.

2. Work on the service levels. People don't like full service restaurants at mid-scale because they don't like subsidizing the service which they think isn't that good to begin with. There are a couple of things Olive Garden and any other full service concept can do to get back on track.

a. Get better uniforms - classy, sexy and fun. Make a statement and get the servers in a better mood. No kidding, the servers need to look better and have an actual relationship with their guests. The uniform will help do that. Get the servers out of their comfort zone and push them to do more.

b. Create a joke of the day - this is the hard part. There are a lot of unemployed comedy writers out there for hire. Get the jokes and fun rolling, and the people will come back. This needs to be integrated into their server program, though and that's what makes it tough. We're not trying to create stand up comedian's, but rather fun ice breakers that will help open a conversation and deeper relationship with the guests. And the fun has to be relevant. It requires great writing and poetry. This is not for your agency. It's for freelance writers and a consultant with food experience.

c. Try new compensation models - take some of the pressure off tipping. Maybe go to a commission based program that pays for specific items being sold over a time period. Take the higher gross profit items and add a buck to each that the server gets. Make it possible for the server to make a good living by selling food rather than working for tips.

3. Create Buzz - And this is actually the easy part. All it requires is giving the managers of the stores the ability to buy a drink, a meal, an appetizer or something else for their guests from time to time. It will make them feel more local, and in the process, get people talking about them. When I go to a local restaurant that is doing really well, I feel a part of the community, and I get a free drink now and again.

When you run out of wet food pornography and low price offers, what remains is the actual problem that needs to be solved. And in the case of full service restaurants, it requires creating ambassadors for the restaurant. Super fans who will talk you up and get people in. To do that requires fresh thinking.

 

 

Restaurant Marketing: Mobile Apps & Your Super Fans

Every business has them. Some more than others. These are the customers who click with you to the point that they become ambassadors for your brand and business. And all they want is to be near you and recognized for being your best fan, your super fans.

Couple that with recent research from Yahoo and Razorfish that points out that more than 80% of mobile phone users reported engaging in some mobile activity while watching TV and you get the picture of how important the smart phone is to these people - and how important it is for you to cultivate that relationship.

"...more than 80% of mobile phone users reported engaging in some mobile activity while watching TV."

Do your super fans a favor and build your app around their needs, wants and desires. Make it wasy for them to spread the word about you. And thank them often, because they are the very people who keep you alive. They are the reason you're in business. Without them, you're screwed. And they are the very people your competitors are wooing. Get your app before your competitors have one and with it your super fans.

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