We cover the implications of the Menulog data breach on your Restaurant.

We look at a great way for you to work on creating a Restaurant Marketing Strategy Plan.

If you are opening a Restaurant, you only get one shot at opening night.  If it isn't a success, then you are stuck behind the 8 ball trying to build momentum for your Restaurant.  It can be hard to get past people's impression of your Restaurant being the one that is always quiet because the locals don't go there.  Cash flow is a big thing too for new Restaurants, the sooner you start getting customers, the sooner you will have start getting some cashflow and return on your massive investment in time and money.

We look at the importance of your Marketing Budget, and how to get great logos cheaply.

We spend some time getting you to understand what it is that makes your Restaurant unique.  This is important as it can make or break your Restaurant.

We talk about how important it is to hire well before you open.

Getting the menu right is really important.  We look at some of the factors taht can make a huge difference in your Restaurants success.  The menu is really critical, so make sure you spend enough time before you opening on getting it right.

Facebook and Instagram can make a huge difference too both pre opening and on opening night, so follow our ideas on how to make the most out of these killer social media tools.

Think too about the importance of your domain name.  Getting this one right can make a huge difference in your Restaurants profitability.

Bruce Irving, the Founder of Smart Pizza Marketing is one of the foremost experts on Pizza marketing, working with many Pizza Restaurants to help them find more customers and turn them into repeat customers.

In this podcast we discuss how Restaurants are using Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and a range of other tools to build their businesses.

We also look at what is required to build your restaurant from 1 location to multiple locations and the mindset that Bruce sees in his successful Pizza Restaurant customers.

Bruce is a big believer in Snapchat, so have a listen and see how he is using it and how he sees Restaurants using it as well to build a loyal following on this rapidly developing social medium.  Some people are picking 2017 to be the year that Snapchat goes mainstream, which means that if you are looking for something to clearly set your Marketing apart from the crowd, now is the time you want to be building up your Snapchat skills and followers.

We talk email marketing and how important it is for Restaurants.  Bruce and I share a lot of common thoughts on the power of email marketing, being on medium that Restaurants can truly control.

We look at how Pizza Restaurants can and should compete against third party online ordering companies like Grub Hub and Menulog.

Lastly we talk about Masterminds - getting groups of Restaurant owners together to discuss the issues that everyone has in common to make it easier to run your Restaurant.

In this podcast we look at what the Key Performance Indicators are for your Restaurant Marketing.  What gets measured gets managed, so we want to make sure that your are measuring the right KPIs in for your marketing.

Remember - you don't want to have the best Restaurant that no one has ever heard of!

We will look at some metrics from a business and profitability point of view because they are the start of your marketing plan.

We look at how your target market impacts on the types of marketing that you need to do and also we talk about what a Restaurant customers long term customer value is, how you calculate it and how you work to increase it.

We'll take a look at metrics for Facebook marketing, email marketing and making sure that your website is working as hard as it can to find more customers and turn them into repeat customers.

In this episode we discuss some of the ways that successful Restaurants are increasing the number of customers that walk into your Restaurant.

If you have a restaurant with a lot of passing traffic, you won't want to miss this podcast.  What is the best way to construct a happy hour offer, what role does your menu play in increasing walk ins and what are some of the mistakes that Restaurants are making with their walk ins.

How can you minimise the risk that potential customers face when thinking about coming into your Restaurant?  What is the role of smells in attracting customers and how can you use that to increase customers?

Nothing attracts a queue like a queue, so what can you do to attract a queue.

We also discuss some great ways for getting feedback on why people aren't coming into your Restaurant.

We also look at location as a part of your business plan and how that can impact your marketing plan for walk ins.

We look at ways that Fish and Chip shop owners can find new customers and turn them into repeat customers.  

We look at the 2 times that a fish and chip shop customer is looking for a new fish and chip shop and ways that you can target them at those times.  How can you use Facebook to find more customers?  What is the easiest way to build an email database and how can you introduce efficiencies in your shop?

Many fish and chip shops are very busy on Saturday night, with long wait times for customers.  We look at ways to manage this and ensure you don't lose any customers.

We also discuss how 1 restaurant owner discovered a database with 1,500 emails that he didn't know that he had.

Finally we talk business plans and personal plans.  Do you have them?  Are you on track to achieve your goals.  Lots of ideas not just for Fish and Chip shop owners.

In Restaurant Autopsy we discuss the negative impact a hacked website can have and just how quickly it can start to drive customers away.

We talk about how to set up a Restaurant Facebook Page.  We give you a complete step by step guide on how to get one set up right the first time.

We have also created a Youtube video, which also goes through the steps so you can see exactly what needs to be done.

Don't forget to check the show notes at www.marketing4restaurants.com/secret-sauce/ for the notes on how to set up your Restaurant's Facebook Page.

We look at the forces that are impacting owners of single location restaurants and small chains.

The factors we discuss are the companies operating in the industry, the evolution of the internet and changing consumer tastes.

The trends that we are seeing as increasing in importance for 2016 are:

Story driven Restaurants

Niche targeting - some restaurants do a great job of targettinangiche  

Divergence between low cost / profit restaurants and high profit restaurants

No bookings

Smarter marketing

Menu engineering

The rise of the celebrity chef

Have a listen and see if you are being affected by these trends and how you can better respond to these trends and have a (more) profitable year in 2016 than in 2015.

Listen as we talk Restaurant Success with Eric Cacciatore from Restaurant Unstoppable.  Eric is uniquely placed, having interviewed 200 of the United States most successful chefs and restaurant operators.  We talk about the critical factors that every Restaurant owner should be thinking about if they want to create success in their Restaurant and in their life.

We talk system, marketing, culture and leadership i this wide ranging podcast which will definitely have something for every Restaurant owner out there to find at least 1 great idea distilled from the experience of hundreds of restaurant owners.

We talk to Tan Terry from Seagulls Greek Taverna, one of our Beta Testers for the Free Restaurant OnLine Ordering system.  He ran an online marketing campaign and spent $50 in one day.  The result - $1,800 in orders.  The night was booming and the kitchen nearly ran out of food.  Find out how he did it and also what he can do to improve those numbers.

Marketing your take out orders is going to become more important for every Restaurant as they face increasing competition from Grub Hub, Eat24, Just Eat, Menulog, Zomato, Food Panda and Delivery Hero.  All of these online ordering companies compete against Restaurant owners, including those they represent to get the order so that they can charge the Restaurant that big commission and more importantly, get that email address which is critical for database marketing.  Tan has done a great job at Seagulls.  Not only has he generated an extra $1,800, he has done it Commission free and he is building his own customer database at the same time.  Find out how in this episode.

The Fine Food Expo is Australia largest trade show for Restaurants and we visited yesterday to have a look for great ideas to help you with your Restaurant.  There are a lot of ways to save money, save time (especially important if it is your time you are saving) and ways to spice up your menu.  Your menu is one of your most important tools in sales and marketing.  We also look at one of the great tools you can use in costing your menu.  We've looked at this in the past, if you haven't costed your menu yet, this is the easiest way to do it.

We talk to Nick Sarillo, authour of A Slice of the Pie, and talk about Purpose and Culture.

We discuss what is Culture, how to come up with your purpose and values, how it can help you with hiring and retention.  We also discuss Open Book accounting - what is it, how does it work and how can it benefit your Restaurant.  

Nick runs one of the largest independant Pizza Restaurants in the United States and has focused on the Culture at Nick's Pizza and Pub for many years.  He has studied widely in the area and has immense practical experience in building a business with a great culture.  

We visited Alinea to deconstruct the experience and work out what you can do in your Restaurant to make it a better experience.  

Innovation is the overarching theme for us at Alinea.  The team at Alinea really are coming up with a lot of great ideas, many of which can inspire you in your restaurant.

Presentation - how can you jazz up your presentation.

Training - the front of house staff were exemplary.

Put all of this that you can do to create an amazing experience because that is where the margin is.

We also discuss the movie Tangerine and what it means for your Restaurant and our Instagram experiment.

We look at Restaurant Fitouts - is it worth spending all that money?  We also look at some of the menu ideas that really work to draw customers in.  We look at great customer service, great menu items and how Restaurants are using Bartercard to build their business.

In Restaurant Autopsy we look at 2 mistakes that killed one of our favourite local Restaurants.  Great food, great value and a great experience wasn't enough to save this Restaurant.

Restaurant Email Marketing is one of the secret ways that many really successful Restaurants use to drive people to the quiet times of the week and the quiet times of the day.  We cover the tools you need to gather emails automatically, to email out to those emails and to measure the effectiveness of your email campaign.  Best practise email campaigns can add over $100,000 of Revenue to your Restaurant, so why aren't you sending emails out today?

We look at Restaurant Marketing from the customers persepctive as we go in search of great restaurants with great marketing to help you better understand how customers are looking for places to eat.  This episode covers our last trip to San Francisco, where we some some great marketing and eat at some great Restaurants.  More importantly, we look at some restaurants that we didn't visit.  You rarely find out why a customer didn't come in, but in this episode we discover some of the things that can make a customer go else where.

Database marketing means an end to the quiet nights of the week in your Restaurant.  Whether it is email marketing, SMS, or even direct mail, a Database creates a huge advantage for your Restaurant.  It will even increase the value of your Restaurant when you want to sell it.  We will cover what a database is, how to create and grow one and some of the ways you can use it to increase profitability in your Restaurant.  Discover how successful Restaurateurs use their database every week to grow their business, more importantly we've got a great way to do Database marketing whenyou don't have a database.

Many Restaurants have awesome looking websites.  Many Restaurants pay thousands or tens of thousands of dollars on great looking websites, but many Restaurants don't have websites that are lead magnets, drawing in new customers day in and day out.

Your website should do the sales and marketing.  Your content is the SEO marketing and the desing is the sales.  In this episode, we look at getting the balance right.  We look at some case studies and show how a little tweaking can make a big difference in the traffic that a Restaurant website receives, the bookings you take and ultimately your Restaurant revenue and profit.

Facebook is the Number 1 Social Media Marketing platform for many Restaurants.  We look at some of the mistakes that people make with their Facebook page and some great examples of Facebook tactics to build your Community.  We also go through the different types of content that work well on Facebook.  More importanmtly we talk about ways to generate that Facebook content as quickly and easily as possible.

SEO is a critical part of any online marketing recipe.  It is also an area that many Restaurants lose thousands of customers a year becuase they haven't got it right.  Discover the Secret of Restaurant SEO and learn how you can improve the targeting of your customers quickly and easily with much better SEO for your Restaurant website.

We look at 8 ways that you can increase the numbers of customers to your Restaurant during the quiet times of the week.  Joint venture marketing, theme nights, corporate customers and happy hours are all some of the ideas that we will be looking at and more to help you find new customers and turn them into repeat customers.

Intro Episode:  How do you find the Secret Sauce for your Restaurant and a little bit about the team from Marketing4Restaurants.com.  Who we are and why we do what we do for Restaurants.  Together let’s find the ingredients for your Secret Sauce.