Here at Making Dough Show we are obsessed with MARKETING your restaurant, however, before we go all out and tell the world about our awesome restaurant, it’s critical to have the following 3 things in place.
Great marketing can put your restaurant out of business!
Marketing is simply shouting out from a mountaintop all about our restaurant!
If we don’t fix the following 3 things, we can set ourselves up for disaster.. Marketing too much!
These are simply basics.
GREAT FOOD
Yes, this is basic! If we don’t have great food, then, there is no need for our restaurant! However, “great food” is such a vague term because food is relative!
We our restaurant owners and chefs are absolutely and understandably bias toward our food! We believe wholeheartedly it’s the BEST!
What matters is not our opinion, but our customers!!!!
How to our customers opinions about our food? Easy. Just look up your online reviews!
Nowadays, our customers are trained to be generous with their opinions about our food and service.
Another thing to consider is that you may have great food.. But, do you serve the dish this great consistently?!!
There is a wonderful Mexican restaurant in town we go to and I love love their Chicken Tortilla Soup. It’s the best I’ve had. However, sometimes there is no cilantro, sometimes there is and I happen to love cilantro! Then, at times, there is more chile and way more spicy. #PortionControlFail
Considering the turn over in your restaurant, you realize that many of our team members are in training. So, the question is, those folks are they serving your awesome dish consistently? With the portions, consistency and etc?
SPEED OF SERVICE
Absolutely, no matter the food you serve if you do not master this one thing, it really doesn’t matter.
No one is willing to wait an hour for their food! If so, they would just stay home and eat ramen noodles!
People are coming to us hungry and they want their food NOW!
There is a multi-billion dollar section of the restaurant industry that is not based on their food quality or taste, but rather their SPEED OF SERVICE. Look at how people spend their money?
They are supporting the McDonalds of the world. So, that should tell you and me that the SPEED OF SERVICE matters to them.. So, it should matter to us!
When it comes to our speed of service, every single minute or even second counts!
Did you know the ticket time Chick Fil A shoots for is 120 seconds? As in 2 minutes?!!!
Now, that’s their standard. The question is, what is YOUR restaurants standards when it comes to speed of service?
How long before a customer receives their apps, their entré and etc.. also their CHECK! How many minutes???
I am a mom and I fully understand! When kids are hungry, they want to climb up walls and at times they misbehave. The parents feel embarrassed and when that happens, the whole experience is ruined no matter how good your food is.
So, we must be OBSESSED over this and push our team to constantly reduce the ticket times.. And gradually change our standards to less and less minutes! You’ll be surprised what your team can do when you put some restrictions.
Our SERVICE
If our service is not friendly, there is absolutely nothing to work with!
If you have awesome food, and fast ticket times but subpar service, you know people won’t put up with that!
Everyone has too many options and if we have mediocre service, we are going to lose. Period!
Something else you should consider is that if we minorly screw up the experience for a customer. Say, the order was taken wrong, or they wanted no mushrooms and the cooks made a mistake. Or say the food took a little long. These can happen to anyone. However, the customer is NOT going to be gracious to us if our servers were not friendly! If they failed to build rapport, show gratitude and courtesy in the way they interacted with the customer.
Then, the customer will not feel bad going into Yelp and bashing our restaurant!
This is another reason, it’s critical that we provide a very friendly service.
These are very basic stuff. Like smiling, warmly greeting a customer when they walk in, genuinely showing interest in them and expressing our gratitude. Having conversations for God’s sakes!! All this, CONSISTENTLY!
Service can’t be a hit or miss. If so, you’ll hear about it in your online reviews. Again, customers are very generous nowadays with their opinion.
That’s why it’s critical our servers are always in training! Becoming master conversationalists!
All these 3 aspects we talked about must be done consistently. Yes, I know I said this before! It’s because this one word is KEY!
Here at Making Dough Show, we are obsessed with helping you grow your restaurant sales. However, if you do not master these 3 things, no marketing in the world will help you!!! No Yelp ads, FB ads, mailer and etc!