Info

Secret Sauce - The Restaurant Marketing Podcast

We discover the ingredients of your Restaurant's secret sauce. SEO, Facebook, Twitter, emails, coupons, yield utilization, USPs, Menu engineering, direct mail, partnerships - there are many ingredients for creating your Secret Sauce and with the right Secret Sauce you can find more customers and turn them into repeat customers. We deconstruct the recipes, so you can increase increase turnover, increase profit and maybe decrease the amount of time you spend working in your Restaurant.
RSS Feed Subscribe in Apple Podcasts
Secret Sauce - The Restaurant Marketing Podcast
2023
July
March
February
January


2022
October
May
January


2021
December
June
May
April
March
February
January


2020
December
November
October
September
June
May
March
February


2019
December
November
October
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
February
January


2018
December
November
October
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
February


2017
December
November
October
September
August
July
June
May
April
March
February
January


2016
November
October
August
July
June
April
March
February
January


2015
December
October
September
August
July


Categories

All Episodes
Archives
Categories
Now displaying: Page 6
May 8, 2017

Described as the Iron Lady of Hong Kong Private Dining, we talk to Grace Choy.

We talk about the our Comparison Research between Dimmi, Quandoo, OpenTable, Tock, Obee and the Free Online Restaurant Booking System.  We think that email sharing 

Grace is very humble, but her passion for cooking shows through in the videos that she produces and that has enabled to build up the largest Facebook following of any Chinese Restaurant on Facebook.

Grace has an amazing social media following:

She has 41,871 followers on Linkedin and 431,703 followers on Facebook.

 

The important lessons from Grace are: 

1.  The power of Facebook Videos; and

2.  The power of using Facebook Video to show your passion.

Grace is very passionate about her cooking and that shows through in the way that she comes across on the videos.  It is so important to be yourself and do things that you are passionate about, and Grace does that very well.

Grace manages her own Facebook, and responds to everyone on the Facebook page.  

Her 20 seat Restaurant is booked out 2 weeks in advance.  She focueses on fresh food and treating people as family.  She also has pre bookings to cut down on no shows.

Grace was the first Twitter Verified Chef's in Greater China, even though she has only tweeted 68 times!  and now has 21,500 followers on Twitter.

Her Facebook following has been the basis for a large amount of free PR that Grace has received, including a short Youtube Video that tells her story.

Apr 27, 2017

Chef Ana Ros along with here husband owns Hisa Franko, a fine dining Restaurant in Slovenia.

Ana's story is truly inspiring, she never received a a classical training, but has developed her own style and techniques and her determination has seen her been recognised amongst the World's best Chefs.

Not originally planning a career as a Chef, she meet her husband whose parents owned Hisa Franko.  He was a trained Sommelier and when his parents handed the reins of the Restaurant to him, Ana stepped into the kitchen.

Her determination to succeed saw her learn the techniques of a chef, learn how to manage a team and how to run the Restaurant.  We talk about the earlier years and how she was able to build her repertoire of techniques in the kitchen, the process she went through build her skills.

We also look at the process she takes to create a new dish, and the way that she is not only integrating local produce into the menu, but working to build the supply chain to enable local commerce and to showcase the amazing ingredients that she is able to source from around Hisa Franko.

This year she was Voted the World's Best Female Chef.  

Apr 7, 2017

 

We met our friends from the Dimmi and discussed some of the issues with the aggregator model as opposed to those who want to tell the story of their own Restaurant.  

Many Restaurants are taking control of their marketing and their story and using the Free Online Restaurant Booking System and the Free Restaurant OnLine Ordering system.

We talk about our plans to help a Restaurant that is kicking in $10,000 a month to keep their Restaurant going and how we are going to help them.

Congratulations to 11 Madison Park, the World's Best Restaurant for 2017.

We discuss why you may not want to be in the World's 50 Best, but you may want to be the best parent to your kids, and how your Restaurant needs to support that.

  1. Hard work - it is important to be doing the right work.  Too many people work too hard at the wrong type of work.
  2. Team work - building a great team and getting them working to help you is really important.
  3. Purpose - your purpose, that is what gives you passion, you need to maintain your passion for a long time, that purpose does it.  
  4. Leadership - Getting the team to work towards your purpose.
  5. Technical excellence - FOH, BOH - you need to be working towards excellence in all of the parts of your Restaurant.
  6. Always learning - Ana Ros is self taught.  She didn't plan to be a chef and has taught herself the skills to be the best Female chef.  That is an amazing story and should be inspiring to all restaurant owners.
  7. Persistence - Massimo Bottura's Osteria Francescana took a long time before it became popular.  You need to persist, knowing that you are on the right path.
  8. Innovation - We look at the role of innovation and the importance of failing and the easiest way that you can experiment with innovation and creativity.

Have a listen to Chef's Table on Netflix, a great series telling amazing stories of these amazing Chefs.

Apr 4, 2017

Super excited that we are going to the 2017 NRA Show in Chicago.  It is one of the best educational opportunities for Restaurant owners and chefs to learn and get inspiration on how to better run their restaurant and/or kitchen.

In this Secret Sauce we talk about attracting tourist customers.  A lot of towns get a lot of tourists, but they tend to go to a very small number of Restaurants.  Are you getting your fair share of the Tourists in your area?  If not, we will discuss lots of ideas to help you find more tourist customer and turn them into repeat customers.

Websites are even more important in Tourist areas.  Make sure that it is:

  • Optimised for Google Search;
  • Optimised for mobile (most of your customers will be on mobiles);
  • Links with Google Maps - your Google My Business account, (think about how people can get to your Restaurant); and
  • Have a signature dish on the front page.

If you need help with your Restaurant Website, talk to the M4R team, we have packages starting from $995 to help you start getting more customers.

Facebook ads can run very differently in tourist towns, making it a lot easier to use Facebook, make sure you listen to our Facebook ads in tourist towns run down.

Have you worked with the local Concierges, Hotels, Tour Operators, and airport tourism guides?

We have a discussion about the issues with Tripadvisor and Yelp and some of your options for dealing with them.  Do you actively manage them, ignore them, build your own channel for customers?

 

We talk about Trip Guides and some ideas about how to be listed in those Top 10 things to do in YOUR TOWN.

We look at Lonely Planet and the effect that it had for Ferg Burger.  

What is your signature dish, does it fit in with your tourist message and how are you marketing it?

Skyline Restaurant

What can you sell? T-Shirts, sauces?  Part of something to take home for the tourists?

Seasonality is always an issue, so we talk about building a database and focusing on locals for the quiet times. You will have your regulars, even if it is only every two years.  

Leave a review, hit us up on Facebook, and Linkedin.

Let us know if you are going to the NRA show!!

Mar 25, 2017

Many of the problems in Restaurants that we see come down to issues with Leadership.  Restaurant Leadership is something that isn't taught, most people pick it up on the job, so we will go through some tools to help with your Restaurant Leadership.

What is the definition of Leadership and in particular Restaurant Leadership.

Restaurant Autoposy.  One of the Restaurants using our Free Online Restaurant Booking System has closed.  We go through the issues that they had.  The biggest issue was that even though they weren't busy and wanted to be better, and it was quiet on Saturday nights, they did no marketing.  Even worse, the website was very poor, no great photos, no SEO (getting found in Google).  There web traffic dropped from 750 a month down to  600 over the last 18 months.  These is less than half of what their competitors were getting.  It probably equated to $10,000 a month in revenue that they were missing out on. I wonder what was going on in the minds of the people in the team there, doing nothing to find more customers.  The only marketing they did was Groupon at the end.

We talk about what Leadership is and look at Dwight D Eisenhower's definition of Leadership, which is "Getting people to do what you want them to do, because they want to do it"

How does Restaurant Leadership work in a Restaurant?  There is the typical angry chef, but I think it is a lot more common to have no Leadership in the Restaurant.

We look at the mindset that people need to be able to be an effective Leader in your Restaurant.

Make sure that your Personal Plan aligns with your Business Plan which aligns with your Marketing Plan.  Too many people forget why they opened their Restaurant and they lose their passion for their Restaurant.  It is so much harder to motivate people if you aren't motivated and passionate about what you are doing.

We look at BHAGs (big Hairy Audacious Goals), and we talk about Missions, Values and Goals and how these are tools to help you be a better leader, but also the big component of the business that you are responsible.

We talk about Adam Sobel's Vision from Cinnamon Snail and Nick Sarillo's Nick's Pizza and Pub.  Check out Nick's book, "A Slice of the Pie."  

Nick’s Pizza & Pub Values

  • We treat everyone with dignity and respect.
  • We are dedicated to the learning, teaching, and ongoing development of each other.
  • We have fun while we work!
  • We provide a clean and safe environment for our guests and team members.
  • We honor individual passions, and creativity at work and at home.
  • We communicate openly, clearly and honestly.
  • We honor the relationships that connect our team, our guests and community.
  • We take pride in our commitment to provide quality service and a quality product.
  • We celebrate and reward accomplishments and “A+” players.
  • We support balance between home and work.
  • Health: We are a profitable and fiscally responsible company. We support the physical and emotional well-being of our guests and team members.
  • Our team works through support and cooperation.

We look at the E-Myth and how it can help you delegate.

How can you be a better communicator in your business.

We also look at Danny Meyers "Setting the Table" as well, another great book on the topic of leadership.

  • Have a personal plan
  • Be passionate
  • Define your values
  • Hire for values and train for skills
  • Procedures
  • Delegate
  • Communicate, Communicate and Communicate
  • Find a mentor.

The journey of leadership is never ending, but remember - The better you get, the better you get.  

Mar 7, 2017

The talk to Ivan Brewer from Restaurantology.  

We talk about a Restaurant using a Qandoo website and the issues that poor SEO and not having a marketing strategy is really hurting 1 Restaurant and Sydney and another that is taking over $100,000 a year in online orders and how they are saving $13,000 a year by not paying commission on their online orders.  We talk about how much you should be paying for online Facebook campaign budgets for your Restaurant.

It is a sad fact that 50% of restaurants fail within 4 years and only make 2% in profit.

The biggest Restaurant profitability mistakes that people make when running a restaurant?

  1.  People fall in love with their food and their restaurant without understanding the profit and loss, or even having a plan of how to be profitable.
  2. Not understanding key fixed costs.  11.6% of net costs are rent.
  3. Venues are often too big.  Large venues have 60% of revenue in 2 days of the week.

 

High Rent as a % of revenue may not correlate to high foot traffic.  If it was high, there should be more sales.

How does Labour costs relate to rent and cost of goods sold.  How many staff do I really need?

We discuss restaurant productivity and ways to increase it.

Discretionary effort.  The more we engage our staff the higher the productivity of the staff.   Listen to your staff and their ideas.

Creating a vision and a story that your team can sell, eg

The KPIs for a restaurant business viability test - % fixed costs / % variable costs.

Fixed costs like  - Accounting, Rent,    Variable can be things like linen and gas.

COGS should be pretty consistent with a weekly stocktake and weekly P+L.

What is the labour %?

Understand the key distribution of costs and be able to adjust in real time.  How can you influence the time spent in the kitchen with pricing.  How do you avoid bottlenecks in the kitchen during peak hours.

You should have a costed roster.  The dollar spend on a daily basis.

How can the distribution of the restaurant across the week.  Should we discount in the quiet times or charge a premium for the busy times.

How does the pricing of the bar work and what opportunities are there to increase revenue and profit from bar revenue.  Why should you discount on the bar, rather than in the kitchen?

What is restaurant sales velocity and how do you influence it?

Try rostering by 15 minute increments. 

We discuss a lot of advanced way to think about the profit and loss and how you can influence how much of the revenue flows to the bottom line.

If you haven't signed up yet, check out the 5 Minute a day Restaurant Marketing MBA. It's totally free.

Mar 7, 2017

The talk to Ivan Brewer from Restaurantology.  

We talk about a Restaurant using a Qandoo website and the issues that poor SEO and not having a marketing strategy is really hurting 1 Restaurant and Sydney and another that is taking over $100,000 a year in online orders and how they are saving $13,000 a year by not paying commission on their online orders.  We talk about how much you should be paying for online Facebook campaign budgets for your Restaurant.

It is a sad fact that 50% of restaurants fail within 4 years and only make 2% in profit.

The biggest Restaurant profitability mistakes that people make when running a restaurant?

  1.  People fall in love with their food and their restaurant without understanding the profit and loss, or even having a plan of how to be profitable.
  2. Not understanding key fixed costs.  11.6% of net costs are rent.
  3. Venues are often too big.  Large venues have 60% of revenue in 2 days of the week.

 

High Rent as a % of revenue may not correlate to high foot traffic.  If it was high, there should be more sales.

How does Labour costs relate to rent and cost of goods sold.  How many staff do I really need?

We discuss restaurant productivity and ways to increase it.

Discretionary effort.  The more we engage our staff the higher the productivity of the staff.   Listen to your staff and their ideas.

Creating a vision and a story that your team can sell, eg

The KPIs for a restaurant business viability test - % fixed costs / % variable costs.

Fixed costs like  - Accounting, Rent,    Variable can be things like linen and gas.

COGS should be pretty consistent with a weekly stocktake and weekly P+L.

What is the labour %?

Understand the key distribution of costs and be able to adjust in real time.  How can you influence the time spent in the kitchen with pricing.  How do you avoid bottlenecks in the kitchen during peak hours.

You should have a costed roster.  The dollar spend on a daily basis.

How can the distribution of the restaurant across the week.  Should we discount in the quiet times or charge a premium for the busy times.

How does the pricing of the bar work and what opportunities are there to increase revenue and profit from bar revenue.  Why should you discount on the bar, rather than in the kitchen?

What is restaurant sales velocity and how do you influence it?

Try rostering by 15 minute increments. 

We discuss a lot of advanced way to think about the profit and loss and how you can influence how much of the revenue flows to the bottom line.

If you haven't signed up yet, check out the 5 Minute a day Restaurant Marketing MBA. It's totally free.

Mar 1, 2017

Make sure you check out the Restaurant Innovation podcast.  This is our most popular podcast this so far this year and it goes into the processes that can help you be more productive in your Restaurant.

In this podcast, we talk to Robbie Doyle from Buy Grow Sell a Business.

Robbie has been a chef for 25 years and a Real Estate agent specialising in hospitality for 10 years.

He tells some sad stories of Restaurant purchases gone bad and people who have lost their homes in when their Restaurant business has gone broke.

What are the right and wrong motivations for buying a restaurant?

What are the big 5 mistakes that people make when buying a Restaurant?

Where are the best buying opportunities to buy a Restaurant?

What discuss Robbie's thoughts on fitout costs?

What role do systems play in Restaurant success?  Should you buy a systematised restaurant or not?

How do the successful people flip Restaurants?  What is the process they go through?

What are the general rules of thumb for metrics on sale price?

What bargains are out there and should you be looking for the bargain, or are the bargains bargains for good reason?

Feb 7, 2017

We now have customers in Singapore and the Czech Republic!  Hooray.

The times, they are a changing.  Customers are changing, tastes are changing, dining experiences are changing, competition is changing and the players in the industry are changing.

I was surprised to see the number of people who are still advertising in the Yellow Pages.  The budgets that people are spending is amazing, when you think of the returns that you would get if you were spending that money online.  We discuss the 7 best uses for the Yellow Pages in 2017.

The online startup space has innovation built in, but the imperative to innovative is a lot more insidious.  The lack of pressure to innovate means that Restaurants often slowly decline in their Restaurant as customers needs change.

The rise of Delivery services, pre prepared food, Booking aggregators are all changing the restaurant business. 

What kind of person is better at innovation and how can you use that to help your team innovate.

What kind of activities can help you with innovation.  How can you change your habits and routines to increase your opportunities to innovate.

We look at how different actions, people and activities.  I've started playing the drums and going to art galleries to change the way I think and the ideas that I am having.  Without that external stimulas, it is very difficult for your to come up with different ideas.

How did Massimo Bottera develop the ability to fuse art and his culinary techniques to create the dishes that lead to Osteria Francescana.

We discuss business model innovation and menu innovation.

The Business Model.  

We discuss how taking ideas from different industries can make a big difference in your industry.  Plus or minus 10% everyone else in your industry is doing the same as you.  In other industries, there may be much better results.

The Business Model Canvas covers:

  • Key Partners
  • Key Activities
  • Value Proposition
  • Key Resources
  • Cost Structure
  • Revenue Streams
  • Channels
  • Customer Segments
  • Customer Relationships

Menu Innovation

You take take existing products and techniques and fuse them together or your can take an object or concept and recreate it in food.  We look at the Flavour Thesaurus by Niki Segnit.

We look at the work of Grant Achatz and his Apple Taffy and how it brings back childhood memories which are a fundamental part of the attraction of the menu item.

How can you recreate a menu with different items, maybe cheaper items.

We discuss failure and why it is important to embrace failure as a part of the innovation process.

Wolfgang Puck has said that he has opened a lot of successful Restaurants, but he has learnt the most about the restaurants that failed.

 

Jan 30, 2017

Facebook Marketing - We look at the Facebook Marketing Report Card for Australia, and very few Restaurants are doing any Facebook marketing.  This is a huge opportunity for most restaurants.

Annual event marketing - We discuss a Restaurant that made a Meat Pie Burger for Australia Day. Sounds pretty ordinary, but it is an Aussie thing.  A great idea that got them mentioned in news.com.au. 

We look at how you to run a Facebook Live Video for your Restaurant.

Check out the Facebook Live Map, to get some ideas of the kind of streaming that people are doing.

Equipment -

Here are the makers of the phone holder that I use - Arkon.

Bright lights - we bought some cheapies of eBay.

Your phone - Android or iPhone.  It doesn't really matter, both do an excellent job.

A couple of tips - Rehearse, plan, and start with something exciting because the video will appear silent.  People need to engage with the video to be able to hear the video.

Pick somewhere quiet, make sure you have a good phone signal.

Be authentic - this is a great way to build your personal brand.

Types of content you can use in your Facebook Live Videos:

  • Food going over the pass
  • Food prep - tell the story of how you create your dishes
  • Sourcing the food - video from your garden, the market
  • Use it to do market research - what items do people want to see on your menu?
  • Go through a recipe

Aangan at Footscray prepare their own spices, that is a perfect type of video for Facebook Live.

We then discuss some ideas on how to best run an ad to your Facebook Live Video.

Tag us in on your Facebook Live videos. 

Connect with us on Linkedin to keep up to date with the latest Restaurant Marketing ideas.  

Jan 23, 2017

In this episode we discuss our Restaurant Facebook Marketing Report.  Less than 1% of Restaurants that we surveyed ran ads in the time.  A shocking statistic when you think that it is one of the easiest ways to increase revenue for your Restaurant!

We know that Restaurants aren't super interested in Facebook marketing.  The previous advanced Facebook marketing episodes haven't been downloaded as much as some of the others (Reasons Restaurants Fail was downloaded a lot more - maybe something to that :( ) But it is really important if you want to be successful to understand Facebook.  Even if you don't do it, your competitors will be and you need to know what is possible.

This episodes looks at using your email database to create a customer audience in Facebook to target your Restaurant customers.

We also look at budgetting.  How much should you spend per day on a Facebook campaign.  We look at the cost per 1000 impressions and also the cost per link click or engagement and give you some rough guidelines.  

We also go into what the cost of your campaign tells you about your audience reaction.

If you want more information on Facebook marketing - check out the legends at Perpetual Traffic.  Keith, Molly and Ralph delve deep, really deep into Facebook marketing.  This isn't for the faint hearted, but it is a great podcast if you want to crush Facebook marketing for your Restaurant.

 

Jan 16, 2017

 

We talk about Delivery Hero exiting Australia, and look at the implications for Restaurants who are doing 

We talked about the amazing technical expertise and innovation at Lume Restaurant.  Rated by Gault and Millau as the number 1 Restaurant in Australia, and amazing experience with some great technology, including the Tock booking system which has allowed them to cut no shows to virtually zero.

This episode covers process for creating an annual marketing plan.

1.  Review you monthly, weekly, daily and hourly revenue.  What are the quiet times and when are the busy times.  This helps you understand what work needs to be done to increase the profitability over the year.

2.  What holidays are there in your country?

3.  We go over the List of International Observances.  Got a quite period with no public holidays?  Look at this list and there are bound be to a few days around them that you can run a campaign around.  We look at some of the days that you can run marketing campaigns around.

4.  Look at your seasonal menu that you want to run.

5.  Start looking at partnerships that you can run to avoid the troughs in revenue.

6.  Look at targeting customers for each hour that your Restaurant is open.  Look at variable pricing throughout the day and week to maximise yield.

Have a  think about how you are growing your email marketing database and the events that you can use to market to that list.

We look at how your planning can help with your goal setting.

 

Jan 3, 2017

Technology and competition is dramatically changing the way that Restaurants operate.  We look at how these 2 mega trends are creating the 7 big trends for 2017 for Restaurant owners and chefs.

We have identified 7 major trends that will change the Restaurant industry in 2017.

1.  Restaurant Home Delivery - there has been consolidation with the online ordering companies like Just Eat and Delivery Hero, and new entrants like UrberEats providing delivery for Restaurants who would have never thought of doing delivery 12 months ago.  On top of this - we have Drones and Self Driving Cars - this technology is going to provide a lot of opportunities for Restaurant Owners.

2.  Marketing - It is becoming really hard now to not have a strong marketing strategy for your Restaurant, along with great execution.  You don't want to have the best restaurant that no one has ever heard of - because it is increasingly likely that you will go out of business if you do.

3.  Bigger Data for Small Restaurants - using Facebook and Comparative Analytics are a powerful way to use big data for small Restaurants.

4.  Automation - the rise of the Restaurant Robots.  Rising wages and increasing costs are meaning that more Restaurant owners will turn to automation to cut costs.

5.  Consolidation - For a small restaurant, going to 1 Restaurant to 2 is the hardest move, but it starts you on the path to get those economies of scale.

6.  Specialization - It is becoming increasingly difficult to run a generic cuisine based restaurant.  Many Indian or Chinese restaurants are struggling unless they are starting to specialize and give customers a reason to be loyal to them.  We look at some of the areas that Restaurants are going to be moving into.

7. Divergence - Restaurants that have their strategy in the middle of the profit mix will struggle - they will either be pushed to build a Restaurant built around low price, or specializing to  create value in niches.  Being a good restaurant with nothing specific will force you to start competing on price and that will make it harder for you to retain your quality.

If you want to read about the changes, check out our in depth report on the Restaurant Trends for 2017.

For your Restaurant to prosper in 2017, you need to be educated.  Check out our best Restaurant podcasts of 2016.  There are 19 must listen to podcasts from the thought leaders of the Restaurant Industry.

Look at the free tools to market your Restaurant and start to differentiate your Restaurant from your competitors.

 

Nov 18, 2016

We look at Living Social being bought by Groupon.  This is a good thing because there is now 1 less daily deals company.  For a lot of Restaurants, daily deals are a very dangerous process, and often a symptom 

We talk about an $8.38 marketing campaign that filled a cafe in Western Australia with customers buying their highest margin item.  We go through the process so you can run the exact same campaign!

We talk about the formula for making a Restaurant Profitable.  This is a very simple formula and used in lots of different types of business, but we will go through what it looks like for your Restaurant.

Leads x Conversion Rate = Customers

Customers x Average number of Transaction x Average Sale Amount = Revenue.

Revenue x Profit Margin = Profit

We discuss all of the ways that you can effect each of these numbers.

This is a great discussion about how some of our customers are making a really big difference in the profitability of their Restaurant.

Oct 29, 2016

We talk about using Prisma, a new and exciting app available on Android and Chrome to help you create very sharable content for solution media.

Building a free CRM System

What is a CRM system,  what is CRM - a process for building information about your customers and leads, and your relationships with the customer

The goals of your CRM system should be:.

  1. Improve marketing effectiveness -  decrease the cost to acquire a customer and increase long term customer value.  eg fish and chip shop.
  2. Increased personalized service or one to one service: Identify people for face to face interactions.
  3. Responsive to customer’s needs: Customers’ situations and needs can be understood by the firms focusing on customer needs and requirements.[
  4. Customer segmentation:   
  5. Improve customization of marketing: 
  6. Multichannel integration: Integrating across multiple marketing channels.
  7. Time saving: Point and shoot marketing.
  8. Improve customer knowledge: Feedback about the food, experience and value.

Your new CRM System needs to be very cost effective, very time effective and very simple to use.  We look at the parts that make up a CRM system and then, how we build a free Restaurant CRM system

Gather information about your customers.  Purchases, bookings, , frequency, recency,birthdays, preferences

Free Restaurant Online Ordering System, and the Free Online Restaurant Booking System.

Big data for your Restaurant.  Every Monday we benchmark every one of our customers against other Restaurants.  so you know if you are doing great and you have some ideas about how to improve if not.

Creating a unified view of customer information across bookings and orders.

Should be electronic.  Called yesterday, had to call back.  She didn't ask for my name.  Only 3 tables in the Restaurant.  75% is take away.  Online ordering service that is charging 12%.  75% of revenue taxed at 12% and not getting 

If you are taking bookings or orders and not collecting emails, you are wasting a huge opportunity.

Mailchimp free for 2,00 contacts .  Many of our customers are using that.

Facebook ads, upload mobile numbers or email addresses.

 

Oct 14, 2016

Adam Sobel is the Chef behind the amazing food and business at Cinnamon Snail.

Cinnamon Snail has food trucks and restaurants in New York and New Jersey.  Adam is passionate about changing the world to vegan organic and he works to do that by creating vegan organic dishes that people want to eat because they are creative, playful and great tasting.  This allows him to dramatically increase his target market - but also help educate people that vegan organic food doesn't have to be boring.  We talk to Adam about how he can to find his passion and how it is a central part of Cinnamon Snail today.

Adam has done a great job of his menu engineering.  He has created some great looking dishes that attract long lines for his food trucks.  The menu is a critical part of why Adam does what he does, and it shows through in his mission and vision and the culture that he has created with the people he works with at Cinnamon Snail.

Check out his website for a better idea of the great food that he is creating.

Adam has a great story too about some serendipity that helped him get his first cook book published.  Once again, it comes down to having great tasting food.

Adam has some amazing videos for Cinnamon Snail. Check out:

Vendy Awards video

Vegan Food Truck in NJ

 

Oct 2, 2016

We look at the power of Big Data for Small Restaurants and some of the tools that you can use to understand how your online marketing is working in your business.  As an example, we look at some data from Sensis about how many people go to their average business website.  Without some big data, the information that you get about your website visits is not very useful, but with some comparative analytics and big data, you can really understand how your website is performing and more importantly, how your online marketing is contributing to your revenue and your profits.

We have a quick look at generating repeat customers and word of mouth and why it can be so important for your marketing.

Facebook Retargeting

We look at what retargeting or remarketing is and why it is so important for you.

These are really simple campaigns to run and can be the most effective campaigns that you can run.  Many of the remarketing campaigns that we run for Restaurants are running at $5 per day.

We talk about how to set it up on your website and the process to be able to integrate Facebook retargeting on your website.

We talk about Corporate Hospitality and how remarketing can increase your Corporate customers (these ones spend the most money and often run events on Tuesday and Wednesday nights - maybe your quietest nights.  

We talk about Canva as well, a really powerful free tool for creating great images for your Facebook marketing campaigns.  

 

 

Aug 29, 2016

We talk about our new Marketing Metrics dashboard, providing detailed information about customers, orders, bookings and Facebook.

We look at the Facebook ad grid, with Avatars and Benefits.  Who are the customers that you are looking for in your area.  If you think it is people who like your cuisine in your local area, you need to be a lot more granular to create marketing campaigns that really resonate with your customers.  This is breaking down your customer base into the specific niches.

We talk about Duncan Robertson from Duncan's Thai Kitchen.  

We go into the Avatars that we created for Rooster Burgers, our test Restaurant and discuss some of the benefits that we would provide those customers.  

We talk about some of the ideas to come up with innovative marketing campaigns that can dramatically increase the number of customers that they bring in, along with the segmentation options that are available in Facebook.  Plenty of interesting options that can really help you target new customers very effectively.

We look at how to take great photos for your Restaurant, quickly and easily that will help your create killer marketing campaigns and also be great content for your website.

 

 

Aug 23, 2016

We look at the steps that you need to take to create a quick and dirty Facebook marketing campaign to get an injection of cash for when money is tight.

First, we look at the new Loyalty discounts feature in our Free Restaurant OnLine Ordering system.

We look at the first Michelin Starred street food hawker.  His commitment to excellence is a really inspiring storing.  Have a quick look at the video.

What is the photo that you are going to use?  We talk about the cheapest way to get a decent photo of the food you need for emergency Facebook marketing.

What is the offer you should use and who will you targeting with it?  We look at some interesting targeting options that can work well with different types of offers.

How much should you spend in your Facebook Marketing campaign.

What are the best times to run the ads?

We also look at how to measure how well it has worked.

 

Aug 5, 2016

 We look at the reasons why restaurants fail.  To many Restaurants close, but we aren't talking about that kind of failure.  We are talking about the Restaurant owner or chef who don't have a Restaurant that is meeting the requirements of their personal plan.  

  • They are working too many hours.
  • They aren't making enough money.
  • They don't spend enough time with their family.
  • They can't take time out from the Restaurant for a holiday.

That isn't good enough.  Running a small business is hard and stressful and running a Restaurant is one of the hardest and most stressful types of businesses.  Let's look at ways that can cause failure and ways that you can avoid failure and start being successful. 

1. Cashflow, leases, cashflow, understanding the P+L and the profitability hospitality metrics that you need to focus on.

2.  How to be objective about your Restaurant.  How can you use open and objective information about your restaurant to make it better.

3. Lack of innovation.  There are so many things that can be done in the Restaurant, POS systems, marketing, ingredients, Menu.  If you aren't continually innovating, you will appear dated when compared to Restaurants uses the latest techniques and technologies.

4.  Fitout.  What is the ROI of the fitout?

5.  Poor marketing.  

6.  No marketing.

7. Poor Culture.  Culture is a soft topic, it isn't reported in the P+L, so a lot of the time it doesn't get the attention that it deserves.  It impacts you, your team and your customers.

8.  Menu Engineering.  We look at some great Menu Engineering ideas and how it works in a real Restaurant, like www.noisyoyster.com.au, where the menu is costed, the wait staff know wait to recommend.

9.  Poor or no concept or Restaurant USP.

10. Burn out.  It is a really tough game.  It takes a toll.  What can you do to get the spark back and the passion that will shine through in bring the customers back in?

 

Jul 27, 2016

We talk about Pokemon Go and why it is a signpost to one of the fundamental changes that is occurring for small businesses and Restaurants in particular.  Some Restaurants are crushing this change and others are ignoring it at their peril.  

Chicken Vindaloo Dim sims.  Just saying.....

We look at some great tips to help you increase personal productivity and the way that you work so that you 

Look at the activities that you are spending time on, delegate, create procedures, hiring, multitasking the right way, automating systems, look after yourself with sleep and exercise, and last but not least - marketing :).

Check out Confluence for a way to store your policies and procedures.

Check out Eric Cacciatore's Restaurant Unstoppable podcast.

Xero - cloud based accounting system that can cut the time you spend on accounting.

Too many Restaurant owners work too many hours for too little reward -  starting to work on your business is the start of making the change to the type of Hospitality business that you want to run, so you should find some ideas to be able to get that 1 hour.  You will find that 1 hour on the business will return to you many hours of time saved down the track and you can use that extra time to continue to work on the business and then you are on the track to build the great profitable hospitality business.  :)

 

Have a busy day!

Jul 15, 2016

Profitable Hospitality is the goal of all Restaurant owners, but it can be very hard to achieve.  We look at 7 areas that Restaurant, Cafe and Take Out owners can impact profitability and we look at ways that you can improve profitability in each of the areas.

1.  Your business plan and the sample P+L.  What are the KPIs that you need to be looking at to achieve profitability.

2. Your Marketing Plan.

3.  Hiring and training.  How much money are you wasting on bad hiring practices and how many great employees leave your Restaurant because it isn't a great place to work.  We will cover one great tip we have used to find the great employees, which is very cheap to use!  We talk about how Nick Sarillo builds a great Restaurant culture.

4.  Wage costs.  How do you look at your wage costs? 

5.  Rent.  We cover an interesting way to look at your rent and 1 way that may help you save a little rent per month.

6.  Managing your food and bev costs.  What is the number 1 way to decrease your food costs without decreasing the quality of your food?  Why not use some of the food costing tools from Sysco?

7.  Menu Engineering.  What is the process for Menu Engineering and how should you do that?  What is the number one most profitable phrase in Restaurant Marketing and are you using it?

8.  What is the 8th item of our list of the Top 7 things to do to increase your Restaurant Profitability?  You'll have to listen to the podcast to find out :)

 

We look at Big Huey's Diner, their awesome menu and some of the great things that they are doing to increase profitability in their restaurant.  

Jul 8, 2016

We look at USPs  - Unique Selling Propositions.

Does your Restaurant need a Unique Selling Proposition, because not every restaurant really needs one.

What should a Unique Selling Proposition do for your Restaurant?

What is the process to create a Unique Selling Proposition?

Qualtiy price, product

We go through some sample USPs and how they work.

 

Mentioned in this podcast:

Norman Hotel - Brisbane's Worst Vegetarian Restaurant.

Coravin Wine System

Brooklyn Brewery

Bevspot

New Managing Director for Menulog - Commissions to increase?

Paramount Coffee Project

Jun 18, 2016

The 2016 NRA Show in Chiacgo was attended by over 45,000 people.  

 

We spent 3 packed days looking for the best products, ideas and inspiration to help you grow your business.  There was so much to see - but here are some of the edited highlights.

We visit 2 great Chicago restaurants -  Nick's Pizza and Pub and Au Cheval with Eric Cacciatore from Restaurant Unstoppable.

We finally get to experience the amazing In n Out Burger - the iconic Burger business.

What was the surprising thing about Bubba Gump?

We discuss some of the reason YOU should go to the NRA show and how it will help you grow your business.

There are a lot of suppliers who have a great story - that story can and should become part of your story.  It helps create the experience and where there is experience there's margin!

We discuss Kimbal Musk from The Kitchen and the way he creates a great story about his suppliers, Denny Post and the importance of a Signature meal- even if it isn't that popular, as well as a great discussion between Jon Taffer from Bar Rescue and Robert Irvine from Restaurant Impossible.

Are you doing coffee in your Restaurant?  Is it great coffee?  What impact would making your restaurant someone's regular coffee spot make to revenue?  We talked to the team from Vittoria coffee.  (It was easily the best coffee at the show!)

The Urban Cultivators look great and if you are creating a fresh and green brand, these are perfect for really highlighting what it is that you are doing for your customers (and how much of a difference would cheap, fresh herbs make?)

Why was it we visited the Aussie Pie Kitchen in LA?

We also look at Torta Bianca - a great ingredient for your cocktail list.

We finish of with esoteric wine varietals and how they can help you with your wine list and profits and lastly a warning about spending the wrong way with your social media marketing.

These are ujust some of the examples of what we picked up from the show.  If you have an idea for a restaurant in mind, or already have a concept, there are hundreds of ideas and products there that you can find to help to tell a better story, find productivity gains or increase margin with better and more interesting menu items.

I have focused too much on productivity, because I am not very good in the kitchen, but I think there was just as many interesting products for HOW you do in the kitchen as there was for WHAT you do in the kitchen.

Hope to see you at #NRA 2017 and hope you have a busy night tonight!

Jun 1, 2016

For many Restaurants, the website is the central part

We talk about how to compare the traffic for your website against other Restaurant's websites, so you know how well your online marketing is performing.

Find out how to make sure that the website is optimised for mobile.

How often you are updating the website?  You should be able to make changes on your website yourself, so you can do it frequently without being charged by your web developer every time you make a change.

A quick and easy way to grow your email marketing database and how that works with your website traffic.

How integrating with Facebook can help drive traffic and customers to your website.

Using www.canva.com to create great content.

What can Instagram do for your website traffic?

Making sure you capitalise on all of the great Public Relations mentions that you get.

 

Have a listen to the podcast and find more ways for how to increase traffic to your Restaurant Website. For most Restaurants, your website is the hub of your online marketing and the start to building a really powerful marketing database. Some Restaurants have databases that generate hundreds of thousands of dollars every month. This can be the start of it for you! Have a listen now, because if your website is working for you, someone else's website will be working for them and they will be getter all of the traffic, all of the leads and all of the customers!

**This WAS meant to go out before the NRA Show in Chicago. Oops sorry. We didn't get a chance to upload it. However, we are going to do a Show special ep covering what we saw, learnt and did along with an ep on a very exciting Restaurant visit that we did and the session with Jon Taffer and Robert Irvine from Bar Rescue and Restaurant Impossible. Stay tuned. We will get these ones out as soon as possible (I am still on the road in Taipei, looking at what tech is going to change Restaurants.) Back on deck next week.

1 « Previous 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Next » 7