My son is an asst. manager of an Italian restaurant. It's part of a small chain. He's working in a brand new store having transferred from another when it opened.

The place isn't doing well. He and I talked about it the other night.

They are located in an affluent and growing area, on THE major 6 lane highway running right through the middle of it all, but there is one problem. They are on the western outskirts, located beyond all the homes and there is NOTHING west of them but open fields.

There are anchor businesses under construction to the west of them, things like Walmart (big surprise ) and others, but these won't be open for about a year.

All the people that visit say, "We had no idea you were here. We never come down this way." etc.

I told him that he needed to run some coupons in the neighborhood newsletters, the Val-Pak coupon mailings and maybe even try fliers.

He told me they had tried fliers. They put out 700 with a "buy one entree, get one entree" coupon. They cashed in a little over 70 of them for a 10% response.

I told him that was great. He thought so too.

His boss, the owner, thought it was crap and a complete waste of time and money.

What do you do with people like this?

I figure things will be fine because he owns the building so he's just going to have to eat it until the other businesses bring traffic but I'd love to have some ideas about:

A) How to convince this idiot that advertising makes money, not takes money.

B) Any ideas on addressing the problem that I haven't mentioned.

A) He's not an idiot in that sense. Advertising doesn't take money. In particular, not in the restaurant business. It takes finesse.

Buy1/get1 promo's are often losers. People bringing in coupons are treated like leeches by waitstaff. Even if they aren't, it take a huge effort to avoid the PERCEPTION that their business is resented.


Ideally, the coupon holder should be treated like a Willy Wonka, Golden Ticket quest of the house. People who respond to an ad should be given the chef's table in the Kitchen with a wine steward assigned to them.

Do you think that happens? Fact is every person who steps in the door should be treated as close the the above scenario as possible. Each person coming in the door should signal a flurry of attention from every person on the staff.

Would the waiter notice if the gravy was too greasy? Not normally. Does the customer notice?

Often the customer sees a bread crumb on the floor and stares at it for 60 minutes. Yet, the wait staff might take minutes to notice if the customer climbed on the table and danced a jig.

Any business, particularly restaurants, are theater. If the play isn't good, they never return. Regardless of the food.

I know a tiny coffee shop in a farmer town, filled wall to wall every day. Why? Because the staff sticks their head out of the kitchen to say "Hello Bob". There is a tiny tea shop nearby that struggles for business. Because they hire Highschool kids with bad attitudes to deliver the food at the lowest cost. People rarely go there.

You only need the first customer in the door, if you do it right. There are restaurants with a waiting list that have no exterior indicators that they are a business at all.
And they don't use fliers.
They use service.
Those 70 customers were his change to make a million in 12 months.
Too bad he didn't see the opportunity.

But your son can. If he visits every customer twice per visit, he can turn the business into a gold mine....just by saying Hi and then listening. You have to pay $100 per person to get that kind of attention. And people will.

Chuck,

Not only did I already say just about everything you did to my son, he's been educated about the necessity of good service since he was a kid.

I demand good service at restaurants and he's heard me explain many times how to provide quality service.

So with all that said, do you have any recommendations on how to actually MARKET the place since that is what I inquired about?

Bruce, if you could get the owner to listen to the MP3 where Dan Kennedy explains his successful Italian Restaurant promotion, that might do it.

Beating this guy over the head isn't going to work, so maybe a softer approach would bear fruit. Your son could simply hand him a CD and say, "My Dad said this recording talks about an Italian Restaurant that got a 33% (or whatever it was) increase in sales."

Alex

Alex,

I don't think I have that. Do you know what DK product that is in?

Is that the one where DK interviews Rory Fatt, along with the restaurant owner? I'll see if I can dig it up, I have it somewhere.

Ken,

What you're talking about is the monthly marketing call that Dan (and now Bill) has done over the last few years.

The specific call you're talking about was on the CD titled "Massive Innovative Action" and featured Dan, Rory Flatt and ReNae Morse, who applied Dan's and Rory's teachings in a way that made her and her husband's restaurant very successful.

What Bruce and the others are talking about is the "Giorgio" sequence of mailers outlined in the Dan Kennedy "Magnetic Marketing" package.

Thanks, Michael -- that's one product I don't have yet.

Magnetic Marketing eh?

Ebay's loaded with em. Thanks, Michael.

Bruce, please check your email.

Alex