restaurant promotion

A Guide to Building a Sunday Dinner Program

Sunday dinner at your restaurant can bring in extra weekend revenue and ensure your regulars keep coming back. So, how do you create the perfect Sunday dinner experience?

Let’s get started with a few tips:

➡️ Create a unique menu: Your Sunday dinner menu needs to offer choices that make customers keep coming back. You should focus on classic comfort foods with a modern spin or classic dishes from around the world. Think about menus that will attract multi-generation families as Sunday is frequently a family day.

➡️ Set an attractive ambiance: Warm lighting, high tables, and comfortable seating help create a cozy atmosphere ideal for Sunday dinner.

➡️ Offer attractive service: Unleash your customer service teams’ creativity – provide excellent service with a friendly, personal touch. What can you do differently within your concept on Sundays? A special Sunday-only touch will distinguish the service and make those who join you appreciate the Sunday effort.

➡️ Develop an attractive marketing strategy: Promote your Sunday dinner program on social media and websites. Utilize word-of-mouth and reviews to engage with your customers. Invite VIPs and regular guests to get the new service style started.

➡️ Pay attention to customer feedback: Guests’ feedback should always be considered when creating your Sunday dinner menu. Ask guests what would make Sunday dinner at your restaurant attractive.

➡️ Keep your price point attractive: Make your Sunday dinner affordable and appealing. A great price point can help you attract more guests and increase revenue. Larger family parties will be more likely to attend if they have an affordable way to do so.

➡️ Keep up with trends: Research trending topics and flavors to keep your Sunday dinner program fresh and appealing. Incorporate seasonal adjustments, make special menus for Holidays and try to include viral recipes (http://spirop.us/viral) in special one-off menus.

For more inspiration, check out a few ideas for successful Sunday dinner programs:

• An Italian restaurant with special Sunday hand-made pasta dishes and affordable wine bottles from a rotating Italian region.

• A Spanish restaurant offering a Sunday family-style paella and sangria pitcher dinner party.

• A Tavern serving hearty Prime Rib and potatoes anna on Sunday night only.

Now that you have a better idea of what could make a successful Sunday dinner program, it’s time to plan your menu! Get creative, and don’t forget to monitor customer feedback for guidance.

#Restaurant #SundayDinner #Marketing #Food #foodanddrink #lifestyleandleisure #MarketingStrategy #RestaurantManagement #RestaurantBusiness

How the NFL Playoffs Impact Restaurants

Spiro Pappadopoulos

selective focus close up photo of brown wilson pigskin football on green grass

With the NFL Playoffs upon us, it’s important for restaurant owners to understand how the demand for catering, reservations, and the influx of customers can directly affect their business.

The volume of reservations at restaurants across the US typically see a spike during the NFL playoffs, especially when a local team is in contention. This means restaurants should plan accordingly and make sure they are properly staffed and have adequate supplies and food on hand.

In addition to the spike in reservations, restaurant owners should also stay prepared for what customers will be expecting. Popular dishes for NFL playoffs include classic comfort food, fried favorites, and all the usual suspects such as buffalo wings, pizza and burgers. Catering can be a huge revenue source for gametime.

Here are a few tips on turning catering orders into opportunities to maximize revenue:

🍗 Tailor a special menu that plays to the crowd. Having a game-day themed menu helps capture attention and adds a specialized touch.

💰 Offer party packages for large orders. This encourages customers to buy in bulk, increasing both your revenue and order volume.

🌐 Utilize online delivery services. These facilitate order and delivery, making the process easy and flexible.

🥣 Items like buffalo wings, pizza, burgers, chili, jambalaya, and salads are great options, as they require less maintenance and travel well.

💬 Reach out to customers in different ways. This can include emailing customers, hosting giveaways like catering gift cards or featured dishes on social media, or offering loyalty rewards.

Make sure to implement the right strategies to boost your catering business this NFL Playoff season and win customers’ business!

#restaurants #catering #foodbusiness #NFLPlayoffs

Restaurant Marketing Tools to Out-Perform in 2023

Spiro Pappadopoulos

According to Statista, in 2021, it was estimated that there were 32,027 full-service restaurant franchise establishments in the United States. This doesn’t include the many quick-service establishments, which are also sure to see a rise in numbers in the coming years.

With so many restaurants competing for customers, it’s essential to have a solid marketing strategy to stand out from the crowd. Modern marketing tools, such as social media marketing, can be incredibly useful for restaurants, helping to build brand awareness and making it easier for customers to find and access your establishment.

Other strategies, such as loyalty programs, special discounts and promotions, and creative content marketing, can also be great ways to ensure your restaurant stays competitive. It’s essential to keep up with trends and experiment with new ideas to see what works best for your business.

An effective social media marketing strategy starts with setting goals and attaching metrics to them. It is essential to research your target audience and conduct competitor research to determine the best channels to focus on. Unique and engaging content should be created to capture the attention of your target audience, and a content calendar should be designed to track your strategy’s performance.

Social media marketing can be challenging for small restaurant operations due to the time, resources, and effort it takes to do it well. However, the right tools can make the process much easier. Data analytics tools can help track the performance of your strategy, market research software can make researching your target audience simpler, social listening tools can help you research your competitors, and AI-powered content creation tools can assist with generating new content. All restaurants should build an online presence using social media and other digital marketing channels. By understanding the resources available and viewing it as a long-term project, the process can be achieved.

woman holding set of liquor drinks — Photo by ELEVATE on Pexels.com

Getting Creative in the Age of Delivery

Spiro Pappadopoulos

The age of delivery arrived during COVID and it is entirely upon us today. This trend has cost restaurants a lot of their profit margin. So as more and more people rely on third-party delivery services for takeout, how can restaurants stay creative to stay profitable or in business at all?

🖼Create special delivery packs.

Think of ways to package up your dishes and include smaller items with them, such as inventive small side dishes, housemade drinks, or special appetizers, that help give your food creation and combination more value.

🛵Focus on in-house delivery.

If you own your services, you can control the delivery quality, times, and prices. This can help you better serve your customer and even add other items that suit the occasion of delivery.

📱Use digital marketing.

Be sure to use social media, text, and push notifications to your user base to ensure they stay up to date on special delivery offers you have. This can help direct them to in house delivery, bring them back multiple times, or introduce your delivery to guests who traditionally dine in the restaurant.

Remember, you’re not just selling a meal delivered to someone’s door. You’re delivering an experience. Get creative, and don’t just focus on the meal alone. Add extra value, such as vouchers, bonus points, or use unique promotions to spread the word.

Delivery has been a rising trend. You can use it to your advantage by providing creative and unique solutions, engaging the customer and giving them a reason to keep returning and referring their friends.

#restaurant #fooddelivery #onlinedelivery #marketing

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!

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.

Seeking Bottlenecks and Hurdles

Spiro Pappadopoulos

I seek the problems in your path, the obstacles to overcome, and encourage you to race at them.

You run a business, there are fifty things that you could do today, fifty ways to make progress and move your business forward.

The problem is there are going to be fifty tomorrow too, and on to infinity after that if you simply operate like a kid at a whack a mole game. To truly move ahead I suggest you seek the things that truly need your greatness, your ability.

Every business has a bottle neck, a singular issue that trumps all others and until it is solved it will hold back the potential of the organization. Your organization.

You are the owner, the one responsible for the loss and the biggest beneficiary of the gains that your business can create.

Define your Success and Attack the Hurdles before you.

If you shrug them off and do not face them, nobody else will. Thats the story. The leaking faucet, and the flickering lightbulb are issues that need attention, but the fact that you are losing custoemrs at the last second because your transaction mechanism is clunky, or the process is attractive to techies but not foodies needs your attention first.

Do you know how your product will be received by those that will buy it or another in massive numbers? How will your service facilitate the transactions it was designed to deliver?

All day today I met with clients and networked with companies, I asked them what their hurdles were.

That is when the true conversations happened. If you bring me in I am going to look for your organizations problems, operationally and marketing wise. I am going to poke at those sore spots and I am going to work to make them better, until they become a strength.

My favorite type of meeting is one like I had with the crew of getprivy.com today, bright honest people working to see their dream become a reality. It is a great idea that they are tweaking to try and go mainstream and big-time. I agreed with so much of what they said and believed and also was able to attack some of their hurdles with ideas and suggestions that I truly think were received with open minds. Check them out if you are in a retail space that wants to do some cutting edge online marketing.

My second favorite kind of meeting is where I ask about weaknesses, hurdles, and bottlenecks and the answers I get are ‘run arounds’ all they want to focus on their vision, not what is holding it back. I live in reality sorry people, I don’t live in dreamland. I like that type of meeting because I can make them short, and I can go back to helping the clients who are ready to find solutions to their operations and marketing issues.

Who is ready? I am. Think we can work together? Let me Know here. Just want to chat? find me @spirocks on twitter.

Keep up with my writing here:

The Problem with Facebook’s Zip Code Ads

Spiro Pappadopoulos

A little background:

Recently Facebook implemented a new way to target ads on their network. With the enabling of zip code specific ads, Facebook promised to allow a more specific way to distribute your ads. I wrote with enthusiasm about the prospects such a new ability would give those advertising to Facebook’s mammoth user base HERE.

So What’s The Problem with Facebook Zip Code Targeting?

A feature with so much promise has a very poor implementation, I recently tried to run ads for my restaurant, Evenfall, and wanted to select the cluster of zip codes around its location. Pretty straight forward right? Well I was unable to run the ads as this is what I got:

Basically facebook was telling me that I could not run an ad, because in the 5 zip codes I was targeting they had fewer than 20 people over 21 years old to show it to. That, of course, is complete bullshit. Whether they have a glitch or it is intentional it is wrong. I employ more than 20 people who are on facebook for gods sake.

So how did I run the ad? Well I explored the old 1o miles of a town method, but that includes areas I know customers are not coming from, and they suggested I bid $3,45 for a click which is absurd, so I decided not to run the add on Facebook.

In case you wondered here are two of the towns census numbers in 2000:

and

So of the 30,000+ less than 20 people are on Facebook? I don’t know, but with the Mafia wars invites, the ‘poking’, the virtual farms, the annoying club promoter invites, the horrible changes to photos, and more Facebook is really starting to feel clunky.

Have you had luck using the zip code features? If so let me know, I want to know the trick.

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restaurant promotion

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

Restaurant Marketing Simplification System:

How frequently to post to your social networks:

I seek the problems in your path, the obstacles to overcome, and encourage you to race at them.

Define your Success and Attack the Hurdles before you.

All day today I met with clients and networked with companies, I asked them what their hurdles were.

A little background:

So What’s The Problem with Facebook Zip Code Targeting?

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