Of all of the restaurant chains in the world, no other chain comes close to matching the average unit volume of Cheesecake Factory. Across 135 locations they average $10.9m each. It was certainly a surprise then to see them selling ad space in their menus for other retailers. While running F&B marketing for a luxury hotel we even bought ad space to promote the new $20m spa. Boy was it expensive. Recently, I also saw a small oyster bar in my hometown had sold not just space in their menu, but even their table tops – virtually everything was for sale. My opinion on menu ads is mixed and depends heavily on the concept in question. For the right concept though, this can be a great way to forge new relationships in the community while also getting all of your menu production costs covered. Some actually turn a small profit they invest back into marketing. For more see: Menu Advertising: Selling Out or Selling Smart

Restaurant Consultant

The fastest and best way to reduce costs for a restaurant is to boost sales.  Just a 2% increase in sales is equivalent to a 10% reduction in costs.

I’m ready to help arm you (or if you’re a supplier – help you arm your customers or clients) with 10 of the most sure-fired ways I know to boost sales.  To help make it all a little easier to digest and implement, this proven set of 10 strategies will be broken up into a 10 part series with one new recommendation going out per day (appearing first in my newsletter, so sign up today).

The recession has seemed to batter everyone’s spirits.  The global recession truly is/was global.  While we are seeing many emerging markets recover quickly and then start to accelerate again, much of the mature western markets (U.S., Canada, Mexico, U.K., and other parts of Europe) continue to lag.  While we are thrilled for our clients in those emerging markets who are bursting at the seams with growth an possibility, we are also optimistic about the opportunities for clients in flat or falling markets.  Fact is, the best time to gain better employees, grow market share, and outshine the competition is when the competition can’t afford to keep up.  Recessions are often when you see the biggest gains in market share (just ask Carlos Slim who catapulted to the top spot of the world’s richest men in 2010 with about a $25 billion advantage over Bill Gates and Warren Buffett).

[For more on how the restaurant industry benefits from a recession visit my "Restaurant Recession" blog post]

Okay, let’s begin.  We’ll start with a general premise:  “Sales cure all that ail you.”  It’s a lot easier to ride a bucking Bronco than to drag a dead horse.  When you have healthy revenue growth, you can fix a lot of bugs and pesky problems others with flat or falling sales have to suffer.  Here are a few of our go-to favorites when we need to get some quick wins for clients – and these are pretty universal so whether you run a mom and pop restaurant or a global chain, these can work for you too:

BOOSTING RESTAURANT REVENUE:

PART 1 of 10: Restaurant PR – A well placed story can be worth its weight in gold.  Restaurant public relations (PR) has entered a whole new era with the emergence of social media.  Just five years ago, the only way to build a buzz in the media was with dedicated media relations teams and intoxicating pitches to elite journalists.  While the fundamentals of media relations and importance of traditional media outlets have not become less important, the new media tools and vehicles to garner publicity have boomed.  Just five years ago social networking barely showed up on the Internet traffic monitors, but today it is the bulk of the traffic on the Internet.  Publicity and celebrity status are more in reach for foodservice organizations with skeleton crew marketing departments.  This isn’t to say publicity itself is “easier” just to say that it’s more accessible now.

Whether you asked Ray Kroc of McDonald’s or the founders of Outback or even the recent runaway success stories like Chipotle – their founders will all tell you the same thing; they had buzz and PR wins that began mounting on top of one another and helped rocket them to the top.  The restaurant marketing approaches billion-dollar chains use after they become billion-dollar chains aren’t the same ones they used when they were under that threshold.   A commonality is a well-oiled publicity machine.

Consumers trust what they see in the media.  Anyone with a checkbook can buy an ad, but not just anyone gets written about.  When a brand is worth writing about, it’s worth talking about.

Traditional public relations efforts targeting magazines and trade journals with long lead-times require a very professional, patient, and methodical approach.  It takes time – and a great story – to romance traditional media.  And traditional media is incredibly important.  The long-term impact of a solid PR campaign can be an absolute game-changer.  Fortunately, in the short term, for those seeking more immediate exposure for their story and offerings, new media and publicity strategies can be put in place that have an almost immediate result.  The ideal approach is to blend both traditional PR and new media, but no restaurant should be without either.  PR is a necessity, not a nicety.

Additional Resources:

Restaurant Advertising Versus Restaurant Public Relations

The Value of Restaurant Public Relations

The Fall of Restaurant Advertising

The Benefits of Restaurant Public Relations

Anyone With a Checkbook can Buy an Ad

Word of Mouth in the Age of Social Media

BOOSTING RESTAURANT REVENUE PART TWO

Cheesecake Factory Menu Advertising

January 4th, 2010

Some restaurateurs are innovating new ways to find capital.

If you’ve been to a Cheesecake Factory, you probably noticed that the menus were filled with advertising.  I first noticed this fact myself when running marketing for a luxury resort and placed an ad to promote our spa services.  It was expensive!  Around $9,000 for six (6) months, at the time.  As a chain, Cheesecake Factory – which also happens to have a $10.9m average unit volume – pulls in millions selling ad space in their menus.  Suffice to say, it more than covers the cost of the printing.

With a $10.9m average unit volume, this restaurant chain could more than afford to print their own menus.

Even back in my small home town in north Florida, I found that my favorite oyster bar (hole in the wall) sold space on just about everything they could think to put an ad on.  Their menus and now even their tables have advertising.  You can bet the value of the advertising paid for the furniture and then some.  In fact, the little oyster forks they brought out were plastic Nathan’s Hot Dog forks (not sure how they ended up in this here).

So, the question: Is it a good idea to sell space in your restaurant to raise capital or does it damage the brand?

My opinion is that Cheesecake Factory should run the numbers again and come to the conclusion I did – you can make more money and better reinforce your brand by putting your own ads in the menu, not a local car dealer.  In the case of the quirky oyster bar, I think it adds to the charm.  The decision really is situation-specific.  In general it’s risky.  In some cases, it may actually pay off and furnish your restaurant at a profit.

Aaron D. Allen

Not just Volkswagen, of course, but hundreds of other brands became successful because of advertising. Timex, with retired NBC News anchor John Cameron Swayze, showed its watches run over by trains or dropped from airplanes and announced, “It takes a licking, and keeps on ticking.” People believed it and Timex took off.

Dozens of restaurant advertising slogans passed into everyday language, from “Breakfast of champions” to “The Big Mac Attack” and “Have it your way.” Restaurant advertisements that we would call “great” made up only a small percentage of total advertising – getting something new and unusual past the consumer was always a tough sell – the restaurant advertising revolution continued into the 1980’s. Agencies competed to outshine each other with attention-getting wit based on what Rosser Reeves, the founder of today’s mega agency, Ted Bates, called the Unique Selling Proposition.

Then, something happened. Let’s fast-forward to today, when restaurant ads we’d call “great” are not only scarcer than hen’s teeth, but amateurish to boot. If you’ve leafed through a Newsweek or Time in the past month, can you recall any ads? How many times do you see a commercial on TV where you don’t know what they’re selling? So much for the Unique Selling Proposition. And often, you’re not even sure whose ad it was. So much for branding. Whether restaurant advertising stopped attracting the brightest and the best, fell asleep resting on its laurels, or market forces simply dampened people’s enthusiasm for it, the fact remains, that restaurant advertising is just not working like it used to.

Taking the place of restaurant advertising, in efforts to garner brand recognition, is public relations. Today’s public relations is not what it used to be, either. Even if some public relations firms may still rely on the stodgy, stiff press release of yesterday, to the new wave of public relations consultants, PR is much more.

Let’s say that today’s PR, particularly for restaurants, is “interactive.”

This is the era of events. Events such as a restaurant grand opening become must-attend events that no one wants to miss.  When frogs parachute from the sky, as they did to mark the grand opening of Grupo Anderson’s Senor Frog’s in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, people were talking. Events aren’t limited to grand openings either. Events can be staged to attract news coverage and publicity, as long as it’s carefully linked to tactics planned in the restaurant marketing plan, the event should maintain newsworthy value.

Then there is the bread and butter of the restaurant PR business, the press release. It has become interactive, too.

We don’t look at a press release as an announcement written AP style, ready for the editor to whittle down to one paragraph. AP style is fine, but what we try to do is make a story people want to read and make the client part of it.

Having taken a firm position on the dissolution of restaurant advertising and advocating, as we do, restaurant public relations as the most effective way to promote a restaurant, we don’t turn our backs on restaurant advertising completely.

No one would disagree that an outdoor sign is an important means of guiding transient traffic off the interstate and into a Cracker Barrel, or that McDonald’s finds great media efficiency with their 30,000+ restaurants. However, if you’re in any way a unique concept- and in today’s competitive environment you better be to stay alive – then you need to leverage your story and uniqueness. You also need to connect with your audience in a real and personal way. Restaurant advertising simply can’t do it.

It is important to keep in mind: whatever it is, no matter how small you think the news about your restaurant may be, it can always be turned into a story the local press will be glad to carry. Often, it can also be made attractive to the regional and national media too. And remember, the more famous you become, the more they’ll write about you. Restaurant PR gains momentum on a constant budget, restaurant advertising does not.

If you contact me, I’ll be happy to fill you in on the cost-effectiveness of restaurant public relations vs. restaurant advertising and share with you case studies on how our style of public relations has made a big difference in the bottom line for specific clients.

We are convinced, through these tested and proven tactics, that restaurant public relations is the answer to the growth of the restaurant business in today’s market.

Bill Gates once said, “If I was down to my last dollar, I’d spend it on public relations.” Restaurant public relations generates news coverage, and news coverage builds credibility. The objective of Restaurant Public Relations is to tell your story through third-party outlets, primarily the media. People believe what they read in newspapers and magazines, what they hear on the radio and what they see on television. People are skeptical of what they see in a restaurant advertisement.

Many restaurant advertising campaigns are mathematical successes and marketing failures. Restaurant advertising may reach it’s intended mass audience with enough frequency and still not increase sales of the product or service. The emphasis of restaurant public relations is not on reach or frequency, but the credentials of the medium and the quality of the placement.

A published article or a broadcast story on radio and television is more credible than the most well placed restaurant advertisement. Credibility is critical. Consumers will trust a feature in Car & Driver or Consumer Reports describing why the Ford Taurus is the best in its class more than they will a slick advertisement from Ford claiming that it stands above the competition. Volvo didn’t gain its reputation of safety through advertising. Instead, it gained consumer trust through publicity from stories like its invention of the three-point lap-and-shoulder safety belt.

In an attempt to fool readers, some companies even attempt to create restaurant advertising that is designed to look like features. These are known as advertorials. Publications; however, make sure readers are aware the advertorial is paid restaurant advertising thus eliminating credibility in the minds of readers.

Restaurant Public Relations Is Not Intrusive, Restaurant Advertising is

In one of Aesop’s fables, the sun and the wind disagreed about who was the stronger of the two. They saw a man walking down the road, so they decided to settle the dispute by seeing who could make him take off his coat. The wind took its turn first. The harder the wind blew, the more closely the man wrapped his coat around him. The sun then began to shine, and it wasn’t long before the man felt the sun’s warmth and removed his coat.

Like the wind in Aesop’s fable, restaurant advertising is often perceived as an imposition. The harder the sell, the harder the wind blows and the harder the prospect resists the sales message. Restaurant public relations is like the sun. It leads to action and produces results subtly by presenting its message through an objective third party; the media.

Restaurant Public Relations Is Cost-Effective, Restaurant Advertising is Costly

Some business executives have the wrong impression that, because it appears on television or in a slick, glossy magazine, restaurant advertising is worth the expense. History has shown that, even though a commercial may have entertainment value, it doesn’t move consumers to purchase the product. People enjoyed the Pets.com sock puppet, but apparently not enough to purchase their pet products online. David Leisure was funny as Joe Isuzu, but his comedic advertisements did not cause a rush to Isuzu dealerships.

Versus advertising, a news feature in Forbes or Fortune builds credibility, positions the company as an industry leader and generates awareness without costing a penny.

Restaurant Public Relation’s Life Span Is Longer than Restaurant Advertising

To the typical consumer, an ad is like a butterfly. Its life span is short-lived. This isn’t the case with restaurant public relations. A well-placed story can reap benefits for an extended period. The fundamental restaurant public relations strategy is to place a story in one publication and move it up the ladder to another magazine or newspaper, or transfer it to another medium such as radio or television. A story can also be sent down the ladder. For example, an article in the Wall Street Journal often later appears in smaller publications, further enhancing the story’s effectiveness.

When determining whether to spend your marketing budget on restaurant public relations or restaurant advertising, weigh the importance of credibility, cost-effectiveness and a positive corporate image.  Though your restaurant public relations campaign may not be as expansive, the figures show that in the eyes and minds of consumers, what they see and read in the media has more of an impact and is more viable than what they see and read in advertisements, making the phrase, “Restaurant advertising you pay for, restaurant public relations you pray for,” fact and not just an old adage. High-volume restaurants, chain restaurants and leading supplier companies looking for cost-effective marketing should first consider restaurant public relations as a tool.  Effective restaurant public relations can create record sales for your company and often for less than the cost of a single newspaper ad or billboard.

If restaurant advertising isn’t working for you, strongly consider appropriating 15% – 30% of your total promotional budget on an effective restaurant public relations campaign.  You’ll find both short-term and long-term gains from this approach that will have a positive cumulative impact far greater than traditional restaurant advertising approaches.