Make Local Sell Local

Embracing Change to Improve Your Restaurant’s Business

You don’t read about marketing to gain insight on maintaining your status quo, you read to learn how to improve your restaurant’s business. All of us seek out ideas, strategies, and technologies that can affect change on the success of our business. That success could be the bottom line, the well being of our employees, or the satisfaction of our customers. In any light it is improved success that we are after.

To get there we seek change, and must lead our teams to accept, embrace, and crave it.

This change after all is not change for change’s sake, it is based on several analytical studies, among them:

Our Organization’s Data from successful sales and failed leads.
Interpretation of Market Opportunities and unfulfilled demand.
Employee and Customer feedback from the POS interactions.

So the change I speak of is another way of saying improvement or strategic positioning.

Am I supposed to do all this for my restaurant?

If you want to improve, yes you are.

You should be using the sales data on menu items to sort through the winners and losers, you should be tieing that data into the food cost of each menu item so you can emphasize the winners and work on the losers. Also how many private dining requests came in last month, how many did you book, what was the reason that those that did not book decided to go elsewhere?
You should be looking at your city like a consumer; to decide if there is a market opportunity. Like a town that had lines out the door for Sunday breakfast might cry out for an affordable brunch.
You should be constantly getting feedback from employees about what the customers are asking for, what they are loving, and what they were not so keen on.

Yes, these things will guide you to the points of change that you need to make, to keep your business getting better, growing, and becoming more successful.

Employees often resist Change, your job is to lead them through it.

One of the hardest parts of doing something new is that it is unproven, and those who rely on a paycheck based on the current way of doing things often resist and/or subconsciously sabotage the new process. An entrepreneurial leader is one who will face the unknown, take a leap of faith in the decision that was made, and have earned the faith of the company’s employees so that they too believe and will work toward a successful change.

You must build an environment that allows you and your employees to connect with each other over the opportunity ahead of you, an environment that is sustained by trust.

Your employees are your most valuable resource, the genesis of your organization’s strength, and the greatest determinator of your success. You should engage them in the changes you make, let them take part in the determination of what ultimately is the final change, and also reap some of the benefits of the success you foster together.

In this way you are not their Boss, you are investing in them as a partner, and you engage with them on a level of mutual dignity. That should be the goal.

Next: Explain the Change to Your Audience.

Your audience, in truth, is a combination of the following groups:

Your current customers
The potential customers that exist in your market
Your employees

Some of your current customers may be adverse to change and the unknown that it brings. They may be attached to something that is changing or taken out of their comfort zone for another reason by the change. It is important to be clear and direct, avoiding ambiguities and outlining the positives of the change.

On the other hand your potential customers first need to hear about the change so that they know about this new offering that is aimed at them. When they hear about it, you should have the reasons outlined why they will love it, told from their perspective. Why is this what is missing from their lifestyle?

The employees are your ambassadors, they will be face to face with customers when they are asked what the Change is all about. If you do not give them the information they need, your change will be a muddled mess of interpretations not based on anything other than speculation. This is a major fail on your part.

Here is an example of how I addressed a major Change at my Restaurant to all these groups: http://andolinisrestaurant.com/brunch/

In Short, Change is a Challenge which when conquered results in Success.

What does your business need? I would love to talk about it.

I am Spirocks on Twitter.

I Got Sauced

Spiro Pappadopoulos

It started out all in good fun. I wanted to open a place that made a really really good burger, crispy wings tossed in original homemade sauces, some hand cut french fries that you think about later in the week, and a small curated selection of craft beer cans. A fun, vivid, graphic vibe; bright colors, big tvs, funky names, and unapologetic ideas like a burger named: The Fat Kid. (A burger with every topping from every other burger including an over easy egg)

We would hire inspired cool people and have fun chipping ideas around, like making a hotter sauce by growing our own ghost chiles and coming up with a banging burger special each month that everyone loves. There is an infectious vibe in the crew and it resonates through the names and ideas that we toss around. I will never forget the way one of the main studs in the Sauce crew told me about an order for an extra patty fat kid burger. Harrison Starkweather (love that name) told me that someone had just ordered a Two Patty Fatty. Loved that.

Business blossomed as the team came together, more and more customers fell for our big ideas for simple food. We embraced spice and found a legion of heat seekers that wait for the next insanely hot sauce to come out. It isn’t always easy to grow, we had to tinker with the tiny space, adjust our food prep schedule, replace computers, and adjust the distance we would deliver to a few times. But we always have had a mojo, and some very talented chefs putting their heads together. Between Mike and Pat and Spencer the food is always under a close eye, and while we may be a fun loving group we take good food very seriously. I love a place that has no snobbery, no air of arrogance, but that just dives right into the fire to make something the best that they can, that is the goal of Sauce, and we try to get closer every day.

In Short; I Got Sauced, and I want to get the world Sauced too.

Some Recent Pics:

Burger of the Month Oct 2014 – The North Beef Burger – roast beef, northshore style bbq sauce, horseradish mayo, cheese & onion strings.

Home Grown Ghost Peppers:

I am Spirocks on Twitter.

The Social Feed and Employees

Spiro Pappadopoulos

How does your social feed embrace your employees? Does it at all?

These are the questions you should ask yourself. Are you tagging employees in pictures of the product of their labors, are you recognizing the fact that many hands are involved in creating what your business accomplishes? Do you thank, mention, and acknowledge in your social feeds?

Here are some reasons you should:

People who love doing a good job, like to know it is appreciated. And keeping great employees is the first step at keeping customers coming back. Be the leader they want to work for, one that gives them love.
Social Media is public, and employees of other businesses in your area are watching. They will be more likely to want to work for you if they see you building your team up.
Your employees have friends and family that want to see there work life celebrated too, these are not only sources of positive reinforcement but also potential customers who are looking to embrace those that support their loved ones.
These employees are the faces of the story of your business that the community will want to embrace, a cocktail without a bartender is not the same experience. Celebrate your story, and the characters that make it unique.

There are tens of thousands of reasons to involve your Social Feed and Employees. These are just a few. Above you can see Mike, Spencer, and I having some fun at Sauce. If you wore your Jorts in that Thursday you got a free hand cut french fry… see those Jorts are worth something!

I am Spirocks on Twitter.

Learning Teaching Motivating

Spiro Pappadopoulos

“I think the big mistake in schools is trying to teach children anything, and by using fear as the basic motivation. Fear of getting failing grades, fear of not staying with your class, etc. Interest can produce learning on a scale compared to fear as a nuclear explosion to a firecracker.”

Stanley Kubrick

I am Spirocks on Twitter.

Tip: Consistently Communicate with Customers

Spiro Pappadopoulos

Marketing a restaurant is a game of consistency, you can’t post/email thirty two things in the next 15 minutes and then take two months off. You know that. Yet it is still likely the case that you find yourself with gaps in your communications, lapses in the connection with your customers that helps drive business through your door. What you need is a plan, a system that helps you simplify, and I have one for you.

See What I do on Instagram and Twitter by following @spirocks on both.

Restaurant Marketing Simplification System:

First you need a base that you control, a place where you can guarantee the rules won’t change and affect all the work you have put in. That is your website/blog, and I spelled out the reasons here: ( Don’t Just Rent Your Friends ) If your restaurant website does not have a blog section, you should make that project number 1.

Create a Blog on your website: Your blog is going to be the place where you create the content that is spread throughout your social networks and email lists.
Create a Mailchimp Account. Great news; they are free up to 2000 contacts so you can try this out with no risk. Mailchimp allows you to send RSS campaigns, which means that once you publish a blog post you have Mailchimp automatically create an email from it and email it out when you want, like say 10am on Friday. That’s it, email campaign done.
Decide the frequency with which you wish to contact your email list. Once you have that plan, all you need to do is create a post before the date and time (give it an hour early) you set in Mailchimp and you are done. Most people find creating a blog post a less cumbersome process than creating an email and best of all you kill two birds with one stone.
Social Network integration via Mailchimp allows you to connect your restaurant social accounts and post to them at the same time.

So there you have it a simple way to create great content once, on a platform you control, and get it distributed free to everywhere it needs to be.

How frequently to post to your social networks:

In addition to the above, I suggest having a plan for social media only posts, as you should post to them more frequently than you email. So say you have a new special every Tuesday, share a picture of that with a simple one line description.

One great place to do this is through instagram, where you can take a photo of a special appetizer for example and share it to not only instagram, but also facebook, twitter, flickr, and tumblr all at the same time. Maybe I will write another post on that if you are interested.

Got any tips on how you streamline your restaurant’s online marketing? I would love to hear.

I am Spirocks on Twitter.

How to Use Instagram Video for Business

Spiro Pappadopoulos

An old journalism saying goes: “Show me, don’t tell me.”

When you are introducing a product or service it is better to show the qualities that make it the best than simply saying it is the best. By showing you enable the viewer to decide for himself that it is the best, not question you declaring it the best.

Recently at one of my restaurants, Sauce, we decided to make a homemade Shandy we thought would make other shandy beers feel shame. So we added a homemade hibiscus – jalapeño – lemon/limeade to a full can of genesee cream ale in a 24oz cup.

To launch it we made the above instagram video.

Show, don’t Tell.

I am Spirocks on Twitter.

Name one thing

Spiro Pappadopoulos

What is the one thing that you do to go out and get customers to try your product, or purchase it again.

The catch is it can’t be a magazine ad or a traditional media buy. No mass mailed coupon or such.

Is it a unique card you personally hand out? Some social campaign thingy? Do you reach out personally on Facebook?

What works for you? Tell me @spirocks on twitter.

I am Spirocks on Twitter.

Limits and Entrepreneurs

Spiro Pappadopoulos

For people who start new businesses and build brands from scratch, limits are the lifeblood of creativity. It is frequently said that ‘It would be nice if money were no object.’ Well it is, so is the employee talent pool, getting the best locations, the customers in your market, and about a thousand other things. The entrepreneur recognizes all these things, finds a niche and builds an offering that delivers value people are willing to pay for.

All these things are limits, they are the parameters of the current possibilities for the business. Embrace them, squeeze them like your own child, they are yours and they are the reason you will succeed. It is important to feel that way about them, for they should be the fostering ground of your creativity, the hurdles that create what is unique about what you offer.

To train your brain that way is to embrace the limits, and to dominate them. It may be easy to get lost in the day-to-day functions of your business, and lose sight of what parameters you are working within, but that is where discipline should kick in and get you back on the path you know you need to be on.

The ancillary benefits of that discipline are many. It is easier to train your employees when you have a defined framework to work within, and what you do will be clear to your customers. It wont be a messy collection of exceptions, it will be clear, concise, and easy to understand.

In Employee Training: Due to our size we carry three brands of the major liquor varieties, for instance for Vodka: Grey Goose, Tito’s, and Reyka, These three represent three price points and all offer exceedingly high quality. Grey Goose is the leading ultra premium vodka in sales, Tito’s is an excellent American made and gluten-free vodka, and Reyka is a small batch premium vodka from Iceland. With these three we will be able to deliver vodka drinks in three price points, $11/$9/$7 — make notes of any customer complaints about this selection and be sure to include the brand requested, as managers will tally them and adjust the three brands if needed. Be sure to offer the customer a taste of the brands we carry if they are not familiar.

I believe that too often a new business creator focuses on the limits as reasons why they can’t make a situation work, instead of embracing them as the guideposts to help navigate them to success. The first step is identifying your limits, then planning to deliver value within the parameters. That discipline will give the business the matter of fact nature that it needs.

In the above example, if someone wanted a dirty vodka martini and they were unhappy with any of the three vodkas offered, they would be in a tiny tiny minority, say 3% of the population of vodka drinkers. Yet every bar has a plethora of vodka bottles, many which do not sell much at all, taking square footage, time to inventory, store, and clean. If you multiply that over and over in various undisciplined categories, what is the true cost of not staying within limits? I would wager that it is far greater than any profit you will make from serving the ultra-picky 3%.

Thoughts and comments?

I am Spirocks on Twitter.