Just as the old timey photo books gave way to motion pictures, so too will static printed menu boards fall to the more engaging digital menu boards. Digital menu boards are particularly popular at QSR’s and fast-casual operations, but there are also still uses for casual dining operations with printed menus. Digital boards can be used for promomotional messaging (remember the old chalk boards when you walked in an Applebee’s?), training, and for zone merchandizing. Menu design must now take in to consideration design techniques for printed output, for static digital output, and for animated digital output (there are considerations unique to each execution). Click here for a more complete list of Digital Menu Board benefits.

Restaurant Consultant

Should your restaurant be on FourSquare? In a word, yes.

Is the world of restaurant digital marketing exploding and there is seemingly a new restaurant marketing tool like FourSquare popping up every day? In a word, yes.

We are living in exponential times, and if it feels like the pace of change is picking up, well, that’s because it is.

There are at current count at least one dozen websites you absolutely MUST be involved in to remain competitive as a restaurant in the world of online marketing and winning those prized (and highly profitable Millennial audiences). As you work out your restaurant marketing budget for digital media you have to consider not just the hard costs but the amount of time that goes in to all of this. You may wonder if there is going to be a solid return on your investment of time and money. Trust me – if you do this right and get in early, there will be.

For now, what you need to know about FourSquare is that it is a FREE and highly effective tool for building restaurant customer loyalty. You don’t need to hire fancy-pants and expensive restaurant consultants to help you implement FourSquare. Your 12 year old niece is probably more of an expert at it than the average restaurant consultant. That’s not to say you should put your niece in charge of your social media either though (see blog post about restaurant social media responsibility). It is simply to say that as intimidating as all of this may seem, it’s within your reach. Watch the short video above, take 5-10 minutes to create a free account, take advantage of some of the free tools offered by FourSquare to promote your new program, and then promote it to your customers as a loyalty tool. Word of advice though – DO NOT OFFER DISCOUNTS. You should NOT offer (traditional) discounts at your restaurant no matter the occasion (not even for FourSquare). I’ll explain more about this in another blog post.

Stay tuned for more posts related to restaurant marketing and word of mouth in the age of social media.

Also see recent posts regarding restaurant cell phone menus, Google Places for Restaurants, FourSquare and Restaurant Consulting, and Restaurant Industry Uses for the iPad.

Restaurant Consultant Aaron Allen

If you have not added your business to Google Places, you should soon. Being found online is as important as having a sign out front of your restaurant these days. Restaurant marketing is increasingly becoming influenced by digital marketing. I know, I know, you have enough on your plate already. Becoming a digital marketing expert and learning about all this stuff like social networking, Twitter, Facebook, SEM, SEO, cell phone menus and mobile marketing, etc – it’s all getting overwhelming and you may feel it is just too much to get your arms around. Whether you are running a high volume independent restaurant, growing a regional restaurant franchise, or expanding a global foodservice brand, many of the principles of restaurant digital marketing are the same and equally important to all. Don’t worry – you don’t have to learn it all at once. You can count on this blog for a steady stream of restaurant marketing ideas and tips for growing your digital brand. Stay tuned for that. Start small though. At least start with posting your business to Google Places today. It’s free and will take you less than 15 minutes; opening you up to be found in the billions of searches happening each month on Google.

Often times, when people think of the profession of restaurant consulting they think of a glamorous lifestyle and often envision a well-traveled food critic with a bigger paycheck when they ponder what a restaurant consultant does. The fact is a successful restaurant consulting practitioner has more in common with a psychotherapist than with a food critic. Often, the job is about getting the client to take the medicine and take responsibility to do what they know they really should be doing.

Here is a recent communication with a staff member within one of our client’s marketing departments. The names have been removed to conceal any trace of the company or employee. The following is in response to yet another email from this staffer who has repeatedly found excuse after excuse as to why a new program or recommendation won’t work or why he shouldn’t be responsible for helping implement the program. He has been able to make a full time job out of not doing his job. Rather than take a new program or initiative on, he will poke holes in it, delegate it to someone else and blame them as the reason it’s not being executed, play dumb and hopelessly unable to understand something to avoid doing it, or make up a grand tale about how we don’t understand the market or conditions or culture (whether in describing a company, customer base, or country – note, this was particularly hard to counter early in my career as a restaurant consultant but now after representing 10,000 restaurants on 6 continents it’s harder for idea-resisters to play that game).

In the case below, the staffer had explained that FourSquare (and digital marketing in general), wouldn’t work in the Middle East because of awareness. He also thought it was a bad idea for the general managers of the various units to get involved in the program and efforts to build comp-store sales, so suggested that instead we execute the program fully for the client without any need for him to be involved.

The below response hopefully both helps illustrate the nature of restaurant consulting while also helping build a case for FourSquare as an effective restaurant digital marketing tool (no matter where your restaurants are located). Often, the job of a restaurant consultant is about getting the internal stakeholders at a client organization to take individual responsibility. No restaurant consultant alone can fully effectuate change. The good ones don’t try to; they activate the resources and people within the client’s organization.

Here’s the response:

“Dear (name of marketing manager)

We did a good bit of research on this subject too. The most significant thing to happen in the evolution of human communication since the invention of the printing press, and the invention of language before that, is the emergence of the Internet. One in twelve people on the planet (including everyone on the planet, from the most remote and deserted islands to the most populated) are on Facebook, for example. Many credit Twitter for helping topple abusive government regimes, and forever changing how news spreads. There are more mobile phone users in the world than Internet users (3.5 billion compared to 1.5 billion). Mobile phones are one of the most important communication tools used today. In some countries there are more mobile phones than even people.

Foursquare is entirely about building loyalty among those who use mobile phones. We do our ‘research’ not only on the global trends and implications, but also looked at the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia very specifically. There is awareness. Keep in mind, there was virtually no awareness of Twitter and Facebook just 3-4 years ago in the region but it has exploded onto the scene and those who got on board early are reaping the benefits. Awareness is there, it is growing very quickly, and there are tools to make promotion at the unit level very easy. I even saw FourSquare stickers outside of restaurants in the remote areas of Brazil last month. The idea is to get good at using technologies that will be so powerful early enough to be recognized as a leader and early-adopter, not waiting until a trend has crested and then jumping on late. By building a competency before it is critical is how great organizations prepare not just for the day ahead, but for the months, years, and decades ahead.

There is a saying, “Show me a great company and I will show you one that has dramatically reinvented itself and is looking forward to the opportunity of doing so again”. If IBM, Microsoft, and even McDonald’s waited until after all of their competitors were doing something to get on board, they wouldn’t be where they are (in fact, both Microsoft and Oracle – two of the world’s largest companies – were created from opportunities IBM recognized but dismissively abandoned or just lazily didn’t pursue). [Client name here] aspires to be a global leader in the foodservice and hospitality industry. To do so, it must not only aspire to do so, but be filled with individuals seeking to look beyond the immediate necessities of work and mandatory requirements; it must be brimming with individuals and partners looking for not “what is” but “what could be”.

This program – like many others – will fail if the organization does not take some part in it. While we would love to help with programs, we must all recognize that it takes a team effort to make programs work. This sentiment of dismissively shooting down ideas, pawning them off on someone else, half-heartedly going along with them, or delegating down the totem pole….it all adds up to yield results equal to the enthusiasm, heart, determination, commitment, and desire to make things happen. FourSquare is about building loyalty at the unit level. We can certainly do our part from here, but it makes little sense to exclude the general managers at the unit level from participating in the efforts intended to effectuate loyalty on their behalf.

Admittedly, we are very concerned about how issues like this impact our ability to build the results [Client name] could be enjoying. I don’t mean to discount the hard work of ANYONE on either side. We are all working our tails off and with a positive sentiment of collaboration and shared desire to see [Client name] and all of its stakeholders fully prosper. That said, there are many programs that are not as potent as they could be; such as the two LTO’s, the Gift Box Initiative for [Client Sub-Brand], etc that seem to be met with a similar relaxed posture of abdicating responsibility, half-heartedly participating, or passive dismissal, that are stacking up to build mountains of missed opportunity.”

(The memo went on to present a clear path on how to improve the speed and effectiveness of implementation, but is omitted due to the confidential nature of those specifics)

The nature of being a restaurant consultant is “you never get credit for your best work”. If the ideas and programs are to be truly successful and fully implemented, the client must feel it was their idea and the results were achieved because of their own efforts. The restaurant consultant can be seen as a catalyst and facilitator, but the credit must go to the client and their people. Anything else would be a disservice. In some cases, like the one above, you have to call-out the internal resources – not allowing them to hide or dismiss their obligations – so that they take responsibility for doing the work they can later take the credit for. In this case, we hope to see this staffer take responsibility and become a champion for implementing FourSquare. Down the road, he may very well become the hero for charging forward with what he at first resisted.

A brand is a promise. The best restaurant branding I have seen is when the promise of the organization is inspiring, believable and reflected at every touchpoint. The customers, employees, suppliers, investors, media, all of the stakeholders – they all see and feel the promise in a way that is authentic and visceral.

People buy brands that reflect how they see themselves in the world. Sure, millions of people buy from the Chipotle brand just because it’s a good burrito or they saw a funny billboard or they were just close by when they got hungry. But the reason the Chipotle brand is so successful is because it is not just a business but a “cause”. Their tagline “Food with Integrity” is more than a catchy restaurant slogan, it is a core belief of the company. It’s a promise that is a non-negotiable. The promise has been reflected at every touch point. The employees, the suppliers, the media, the customers – they have all bought in to the ideal of sustainability and being part of something bigger and more important than “we have the best burrito”. And the result? Chipotle is the best performing restaurant stock of 2010.

In developing new restaurant brands or facilitating improvement of established restaurant brands, we start by helping the company define its “reason for being”. We facilitate defining and articulating more authentic and inspiring brand compoents including the Brand Promise, Brand Positioning Strategy, Brand Personality and Brand Story. These elements all get wrapped up in the Brand Constitution. From there, the rollout plans are devised for how to get those brand elements inextricably connected and weaved in to the fabric of the company so it is reflected at every stakeholder touchpoint.

A lot of marketers and restaurant consultants start at a tactical level and talk through things like new logos, creative campaigns, how to jump in to digital media…they are all about how to say it not “why”. That’s the difference between great restaurant marketing and uninspired “me-too” approaches that just don’t work. The process is a lot more akin to psychology than it is to the marketing profession most of us think of when the topic “restaurant branding” comes up.

The Ask Why video is a powerful message and great insight in to the right way to approach restaurant branding and leadership.

The National Restaurant Association (USA) has reported the average restaurant marketing budget is three percent (3%) of total revenues. Critics argue this point and we’ve seen budgets ranging from zero to six percent (6%).  We believe this depends on the brand, operations performance, market conditions and a host of other variables. Yet, while many can generally agree on a reasonable allocation of overall sales, they pay surprisingly little attention to how the money is allocated beyond just falling into the “marketing budget”. Once you have the allocation, where does it go?

The Digital Marketing Toolkit

We recommend that of the three percent (3%) allocated to the marketing/advertising line-item, forty-percent (40%) of that be dedicated to digital marketing and publicity efforts. Going further still though, the budget, the strategy, timelines, the tactics, the messages, must now all be succinctly distilled and then divided among a number of cutting-edge new digital media categories. This list of vehicles is mind-boggling and it only continues to grow and fragment. You’ve got the Internet and Intranet, search engine optimization and Pay Per Click advertising, digital signage, narrowing-casting and Podcasting, RSS feeds, social media and social networks, Wiki’s, Widgets, Mash-ups, Analytics – the list grows and grows. These are sustainable emerging technologies too – not just fly by night digital jargon.

It’s Natural for it to all Seem Overwhelming

The marketing rules have changed in the digital era and the train is moving like a bullet. Yes, the principles of marketing – the four P’s, brand strategy, etc. – these remain as true today as ever.  They are bedrock and all too often marketers chase the latest fad while forgetting proven principles to restaurant branding.  While maintaining a close connection to the fundamentals of restaurant marketing we should also be reaching out to discover the innovative new approaches that will prove to be game-changers.  It all sounding complicated and overwhelming isn’t a good excuse for ignoring the seismic shift that’s afoot.

The Trend Will Pickup Velocity

Digital marketing is has only started to become recognized as a powerful tool in the restaurant marketers toolkit.  Today it represents a tiny fraction of the overall restaurant marketing budget for chains and independents alike.  Given that more than 30% of restaurant customers will visit the restaurants website before visiting the restaurant itself, getting a solid web presence and supporting it with a strong digital marketing and publicity campaign is more important than ever. 

Restaurant Consultant Aaron Allen

Some of the most significant inventions in the history of humankind have occurred within the last decade, and at the top of that list is the ever changing and evolving Internet.  In less than 5,000 days of existence, the Internet has forever shifted the worlds of media, marketing, friendship, employment, dating, selling, education, transportation, interpersonal communication and almost every other aspect of our lives. (For more on the future of the Internet, I highly encourage you to watch this short video from author and Internet expert Kevin Kelly as he discusses what to expect from the next 5,000 days of the Web.)

What restaurant marketers need to understand is that the concept of “digital marketing” is about much more than “the Internet.” When most people hear the word “Internet,” they think of Web sites and perhaps e-mail.  However, digital marketing stretches much further than the Internet and the “digital world” – like a giant cloud – has begun to become inescapably intertwined with almost every area of our lives.  While this new reality incites saber-rattling among conspiracy theorists, it evokes jubilation among modern-day marketers.  The reason? Digital marketing delivers.

There’s an old saying: “Half of all advertising is wasted; the problem is, no one knows which half.” The funny thing is, in the new world of digital marketing, this old saying is no longer true. Digital marketing offers advertisers the Holy Grail: efficient, measurable marketing with costs that are directly linked to results.

Even more encouraging for restaurant marketers, digital marketing is the best way to engage the restaurant industry’s most prized, if misunderstood, audience – Millennials.

A mix of Gen X and Gen Y, the Millennial generation includes anyone born after 1983. For reasons of demographics, culture and consumer tastes, Millennials are now a larger and more profitable audience than Baby Boomers for the restaurant industry.  Millennials are “digital natives,” meaning they were born into the world of new digital technology and grew up using it – they are especially adept at using computers, smart phones, social networking and other new media – and they expect the brands they love to join them there.

Today, for QSRs and fast casual restaurants, Millennials comprise a whopping percentage of your customer base – and equally important – a whopping percentage of your employee base.  They think, relate, interact and engage in the digital world – are you ready to reach them?

When you combine the powerful forces and efficiencies of digital marketing with the unbridled spending urges of Millennials, you have two of the most potent ingredients in a recipe for sharp gains in market share and revenue.

Now this is certainly not to say that Millennials are the only audience for restaurants. A growing and successful QSR or fast casual brand could hardly afford to alienate the other audiences it attracts. And this is also not to say that digital marketing is a silver bullet worthy of the whole marketing budget. Digital marketing is a component of a fully integrated marketing arsenal.

It’s More than Millenials

More good news: Millennials are not the only ones hooked on digital media. Far from it. The shift to digital media is global and it spans every one of the most profitable demographic and psychographic audiences courted by restaurant marketers today. Simply put: all of your customers are spending an increasing amount of time on digital media – that’s where “the eyeballs” are going.

Budgeting for Digital

The National Restaurant Association (USA) has reported that the average restaurant marketing budget is three percent (3%) of total revenues. Critics argue this point, and here at The Allen Group, we’ve seen budgets ranging from zero to six percent (6%).  Marketing budgets depend on the brand, operations performance, market conditions and a host of other variables. Yet, while many restaurant marketers can generally agree on a reasonable allocation of overall sales to devote to marketing, they pay surprisingly little attention to how the money is invested beyond just falling into the “marketing budget”. Once you have the money allocated for marketing, where does it go?

The Digital Marketing Toolkit

We recommend that of the three percent (3%) allocated to the marketing/advertising line-item, forty-percent (40%) of that amount should be dedicated to digital marketing and publicity efforts.

Going further still: the budget, strategy, timelines, tactics and messages must all be succinctly distilled and then divided among a number of cutting-edge new digital media categories.

This list of media and marketing vehicles is mind-boggling and it only continues to grow and fragment. You’ve got the Internet and Intranet, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Pay-per-click advertising, digital signage, blogs, narrowing-casting and podcasting, RSS feeds, social media and social networks, Wikis, Widgets, Mash-ups, Analytics, iPhone apps – the list grows and grows. But if you’re new to digital marketing, please understand that these are sustainable, emerging technologies – it’s not just fly-by-night digital jargon. All of these marketing tools are becoming more established and will likely be with us for some time. (Until something new takes their place!)

It’s Natural for it to all Seem Overwhelming

The marketing rules have changed in the digital era and the train is moving like a bullet. Yes, the principles of marketing – the four Ps, brand strategy, etc. – these remain as true today as ever.  They are bedrock and all too often marketers chase the latest fad while forgetting proven principles to restaurant branding.

But digital media is not a fad. It’s the future. The media as we know it is being transformed before our very eyes. And I think, after another 5,000 days in the life of the Internet, we’re going to be astonished to look back at how much has changed.

As leading executives in our industry with a leading brand portfolio, you don’t want to feel overwhelmed by digital marketing.  You want to feel overjoyed.  You want it to work, to be right for your business, and to fit with what already works.  The truth is that digital marketing is not rocket science, and it’s also not a magic bullet – but it can work, and it can help get the results you want.  You just have to make a commitment for that to be the outcome.

Restaurant Marketing Consultant Aaron Allen