Restaurant Marketing and Public Relations
Restaurant marketing, though often overlooked and under funded, is crucial to both startup success and the building and maintaining of critical sales levels. While there are many things you can do in house and direct and community marketing is always a good idea, I have found a public relations campaign essential to building large scale awareness of a restaurant quickly and effectively.
The Restaurant Business Plan
The business plan is essential to any new restaurant venture. Your odds of succeeding are greatly increased when you study and report your idea. It is your business resume and map to success. It is the document that most of the important startup connections will demand to see.
Restaurant Startup Products
Starting any business is always a challenge. Its not only a lot of hard work, its not always obvious what needs to be done and when. If you are planning (or even just dreaming) of opening a restaurant, some of the products below could be the difference between failure and success.
Restaurant Operations
The products below have been created or chosen to help the restaurant owner manage the day-to-day operations more easily and effectively. Each one of these
We have also combined some similar and related products into special offer combo packages. Be sure to check that you don't "double order" products that are already included in the combo sets.
Restaurant Back Office
The products below have been created or chosen to help the restaurant owner manage back office tasks more easily and effectively. If you use QuickBooks as your bookkeeping system, the Restaurant Operators Guide to QuickBooks is
an invaluabletool.
Restaurant Training & Manuals
Formal training of your employees is usually considered an unnecessary luxury. Most come with experience and you may say that these jobs aren't exactly rocket science. However, the benefits of proper and periodic training and clearly stating company policies are huge and long-lasting. You will save money, have a happier staff, a more contented clientele, and may even avoid some legal problems.
Special Offers
These products have either been discounted form the original price or combined with similar products to create a utility package that we can offer at substantial savings.
Some of the trends that are affecting the food and beverage industry as follows 1. Celebrity involvement
2. Theme restaurant
3. Dining entertainment options 4. Increased competition
5. Take out and delivery
6. Hotel and restaurant branding partnership 7. Multiple branding among restaurant
It means introducing the revenue centers among customer. Before positioning you have to see whether the restaurant or lounge is met following requirements. - physical location
- Atmosphere
- Considerable prices
If it is free standing restaurant there will be big competition with others. Here you have to find unique characteristic to suit to your place and use that as selling tool
POSITIONING RESERCH
Positioning research should become an ongoing part of the operation of any restaurant. Positioning research falls in to following basic areas
1. Guest trading area research
It covers the research about guest and where they come from and catchments area of guest, their lunch and dinner behaviour
2. Guest profile research
Study about guest’s age, gender, employment, spending power, loyal customer or not etc...
3. personal conversation or observation
The host or food server can get information by conversing with guest 4. Special promotion
Conducting special promotion by giving benefit to the customers 5. Guest surveys
Get the guest comments and feed back in order to make changes 6. Situation research
Situation research can be used to identify market segments. 7. Competition analysis
Here study about all the competitors an their strengthens and weakness
MERCHANDISING FOOD AND BEVERAGES
Food and beverage can be merchandised by special packaging and pricing, promotional materials such as posters and table tent cards and suggestive selling by food servers.
CREATING MENUES
A menu must reflect the restaurant’s position or image, provide information and serve as suggestive selling tool. While this may seem like a monumental challenge, it is actually quite easy when you follow a menu development cycle that includes image, price, message and design.
The menu development cycle begins with the restaurant positioning or image. Restaurant image refers how your restaurant is perceived by your patrons. What image does your restaurant create? What type of ambiance or atmosphere do you offer?
Price:
Price information is critical menu consideration. Your pricing strategy should be determined long before your menu is designed. What price does you guest expected to pay for menu for menu item? Will items be priced individually or as full meal? How much will be the preparation cost? What will be the profit margin?
In addition to that the following factors should be considered when pricing menus - Type of operation
- Guest perception and demand - Competition
Message:
Make sure your menu is organized, readable, and convey the tone of your restaurant Design:
The menu message is only part of the presentation. An attractive design will enhance the copy and draw guests to featured items and specials