Tag: Restaurants

Top 7 Steps For Strengthening Sales and Profits In The Restaurant Industry….Actually Applies To Most Businesses:

Top 7 Steps For Strengthen Sales and Profit In The Restaurant Industry….Actually Applies To Most Businesses:

1. Know your customer!  People coming thought the door and buying should be acknowledged with an email or card and possibly more. How do you do this?  You need to have their contact information and specifically an email address and now ideally their cell phone number.

Here is an idea on how you do that: Buy them a drink or a dessert in exchange for their information.  Here is the key: when you identify a particularly important person, the owner comes to the table, welcomes them and offers to buy their dinner in exchange for the cell phone number so they can be alerted for a very special event. Now before you say this ticket could be $200 or more I ask you how worth it is to have the cell phone number for key text messages with VIP’s and I mean people whose net worth is in 8 figures. This is huge

2. Have a plan. Your financial plan should be an annual target that can then be detailed to a weekly plan.

3. Know your numbers. Traffic and sales by time of day. Track your trends. Use this information to market to your list. Invite them to slower times using incentives.

4. Use all proven marketing tools to help grow your business. These include direct mail to targeted zip codes and ads with a “hook” in publications your target customer reads and other venues like radio, participation at key charitable events, local/regional festivals that are for your target audience, on line promotions and more.

5. Have your on line credibility in place meaning a website and social media presence

6. Use a referral marketing system. Reward people for inviting their friends and colleagues.

7. Monitor the variances from plan in all areas of your business. Nothing is excluded: payroll, food costs, utilities….the gold is in the detailed analysis of the variances.

Now You Know…Success Is In The Details.  Failure is almost always a result of not consistently following the steps that have been proven to lead to success.

Steve Pohlit

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About: Steve Pohlit CPA,MBA has been the CFO and COO of  major domestic and international companies.  Steve has extensive business ownership experience having purchased and started off line and on line businesses.  Steve offers his  business building experience to companies and entrepreneurs with business coaching and business consulting.  His  focus is on building business  profits and net asset value at above average rates.   All articles published by Steve unless specifically restricted may be freely published with this resource information.

This Restaurant Industry Headline Is No Surprise

“The Restaurant Industry suffered Its Worst Quarterly Decline In Customer Traffic In 28 years In the Second Quarter 2009”

I love the retail industry and I consider restaurants part of that overall industry. I recognize restaurants are distinguished in the financial press for reporting purposes.  I also recognize that if you are a restaurant then you should be studying how you are doing in comparison to others.

The business of retail is so much fun because there is a tremendous amount of valuable information available and generally with the volume of customer traffic, you can test just about anything and receive feedback quickly as to whether it is working or not.  In retail the most energy should be devoted to marketing and in all fairness it usually is.  No whether that marketing is effective or not is a topic of debate. My view is that it isn’t and the view of the people dong it is that it is.

That brings us back to the overall results reported for the Second Quarter of 2009.  I wrote that the decline is written in a headline like it is a surprise.  Many may be thinking my view was based on the state of the economy with unemployment still running high and consumer confidence still running low. But actually my view is based on dismal failure of restaurants to pay close attention to the details of what is important to customers.

To support my view, I look at the exceptions. Here is one reported on by Fare Magazine. That exception is Panera Bread. They  have not cut prices, they have not gone promotional and the company continues to grow profitably. Click Here for the complete article.

There is always value in studying what is working for others and, for that matter what isn’t. Look within your industry and outside of your industry.  I forget what bank was the first, but I remember the story of a bank president looking at the success of drive thru windows in the fast food industry.  He tried in banking and it rapidly became very successful.

In any economy there are always companies that do well and those that fail.  The ones that do well are those who consistently pay attention to the details important to their customers.  This is the value exchange principle.  The more value I give you the more you are willing to pay for it.

Sharing with all my readers the energy of peace, happiness and abundance

Steve Pohlit, Expert Business Consulting

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About: Steve Pohlit is a CPA,MBA and has been the CFO of several major domestic and international companies.  Steve is business owner and an expert business consultant, direct response and social media marketing  and social networking security expert . Steve is  focused on helping companies improve their business performance. All articles published by Steve unless specifically restricted may be freely published with this resource information.