Working at a restaurant is meaningless!
Let's face it, that's the hard truth. We work long hours preparing the food for our customers. Like we spend days making the dough, we shred cheese, slice vegetables, roast meat, etc.
Whatever you serve in your restaurant, you put days of work to get that ready. We do something that when a customer orders, hopefully within 25-20 minutes, we can provide them that food.
And you know, in reality, that food in a few hours is going to end up in the toilet and get flushed.
This industry is very tough. Working in a restaurant in itself, and running a restaurant is meaningless.
Sometimes we are stuck in the cycle of interviewing people, hiring them, training them, coaching them, terminating them, or they quit.
Doing these things every single week can be exhausting.
October 26 is a MAKE A DIFFERENCE DAY!
Today we are talking about how we, as restaurant professionals, can make a difference in the lives of our customers, our people, and our community.
This is something that I learned from watching Walmart's Shareholder Meeting (you can look this up on YouTube).
Public companies like Walmart, Amazon, Facebook, and more have quarterly shareholder report that they send out. Pizza Hut, Domino's, and Papa John's also include that.
They strongly recommend you look into those numbers. As mandated by law, they do have to report in public their sales.
They announce what they've been doing, and where the direction of the company is going for their shareholders.
This Walmart's Shareholder Meeting is quite different. They had a massive stage with bands, performers, and invited famous people to talk like Hollywood actress Jennifer Garner.
They had brought their folks from different parts of the world where Walmart is operating. Their CEO and other officials would come on stage, and there were music and dance. It was all about more of celebration.
They share the progress of the company, the differences they made for the meals they serve. Altogether the things they've been doing, they were celebrating it during this Shareholder Meeting.
Watching this made me realized some things that we can apply to our restaurants.
I would like to share what I learned from that, and what we've started implementing for our restaurant every single month that helped us to:
Build our brand and reputation in the community.
Be well known by the people and respected, which leads to people being gracious when we do mess things up.
Give meaning to the work that they do daily for them to know what they make possible.
Since then, we have been creating what we call a MONTHLY CUSTOMER IMPACT REPORT.
This is directly reporting about the impacts that we had as a restaurant in our community. We show this to the public through different platforms such as our social media, website, email newsletter, Facebook notes, Google post, etc.
We are proud of our restaurant's accomplishments and contributions to our community.
We are grateful for how each of our team members contributes to everything we do for the community. So we also present this report to our team internally using our own scheduling platform.
By being part of our company, we make it possible to make a difference in our community. I want everybody in our company to understand that as one team, we can collectively make a huge difference.
One way is just to tell them, and the other one is to share footage and tell stories.
As you know, telling facts in stories sell.
What do we put in our Monthly Impact Report?
Hopefully, if you see that it's going to help your team feel that the work becomes more meaningful, you can connect to your customers better by:
1. Sharing footage of every event you attend
Sharing footage, such as photos and videos of different events that you have hosted.
We have been donating gift cards or food, and we take photos anywhere we go.
We have that vision to share those at the end of every month. So we get the team on board.
An on-the-ground local strategy is very critical. No matter how good you are online, text message marketing, email marketing, Facebook ads, etc. It is still necessary that we physically interact with people.
Meeting them face to face, shaking their hands, passing out food, we are building goodwill.
We take food to our local fire station because we love them. We go to our local police station and bring them our food because we appreciate them protecting us. We support our local churches, we give free food to their youth group gatherings.
This is what we have been doing for five years in our restaurant.
In the last six months, we have decided to capture photos and videos of these events. Anywhere we go with our food, we take photos and videos.
2. Hosting various functions in the store and telling stories
We host several events in our restaurant, such as birthdays, anniversaries, graduation parties, etc.
Some of them are scheduled ahead of time, and some are on the spot celebrations.
Those are opportunities to catch memories through photos and videos.
Tell stories about what's happening around your food (or restaurant) to everybody.
What worked for us is to understand that the actual impact does not necessarily happen through us (the owners of the restaurant).
But rather, it happens within our people because they are the once doing the work. They are the ones who make things happen.
It also transpires through our customers. They can choose to go somewhere else, but they are choosing to do business with us.
They are prefer to celebrate their special occasions with us. That means the world because they have options.
So our Impact Report is not about our restaurant, it's about our people and our customers.
Ultimately our goal is that the community where our restaurant is located, we want it to be a better place.
Our vision is to have a better place to work, a better place to live, a better place for families because we are there.
In a previous show, I talked about how critical it is for us as local business owners, particularly restaurants, to be aware that one of our main roles in the community is to be a Connector.
Connecting our customers to one another, our customers to our people, our customers to the business community, and vice versa.
We are connectors because we have thousands of customers that we serve, and we have connections with the business community that also has access to thousands of customers.
It is a privilege to be in this position, and we do need to use that to benefit our community.
Here's what you need to do to start implementing your very own Customer or Team Impact Report and publish it every month in your restaurant:
1. Choose one main Point of Contact (POC).
Do you have a manager or somebody or even a team member who is friendly and caring enough to value people and eager to find opportunities for the restaurant where you can contribute to the community?
Assign that person to be the POC. Part of the POC's task is to gather stories, photos, and videos.
2. Communicate the vision to the whole team.
They need to understand fully what the vision is so they can capture stories and photos and videos effectively.
3. Create a team memo.
We use a team memo to make sure that everybody knows a particular piece of information. It can be written on a one-page paper.
On top of it would be the purpose of the memo and then succeeded by the steps that they need to follow. Also, don't forget to let all your team members sign it after they read and understand what is on the memo.
4. Document everything and be specific.
Any donations, spirit nights, fundraisers, graduation, birthdays, whatever occasion it may be, make sure you list all the different kinds of photos, videos, and stories that you need.
Our POC creates a Google Doc on Google Drive to collate all the footage and stories that are sent to her directly. She uploads all the photos and videos that are being shared to her to make one report.
On the last day of the month, the POC goes into the Google Doc and ensures that everything is in sequence and layout nicely.
5. Publish it through different platforms, externally, and within your team.
There are at least five places where we post the report externally for the public to see it:
Facebook - we create Facebook Note instead of a regular Facebook post.
Google post - you can create a post on Google as a business, and when people go in to leave you a review on Google pages, they will see those Google posts.
Facebook Groups - this is free and has great reach.
Website - we have blogs where we put the report so people can see our involvement in the community.
Email Marketing - send email messages every week to your loyal customers.
We share the same report internally, to our team members through our scheduling platform called 7 Shifts.
We thank the whole team for making things happen as one organization.
The truth is, if you do not celebrate the difference you make in the community, no one will.
Be proud of the difference you make in the lives of your people. Be proud of how you make a change in the community.
Start capturing photos and videos. Tell stories to everybody and inspire!
Listen to the podcast:
Download for free!
52 Ideas for 52 weeks of the year to market your restaurant!
The Ultimate Restaurant Marketing Guide
Tune in and Subscribe to the Show
