Monthly Archives: March 2009

5 Reasons Why Paper Based Loyalty Punch Card,Though A Good Concept For Restaurants Turns Out To Be Costly For Both Franchisee And Franchisor .

Posted on March 18, 2009 by Nash Sherchan| 7 Comments
Flickr-Nick J Webb

Flickr-Nick J Webb

Paper Based Loyalty Punch Card Is A Good Concept For Restaurants To Attract More Customers. But Why It Turns Out To Be Costly To Franchiser And Franchisee Though Its Main Goal Is To Benefit Both?

Subway one of the most successful restaurant chain has tried paper based loyalty card. There is no doubt that the concept is good. Because essentially the idea is to give one more reason for your customers to choose your restaurants over it’s competitor. When you are offering one free meal after the 6th or 9th visit, you are rewarding your customers for their loyalty. The theory part is perfect. But when you bring that into practical field of restaurant marketing especially with thousands of chain restaurants like Subway, there is a fundamental problem. I like to call it a disorganized tracking system.  Since this is only in paper based and not in the digital form, it can be duplicated, altered and stolen and more importantly can not be tracked. That is when this good concept in theory turns out to not so perfect in practical.

Subway has already tried paper based loyalty punch cards. They had to pull out this program because the volume of the fraud that was going on was overwhelming. It was doing more harm to the Subway Corporate and Subway franchisee than the well intended benefit they were seeking from the program. There are couple of lessons to be learnt from the mistake that Subway has done that could save a franchiser tons of money and more importantly the hassles that a company has to go through later.

5 Reasons Why paper based loyalty program turns out to be not beneficial as intended in the first place:They are as follows:

  1. Not Trackable-
  2. Frauds – Internally and Externally
  3. Creates Confusions among Customers
  4. Chances of Loosing the Cards
  5. Creates Disharmony between Franchiser and Franchisee

Not Trackable – The biggest draw back of the paper based loyalty punch card is tracking system. It virtually doesn’t have tracking mechanism that can essentially track the cards and card holders and the redemption. So when you can not track what you are doing how can one know if they are really benefiting from the loyalty program.  It is like you are selling food in your restaurant but you are not able to track how much expenses your restaurant occurred and how much profits your restaurant made. It would be like firing a missile in the air without any target.

Frauds – Internally and Externally – Subway’s paper based loyalty program faced the biggest challenge not only from externally but internally too. When those loose paper loyalty cards are lying on the tables at the restaurant any employees or managers could take the cards and give it to their buddies or worst could sell in half price for profits. Another problem was from the fraud people out side of the restaurant who just wanted to take advantage of loop holes of disorganized system. The thieves would imprint exactly the same card may be in their own garage with a new laser printer and use it in multiple Subways. God knows how many times they would have used in those stores. I am guessing they were enjoying FREE Subway sandwiches for days if not months until they took away the program.

Creates Confusion to the Customers- Since the Subway Franchisee is hit with those fraud cards multiple times, he or she is very careful with every new free sandwich cards. May be some of them would have brought their thick lens glasses to make sure they read it right. Well now this creates confusion to the customers. Now the customers who are bringing the original cards are confused with the franchisee looking at the cards as if it was a duplicate one. This creates tension between a Restaurant business owners and the genuine customers.  Customers might feel that the restaurant owners didn’t trust them. So it could be that the same customers might never come to that restaurant. After all you do business only with them who trust you right.

Chances of Loosing the Cards. This is not a major issue but still counts when you have thousands and thousands of restaurants like of Subway. When customers comes claiming that they lost their cards there is no way you can track them. If it was a digital card you could deactivate the lost card and instantly issue a new loyalty card.  As a franchisee restaurant you don’t know what to do with these customers who come to you claiming they lost their cards. If it is only one card then it might be OK. But when there are millions of customers claiming for lost cards and worst claiming that they had 9 punches already and the 10th was next when they get their free Sandwich. This puts franchisee and franchiser in really an awkward situation.

Creates Disharmony between Franchiser and Franchisee- Franchisor created the loyalty program with a good intention to benefit their franchisee. But because of the disorganised tracking mechanism, it puts pressure on the franchisee with unnecessary hassles. This might lead to even loose some of their loyal customers due to trust issue. This creates a communication gap between a franchisee and franchiser. Franchiser with a good intention implement a program. Since the program doesn’t work in the practical field, the franchisees don’t accept the concept. This then leads to create disharmony between Franchiser and Franchisee relationship.

Hope other restaurant chains big or small may take note of this and learn from the mistakes of Subway. It is said smarter restaurant are those who learn from their own mistakes but smartest restaurants are those who learn from other mistakes. So I hope you will not make the same mistake that Subway made and save tons of money and hassles. If you do decide to incorporate loyalty program in your restaurant, I would recommend you to implement digital loyalty program.

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World Controls The Message Of Your Restaurant. How You Can Participate In Cyber Conversation And Create A Buzz About Your Restaurant That Is Worth Making A Remark About?

Posted on March 17, 2009 by Nash Sherchan| Leave a comment

It is an incident that happened couple of weeks ago which I forgot about it and let it go. I couldn’t help but think about it again and again because what they did was against the purpose why they did it in the first place. They themselves defeated their own main purpose of getting the message wide spread to as many people as possible.

Well you might be thinking what on earth I am talking about. It is about a blog post that I had written couple of weeks back. I had found a video from one of the television network  on the internet. I found it so relevant to what I was writing on the post that I decided to share with my audience what was happening in  the restaurant industry with regards to economy down turn and its affect on even  high end restaurants.

To my surprise after few days they had taken out the main content from the video and only left the advertisement part of their television network. Well that doesn’t do any good to my blog post that was attempting to convey the message in conjunction to the video content. I was not only advertising their brands on my blog. I would definitely do it with along with the content.  But to them it was like “Get but don’t Give”. Well that formula might  have worked during pre industrial Tv age but it doesn’t work in the information age when message is not controlled by the mass media like TVs but by the world.

I think they don’t realise that they don’t any more control the message. With this incident I get the sense that television industry, some of them are still in the pre industrial age thought process where they believe that all the news or message of the world has to pass and consumed through them. Not any more if some of the Tv executives or department head think so. They though they could control me what I can and can not share with my audience. Well if they thought so then they are wrong. Though they took away the video content, it didn’t do any harm to me. All I did was go to You tube and found another similar video content who understood the value of sharing and posted that video. It did more harm to them than me.

Let me explain why? First of all when any one loads up video online with a BIG SHARE button, that means it  is meant to be shared. They want to get exposed to as many eye balls as possible. Isn’t that what television network want to do? To have as many viewers as possible. But when they took out the video content it was self defeating purpose. If you are a football fan then it is like suicidal goal where your own team mate is scoring suicidal goal against your own team. I am sure any successful team whether it is in football team or television team wants to have that.

Lesson to be learnt from traditional Media Like Television.

Restaurants might think what are the lessons here. Well there are couple of  big lessons here.They are outlined as follows:

  1. Lessson Number 1 – Don’t think you control the message any more in the information age.
  2. Lesson Number 2 -  Give to Get
  3. Lesson Number 3 -  Participate in the Conversation and don’t be snob in the virtual world.
  4. Lesson Number 4 -  When you are on the internet you go with the mindset of sharing

Like the Tv that thought they controlled the message, don’t assume that you control the message about your restaurant. Good or bad is going to be decided by the customers. If they didn’t like your service or quality of the food, they are going to talk bad about it online leaving bad comments on social sites like Yelp or Face book or Twitter. So as much as you would like those negative comments not to be exposed, it is not in your control any more. Those high school kids has the power to tell 175 million people at a click of a mouse on Face book. So I would recommend you to focus on providing the best food and excellent service and not worrying about controlling the message. World controls the message now.

Don’t be stingy . You have to give before you get. This is a universal principle that applies to any thing in life and business. You have to give some reason for customers to come to your restaurant.

Don’t act like snob in a virtual world. Don’t clench your fist rather open your hand to give cyber handshake to new people you meet online. Participate in the conversation that goes online whether it is on blogs, or Twitter. To explain further this concept of being open in the cyber world, I cannot think of other example than video presented by Gary Vaynerchuk. Watch the video and you will know what I am talking about.

I hope this will enlighten you about the guidelines how you can have your restaurant’s online presence effective by opening your heart and arms for good cyber handshake and increase more fans on Face book and followers on Twitter.

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7 Rules On Twitter That Restaurants Can Follow To Attract More Followers And Then Turn Them Into Customers.

Posted on March 16, 2009 by Nash Sherchan| 4 Comments

Though I had seen Twitter long time ago when Rick Sanchez was using it on CNN for instant feedback from his viewers I had never thought of using it. Little did I know then how effective it was to multi communicate with like minded people that you have never seen and known. But similar thinking and viewpoints of common people bring them  closer in a virtual world thought they are physically distance  apart. The tool that is this dynamic and versatile is Twitter. I believe after using for couple of months and seeing it’s effectiveness with my own eyes, I believe it is one of the best invention in communication  that we have seen so far. It is far better than  telephones the greatest invention of our times. I say this because telephone is confined to a limited number of people at a time  that allows limited communication. The biggest hurdle in sharing ideas with this communication channel is the cost. The cost is so high not only in terms of money but the time that few people would dare using this channel to share their ideas with common people. On the contrary, with Twitter it is open communication platform where unlimited number of people can communicate at once  and the cost of communication is virtually zero when one has internet connection. This opens a door to even a regular common people who doesn’t have money but has ideas in their head that they want to discuss with the like minded people and collaborate with them and have a joint venture partnership or form a company to build a company based on their common ideas.

Twitter doesn’t care if some one,be it a person or a company have money or not. All it cares is whether they have ideas that is worth spreading. So as a restaurant business Twitter has levelled the plain field for marketing. It means that you as a small restaurant have a chance to battle even a big chain restaurant with big marketing budgets. It is not about how much money you can spend on mass media marketing now but it is how effective you can be using social media like Twitter and that is available for FREE.

Over a period of few months I have experienced myself how to engage in a conversation in Twitter and also tried to follow some of the top 7 restaurant brands on Twitter to get an idea how they are using Twitter. Combining both my experience and traits of 7 successful restaurant brands on Twitter I have found seven rules that is effective on Twitter to be successful in creating tons of followers. They are as follows:

  1. Start a conversation. Be an authentic voice of your restaurant
  2. Be Polite with Reply and thankful for Retweet.
  3. Follow who followed you
  4. Don’t block any one with Direct Message
  5. Try to blend humour with the message
  6. Don’t over do it. Go with a natural flow when it  is relevant.
  7. Twitter is not magic but when used correctly you can make it appear like a magic to your competitor.

Start a conversation. Be an authentic voice of your restaurant.Twitter is full of human but robots. Human beings like to communicate with humans and not with computers. So try to create your own authentic voice of the restaurant you represent. And most importantly start conversation not with plain statements but ending with question type statement like ” Today is cold outside. We have tomato basil or Chicken Noodle soup. Which one would make you feel warmer? ” See you are trying to engage your customer with some thing to say. In the contrary if you said only ” Today is cold outside. We have tomato basil or Chicken Noodlesoup”. You are not engaing people. You are just plain talking to your self. It is like a boring lecturer lecturing his classroom full of intellectual students who don’t want to listen to him.

Be Polite with Reply and thankfulfor Retweet. Try to reply any questions that your potential customers might have even if they have never visited your restaurant. You never know when that customer is going to come and visit your restaurant even if he leaves in different state. He or she might visit your town and come looking for your restaurant. Even when you get some stones thrown at you, be diplomatic when answering those replies. Always thank for the person that retweet your message. It is a courtesy. They  liked your message and took a time to share with their followers so you owe a thank. They will be pleased and will remember that you are a courteous person who is polite and thankful.

Follow who follow you . Well some people might not agree with this point to follow every one who follows you. That is ok as every individual has different priorities and goals. But as a restaurant business our goal is to attract as many potential customers as possible. So when some one is following you that means they liked your message or what your restaurant has to offer. Following them back is like saying that yes we are open to talking with you too. It is like cyber handshake in a digital world. If you don’t want to open your closed fist for cyber handshake how can you expect to build a relationship with a strangers you just met on Twitter. Without a relationship there is no business too. After all business is built around relationship based on mutual trust. The perfect example of a company who follows this principle is Zappos. It is one of the most customer centric company online. They understand the value of potential customers who could be a customer of life time.There fore they leave their door open to even a stranger that they meet on Twitter and follow them back as a gesture of cyber handshake. If you want to check out with your own eyes you can see then at www.twitter.com/zappos

Don’t Block any one with direct message. Again this is another area where people have different views. But as a restaurant you want to open your direct message to every one that follows you. I have seen so many people block this. With due respect to their own priorities, I feel opening this lets a chance to communicate their perspective on any issues. After all  we decided to communicate via twitter to know the unknown. So if we close the door then we are always unknown. Especially to the restaurant business this applies. Because there might be some customers desperately wanting to connect with you or simply trying  to tell about a service problem to you and if this is blocked then how on earth would you know about it. You miss a chance to build a strong relationship with this customer who could have helped your restaurant in correcting all the weakness and make improvement upon them.

Try to blend the humour with your tweets. People come to twitter not only to communicate. They come there because it is a fun place to hang out. If you are talking about the same boring stuff that they are used to in the physical world then they might not follow you. In fact they would unfollow you even if they had followed you to begin with. So make your effort to be little more interesting than regular folks out there in the bushes with some jokes or humorous comments that gives your twitter message a style with a difference when it appears in Twitter. Popeyes Chicken does this best with their tweets. If you want to have a taste of humour tweets you can do it by following them at www.twitter.com/PopeyesChicken

Don’t over do it. Go with a natural flow when it  is relevant. Some time it can get tempted to tweet many times a day especially when you are starting new. You might have nothing to say and this might cause you pressure to say something when your twitter has only few updates. That’s ok in the beginning. But don’t push your self to be what you are not. It has to come natural from you and do it only when you feel it is appropriate and right time for tweet.  Don’t try to bombard with useless information to your followers. Try to add value to your followers with rich information that is useful to them.

Twitter is not magic but when used correctly you can make it appear like a magic to your competitor. Restaurants should look Twitter as another powerful communication tool. If you use this tool effectively and correctly then you will gain tons of benefit that your restaurant might not be able to handle. Well that is a good problem to have that any restaurant would gladly accept. But if you use it incorrectly then you will hit the axe on your own foot. It is like a loaded gun. If you use it correctly you will kill lots of birds at one shot and if you aim incorrectly there is a chance that you might shoot at your self. So I caution you to use it with proper guidance. You will be amazed how this simple free tool called Twitter can be so effective in attracting so many customers to your restaurants that it will lead your competitor scratch his head thinking it is a magic.

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Google Business Center-Learn How To Put Your Restaurant On Google Map And Add Coupons To Attract Customers For Free.

Posted on March 12, 2009 by Nash Sherchan| Leave a comment

There are so many free online resources provided by Google to business like restaurants and many others it some time lead us to think Why Google would do it for free? Well Google wants to help small local businesses and may be in turn it will help them to gather all the datas of local businesses which in turn later will help them to benefit for the company. I guess they believe in first give and get later principle. Well that is true in any business. What ever the case may be, the important thing for us as a restaurant business is to take advantage of this free tool called Google Business Center where they enable small business owners to place their restaurants on Google maps and also let them add coupons to attract the customers.

Watch the video and it will show you step by step how to set up your restaurant in Google map. Follow the video tutorial and get your restaurant exposed to the world at no cost of yours. Without spending a dime it will give you at least an online presence. When local customers or tourists from different states or different countries visit your town they might be looking for a local restaurants in your town. If you place your restaurant in Google Map then it will enable the potential customers to find you. To attract the potential online customer to the physical store you could offer google online coupons. You can do this by adding coupons within the Google Business Center.

Hope your restaurant business will take advantage of this free tool provided by Google for an online presence.

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What Sways The Customers Mind To Choose The Restaurant They Visit For Lunch?

Posted on March 10, 2009 by Nash Sherchan| Leave a comment

Does restaurant brand matters at all in the information age while the information are accessible at a finger tip?

Brand is some thing which every restaurant wants to establish in the hearts and mind  of the customers. Big Restaurant chains have done this throwing millions of dollars in industrial age media like television commercials , radio, newspapers. But does this huge advertising spendings on old school media justify the brand they intend to create in the minds of new generation customers.

Well to answer this question, lets dive into what really branding means to today’s customers of new  generation ? Restaurant Branding in the information age has changed a lot due to the instant access to an information of any thing including restaurants via internet. Thanks to Google that has made this possible. Branding in the industrial age when there were no internet, it used to be a logo, symbol or even a name that was associated with quality and trust in the eyes of customers. Don’t get me wrong because branding is still the identity or representation of a company that assures quality and trust. But the perceiving power of any brand-established or non established has gone to consumers due to instant access of information to that particular restaurant brand. It even narrows down to that particular fanchise restaurant at a particular location.Branding in information age is perceived value of a company in the minds of the customers. It can not dictate the mind of a person to like a restaurant despite poor service or quality it promised by it’s mothership brand. For example Blimpie was a top sandwich chain restaurant which could have gone along with Subway. In the process, they focused more in the growth than the quality. Ofcource, there are very good Blimpie sandwich restaurants that serves fresh sandwiches. But when I visited a couple of them, I found stale  tomatoes used in the sandwiches. I lost the desire to have sandwich in Blimpie then. Since then I haven’t visited Blimpie and it’s been years now. So the point here is that even though Blimpie who probably spent millions on that brand is valued worthless in my mind. No matter how much money they throw at television or radio, it can not change my perception of their brand. Because it is not the flashy ad that I look on the television but the fresh tomatoes that they serve on the sandwich prepared in their franchise restaurants.

When people have 30-45 minutes break for lunch, how does convenience and faster ordering system plays a vital role in your customers decission process in choosing the restaurant and also changing the brand perception.

Another thing for the restaurant brands-big or small to do is raise the bar by offering  convenient and faster ordering system via mobile devices like iPhone. Because if they don’t maintain the competitive edge then the brand perception of the restaurant can degrade quickly in a matter of few clicks and push of buttons on their mobile devices. People today working at corporations or students at colleges, they maintain fast pace life. Restaurants have to understand these digitally  advance customers and must be able to keep up with  their rapid demands. No matter how much money big restaurant brands throw at those flashy ad on the television they can not control the perception of these most socially aware customers. With a push of button on their iPhone they will get an instant information about the restaurant whether it is a good one as they advertise on TV or the bad ones they are flatly lying.  All they have to do is go to social sites like Yelp and look at the restaurant reviews from real people like you and me. They are not the paid actors like the one  on the ad where their minds are controlled by the company to say  only good things. At yelp you will get access to even the bad things about the branded restaurant if it does have poor service or not so good quality food. The big brands like Pizza hut, Papa Johns or Domino’s for example would not have any control of these messages- good or bad. When these information is available on the internet, Big Brands can not  simply control the perception value of their brand in the minds of the new generation customers. In fact they control their value of the brand.

Lets bring in another example here to further explain this concept. Lets say in one area there is a Chipotle Mexican Grill, Moe’s South West Grill and Qdobas. They all are similar concepts selling pretty much the same stuffs like burritos, tacos, nachos, quesedillas with slight variations. Now the customers  are in same area with the same driving radius miles. Recently Chipotle introduced their iPhone mobile ordering system for any customers to order their burritos or any food items via iPhone and pay it online and get the food with out even waiting in the line. Now this is some thing that Chipotle has done, one step further to make it faster for time challenged customers. Though a customers might like Moes or Qdobas, his or her decission making process of choosing the restaurant might sway towards Chipotle. The reason is because of the limited time available to the office workers for lunch break.

When customers come out of their office to driving parking lot they have already lost 5 minutes. Now driving to the restaurant location, it might take another 5 minutes if they don’t have traffic. There is a big if. Once they reach the restaurant there is a big line. This is where it gets complicated. Some time it might take 5 or 10 minutes or may be even more time to order their food. Before they start enjoying their food their lunch break is over. The time they are supposed to enjoy while eating their food is lost in the process of getting the food. So if restaurant like Chipotle cuts that time to minimal by allowing them to order via iPhone before leaving their office and allowing them to pick up the food with out waiting in the line then this will change the perception about Chipotle restaurant brand over Moes or Qdobas. So among the big restaurant brands it self one has to work to create a friendly brand value in customers mind.  With this easy ordering system available I think time challenged customers would want to wait for 10 extra minutes just to get their food and not enjoy their lunch break. Even if they were Moe’s or Qdobas fan, during the lunch time they would simply choose Chipotle because of faster ordering system experience.  In this case the brand perception value of Chipotle is increased instantly compared to Moes or Qdobas even in the minds of Moe’s or Qdobas fans.

So branding in information age is not permanent and changes fast in the minds of customers depending upon how much value you can create in the minds of new generation customers and not solely creating flashy advertisements in the televisions.

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Mobile Marketing- A trend in Pizza Restaurant Industry That Is Changing The Way We Buy Pizzas.

Posted on March 9, 2009 by Nash Sherchan| 7 Comments

Why Mobile Coupons are getting popular during the economic downturn?

It is apparent that Mobile marketing is the trend in a restaurant industry that is changing our preferences over everything to mobile. It is natural because  a mobile device like iPhones, gPhones and Blackberry’s are always with our selves. Since they enable mobile web access, it is more easier for us as customers to opt in for coupons and order  pizza via mobile ordering system without  ever opening our desk top which might take a minute or two just to reboot.  By this time with a mobile phones, we  could order the pizza and be done with it may be even before the computer is ready after it reboots.

Lets face it today, due to the economy down turn every one wants to save money on their dinning expenses. Forget about those expensive restaurants for a while now before economy comes back. Customers have cut back on going to fancy restaurants with high priced menu items. No wonder even the high end restaurant have come up with creative marketing ideas to lure the budget oriented customers by offering under $10 price on menu items. Pizza restaurant are no different to them. In order to attract those customers on tight budget, they have to throw incentives  in the form of mobile coupons. Pizza restaurants have been known for years for offering paper coupons but not the mobile coupons.

Domino’s rolls out national mobile coupon program. This should indicate that at least pizza restaurants if not all restaurants need to adopt mobile marketing if they want to sustain the business in the age of mobile phones. People have started changing their food ordering habits by purchasing pizzas via their mobile devices like iPhones over computers.

Domino’s have selected Air2Web a company based out of Atlanta to manage their mobile marketing campaigns. It is strictly permission based  mobile coupons that is sent to customers who have opted in, via text message. When the customers receive the text based coupons via text message they can use those coupons while placing an order for their pizzas online in English or Spanish by visiting at www.dominos.com or from a web-enabled mobile devices like iPhone or gPhone at www.mobile.dominos.com/ One thing that is attractive about the mobile coupon is that they are trackable and measurable. Since customers don’t have to go through a hassle of clipping the coupons, they are more receptive to these kind of digital coupons. Redemption rate also go as high as 5 to 15 % where as the redemption rate on paper based coupon could be as low as 1%.

It is about time for all the restaurants including other independent pizza restaurants to take mobile marketing seriously and start learning about it at least if not use it.

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Posted in Mobile Marketing, Viral Video Marketing

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Top 7 Restaurant Brands That Are Worth Following On Twitter.

Posted on March 8, 2009 by Nash Sherchan| 5 Comments

Restaurant is a part of a service industry where service might be equally or may be more important than any other aspects of the business while delivering the food that the customers buy. In the past, when customers received a bad service or not so good quality food, they used to write comment cards and drop them into a suggestion box or send complain letters. It used to take days before they reached to the company. More often they used to get lost in those piles of other files on the desk without reaching to the main person in the company. No matter how mad the customers were, all they could do was tell bad things about the restaurant to certain number of people that you could probably count in your fingers. But today that is not the case.

Today with Y2 generations and baby boomers who are into Twitter, the first thing they do when they are unhappy with the quality of food or service is, they tweet about it in 140 or less characters and tell all his or her followers that could be in thousands. In one push of a button on their mobile phones or at a click of mouse on their computers they could literally expose it to the whole world. There was a fine example when Tony CEO of Zappos few weeks ago tweeted about a restaurant that didn’t have a Swiss cheese for him while he went for a lunch at that restaurant. The restaurant is supposed to have cheese right. Since they didn’t have one he made a joke about it by saying that it is like staying at a hotel and not having a towel for the guest. Well hotels are supposed to have the towels right. The point here is that single tweet went to thousands of his followers and they again retweeted to their followers. So the compounding effect was enormous that gave a bad public relation to that restaurant. Had they maintained Twitter account and monitored this in a real time then they would have been able to put the fire off by instantly providing Swiss Cheese even if they would had to borrow or buy from their neighbours. Infact it would have been a great chance to turn that negative into positive by providing Swiss Cheese right away and proving to the world that they are fast at solving problems that might arise to their customers, via Twitter.

There are couple of top restaurant brands who have understood the importance of real time customer service. Some of the brands were listed in Mashable. But there are few other new ones that I have added by analysing their twitter success so far. All the 7 restaurants have been able to use Twitter as an effective tool to communicate directly with their customers and help them with anything from directions, contact information, to customer complains on a real time.Out of many restaurants there are seven top restaurant brands that are worth following. The 7 top restaurant brands are:

  1. Starbucks
  2. Dunkin Donuts
  3. Kogi Korean BBQ
  4. Coffee Groundz
  5. Burger King
  6. Popeyes Chicken
  7. Jasons Deli

Starbucks is the top brand by far in any catogories of restaurants that holds number one position with the most number of followers. At the time of writing this article they had 72936 followers. The number of their total followers alone should prove that other restaurants should be on Twitter. It is worth their time and investment that could not be measured may be in dollar amount but definitely in number of happy customers. Brad Nelson is the guy behind Starbucks twitter success. With a coffee back ground it has helped him to understand Starbucks customers very closely and reply every direct messages he get on his Tweet Deck. Tweet Deck that he is using to manage his tweets has enabled him to manage direct messages, topic trends and monitor Starbucks reputation and many more useful information.You can follow Starbucks at www.twitter.com/starbucks

Dunkin Donuts with 9186 followers at the time of writing this article is in the second place of top restaurant brands that is using twitter effectively. Joe to David aka “Dunkin Dave” is the the guy who is behind Dunkin Donuts twitter success. One of the thing that I like about Dunkin Donuts is that they have been successful in engaging their customers and creating a great relationship with them. They have used You tube video channel to reach their loyal customers that they would not not able to otherwise with the traditional televisions. With the use of Twitter Dunkin Donuts have indicated that their company is for deeper relationship with their customers and to help them in every way they can.You can follow them at www.twitter.com/DunkinDonuts

Kogi Korean BBQ is the best example as a proof how Twitter can quickly create the restaurant brand in the shortest period of time. Kogi BBQ which started last November in 2008, has gained it’s popularity not only in LA but in the whole United States and virtually in the world because of Twitter. They have used Twitter so effectively that they have created a great brand which did not existed even before 6 months. With in this short period of time, they have been able to grab 7607 loyal followers. Some of them are so food fanatic that they even chase for their truck in the middle of the night and wait for 2 hours to get a burrito or taco.You can follow them at www.twitter.com/kogibbq

Coffee Groundz is another independent coffee shop based out of Houston,Texas that has adopted social media like Twitter which enables them to stand out from the crowded coffee shops and restaurants. J.R. Cohen, operation manager of Coffee Groundz is the man behind it’s Twitter Success. With 3567 followers at the time of writing this article, they are on the fourth place. One of the cool things that I like about this coffee shop is that they are so responsive to every tweet even if it is from an unknown person who has never visited their coffee shop. I know it because I have tweeted and they had responded to my queries. I asked them about their ustream live concert show they were having in their coffee shop as this was a great interest to me. They were very responsive. Though I have not visited their Coffee shop, I will make every effort to visit them when I am in Houston,Texas. I am saying this not because I am writing this article but because they have connected with me via Twitter. So as a human being I feel I have already built a relationship with their coffee shop. This is a perfect example how using Twitter can be successful in attracting even an unknown person like me to their business by extending a cyber handshake. Only one online tool that is this dynamic that enables is Twitter. You can follow them at www.twitter.com/coffeegroundz

Burger King-the famous burger chain has taken the fifth place with 2102 followers at the time of this writing. Burger King is experimenting with Twitter right now to see how effective it can be to communicate well with its customers and create a friendly brand.They use Tweetdeck to manage their day to day tweets answering questions and putting the fires off right and left. Tweet deck is a great application for them to monitor their brand by searching “Burger King and “theBKlounge” in the twitter search. You can follow them at www.twitter.com/theBKlounge

Popeyes Chicken the famous fried chicken restaurant of Louisiana has held the sixth place with total number of 1829 followers at the time of this writing. One of the distinct characteristics of Popeyes Chicken is that they blend the humour with their tweets. One of the early taste of humour tweets that I got from them was when I wrote an article about Restaurant Branding via Twitter. It said like @iRestaurant put a little more meat on the bone. Loving his article:http://bit.ly/Atk6M . It was referring to an article where I had added more stuffs to it to make more packed and informative. Even today I get the taste of their humour tweets every now and then even though it is directed to their customers. I am so hooked that I have even started using their humour tweet like ” I try breast to leg up all the restaurant entrepreneurs in using Twitter as an effective online marketing tool.” When asked about the person behind Popeyes Chicken Twitter success they joke it by saying that they are so chicken to even expose their identity that they don’t want to release their name. This alone makes every one start cracking to laughter. Wait till any new customers get their first tweet from Popeyes Chicken. They would probably be laughing their lungs out when they come to their stores to try their Buffalo Chicken Wrap or Cajun Spiced Fried Chicken. If you want to experience that laughter even if you can’t visit the store ,you can do that by following them at www.twitter.com/popeyeschicken

Jasons Deli is on the seventh place with 1342 followers at the time of this writing. Jasons Deli is another Restaurant brand that have been experimenting with lots of online tools in their marketing effort. One of the new tool that they are trying out right now is obviously Twitter and it seems it has been effective so far. One of the other tool that they have used very effectively is online ordering system. They have one of the robust online ordering system that they can manage their online ordering, deliveries and catering orders from one central location. In conjunction with their website, online ordering they have added the Twitter component to their communication channel to bring their already built customer relationship to more close and engage in more deeper level. You can follow them at www.twitter.com/jasonsdeli

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How Dairy Queen Is Using Blog As A New Medium To Reach Customers Of New Generation Like Facebook, My Space And Twitter.

Posted on March 7, 2009 by Nash Sherchan| Leave a comment
Dairy Queen

Why it is important for any restaurants to maintain a blog apart from regular website in this new digital age ?

Recently Dairy Queen has entered to the world of Blogs. Dairy Queen understands that it is very vital in this day and age of digital world, to connect with it’s customers with new medium like Blog. Dairy Queen, one of the prominent brand in the restaurant industry, starting a separate blog apart from it’s static website indicates that no more can any restaurant depend on just a regular website with no means to two way communication with it’s customers.

Time has changed a lot since the inception of internet. When restaurant used to have a flashy website, they did provide some contact information to directions and phone numbers but they were not able to engage with their customers at a deeper level. But today it is so easy that  any one can create blogs for their restaurant with a simple guidance or video tutorials. This has enabled restaurant business-small or big an opportunity to connect with it’s customers so close that it has never been able to do so in the past. Using widgets like Flickr restaurants can share the happy moments by uploading photos of their customers on the blog. They can even record the video of a birthday party of their customers and share with their own community of  loyal customers by embedding the You Tube video on their blog. This has given a life to the regular website which seemed dead with out the means of sharing those lively photos and videos on their blog.

Y2 Generation and Baby boomers, the two most socially aware groups in the world have changed their life style going digital maintaining their cyber homes at social sites like Face book and My Space. They are avid users of Twitter and never leaves their iPhones, gPhones and Black Berry. They are always in a rush and maintain a fast pace life. They are impatient and can’t wait long in lines to get their lunch. They would prefer ordering through mobile phones like iPhone and pay online with their credit card or pay pal account. They come straight to the Cash register, show their text order confirmation number and get their food and out they go. If restaurants can’t maintain the same level of speed of these new generations then they will leave your restaurant at a push of a button on their mobile phones.

These two groups are one of the most influential groups who has more money and digital power than any other group.So neglecting these group might not be at the best interest of any restaurant. Instead learning their styles and talking their language would be the best route for success by using blogs and communicating to them via twitter. Some of them maintain their own authority blogs who command a power to even thousands of follower under them. If you make them angry or provide bad service then with a click of mouse they would tell the whole world about it on their blog. So it is very critical for all the restaurants to understand this new time we are entering and need to change to evolve and manage your restaurant in a new way.

Dairy Queen has maintained their blog as a central point where they engage with their customers. Every now and then at an interval of days they post new information about the new products, game contests, sweet deals and many other thing that is related to the company and are useful to the customers. They also have a RSS -Really Simple Syndication that allows their customers to subscribe blog post automatically and also receive them via email. That keeps their customers updated with everything that is happening within Dairy Queen. I saw them releasing the You Tube video showing the back of the scenes videos which are not available to general customers. This gives a chance for their customers to see what goes behind the scene of making such a great blizzard or any other products. They also have used the survey on the blog to get the pulse of their customer’s food preferences. They also have integrated Twitter within the blog. Any body visiting the blog will have a chance to folow them on Twitter. By far this would be the most powerful communication tool that Dairy Queen is using in conjunction with the Blog. To check out their blog you can visit at http://blog.dairyqueen.com/

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How Twitter Is Changing The Way We Communicate And How It Will Affect Your Restaurant Business.

Posted on March 3, 2009 by Nash Sherchan| Leave a comment

Watch the video and hear direct from Evan Williams CEO of Twitter about how his company has evolved from a small idea into a big phenomenon how we as human beings have changed our ways we communicate to each other. Never in the history, has any other medium made our human interactions faster and more interactive than Twitter. Not even telephones,the greatest invention of our time.

Twitter is new in the social media arena. So you might argue that not all of your customers are on Twitter right now . So that one doesn’t have to worry about getting into social media like Twitter. I would say that at least every restaurant should start learning about Twitter  if not use it right away to your restaurant marketing advantage.

The biggest question you need to ask your self is whether people are talking about your restaurant in Twitter or not? You can do it by searching your restaurant name in search.twitter.com . If you don’t see any thing about your restaurant. Then you have to find out why people are not talking about your restaurant on Twitter. When people find restaurants excellent they buzz about that restaurant online. If you don’t believe it, type in  @kogibbq  or Kogi korean BBQ in search.twitter.com and you will know how and why people talk about restaurants on Twitter. May be you have to look hard into your product, service and marketing to make sure that they are  remarkable so people would have something to remark about on Twitter.

On the other hand if some one is talking about your restaurant, one needs to find out what are they talking about whether it is good or bad. If it is good then you can enjoy the best pr you can get for your restaurant and keep on providing even better service and products. If someone  is talking bad about your restaurant, you need to listen what they are saying online and engage with those customers first thanking them for pointing out your restaurant’s weakness and then rectifying it with alternative solutions.

When you look at the growth rate of Twitter, it is mind blowing. It is growing like crazy at an exponential rate. Evan Williams on one of the interviews has predicted that most of the people would be on Twitter within 5 years. This means you are on head start to be the first in this band wagon and start attracting your loyal customers and other potential customers as your Twitter followers before your competitors starts picking every one. Social media and Twitter are here to stay for a long time. It is just the beginning. So there is no point waiting for any reason. So go to www.twitter.com and create your restaurant account. You will be glad you did it. You will start discovering how beneficial it is to your restaurant business.

This is Twitter Profile page of Kogi Korean BBQ restaurant

Kogi Korean BBQ restaurant in LA has proved that Twitter can be the most effective communication tool for any restaurant business. They have used twitter to relay the messages to their customer about their estimated time of arrival at the prescheduled location and delays caused by the traffic every now and then.  They also send some specials of the day via twitter for those who would like to take advantage of the savings. Every time they introduce new items on the menu, they tweet them via twitter. When they post those funny photos on Flickr or great road trip video clips on YouTube they tweet them to all their twitter followers and they would be notified with in seconds. Then all of their followers would have a chance to visit their  blog to see those photos, videos or new menu items that they introduced. The communication would be that fast and instantaneous.

I hope this gives you an idea how Twitter can be one of your most effective communication tool available for free on the internet that you could use today and start building a die hard twitter followers of your restaurant creating a great brand.

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How Kogi-Korean BBQ Restaurant is leveraging Blog, Flickr,Twitter And Facebook to effectively market their Restaurant.

Posted on March 2, 2009 by Nash Sherchan| Leave a comment

The video  is inspirational to many especially restaurant entrepreneurs who come to America with a dream to make it big in restaurant industry. Though it might seem overnight success, it is not. There is years of dedication in the art of food, passion for what Mark Manguera and Roy Choi believed in. Nothing derailed their conviction. Few months ago, when they were just starting, no body would want to try their food let alone buy the food. Mark even had to beg people to try the food. This was a humble begining unwilling to take “no” for answer. They were persistent and kept on moving ahead pushing hard. They introduced their food to new customers one at a time. Once they ate the food, they couldn’t believe it was that delicious. They couldn’t help but spread the words and  become their die hard fans.

Kogi Korean BBQ restaurant  is not a new thing in LA restaurant market space. After all there are so many similar restaurants all around LA. So the question is what did Kogi Korean BBQ do to  get so much attention from the media, press to die hard fans who would keep on chasing for the truck in the middle of the night. The answer to that is they stood out from the rest of the average restaurants to be one of the coolest mobile restaurant. They set the trend by being different and taking the restaurant to their customers and not the other way around.  They also had a remarkable product-fresh juicy burritos and tacos with unique authentic Korean and Mexican flavour. Once people ate it, people felt as if they died and gone to heaven. They couldn’t help but keep on talking to their friends and to every one they met. This started spreading like wild fire and even reached to the halls of LA times and many other Los Angeles media press.

In my opinion the most important factor to its quick success and  popularity is social media like blogs,Flickr and Twitter to name few. These new media has made it possible to any body  to spread their ideas quickly and gain success provided they understand the social media and use it effectively to their restaurant marketing advantage. Kogi  Korean BBQ has maintained a blog and within the blog they have incorporated Flickr  and also Twitter. Never before was it this easy for any small independent restaurant like Kogi to engage with it’s customer this closely sharing photos, videos and comments. Blog has made it possible for restaurants like Kogi to communicate back and forth with it’s customers and understand exactly what they like and dislike. They also have used Flickr to share the happy moments and may be some funny ones too with their  customers. Customers are given an opportunity to express their love of food. Once they capture them in their lenses they make  it available on their blog so they can cherish the moment even days, weeks, years later. They have taken this one step further. If picture is worth 1000 words then video is million words worth. They have used video to share some of their road trips with their die hard fans and displaying those mouth watering tacos and burritos not just to people in Los Angeles but virtually to the whole world. The fact that it was in LA times I also watched the video though I am not in the vicinity.However since the video has a great impact on me, when I visit LA I will definitely be one of them chasing Kogi Korean BBQ in the middle of the night after my night club social time.

Lastly the most powerful tool they have leveraged in communicating with their customers is Twitter and Facebook. Considering that it has to fight all the heavy traffic through LA while moving from one place to another, the timings can be off from the schedules. This is the time when Twitter and Facebook come in handy. They can tweet on Twitter or make an updates on Facebook about their situation whether they are in traffic or anything that is causing delay. That way at least customers can be well informed and wait there for the juicy tacos even if the wait is for 2 hours. Twitter and Facebook also allow them to broadcast the specials of the day or any new menu updates. Twitter and Facebook is freely available tool on the internet and they have used it effectively to their advantage.

When you look at it’s history, it is barely 4-5 months now and they are so popular with in this short period of time. We would be pondering how on earth is this possible to a new concept restaurant which didn’t have any brand recognition at all. Well this is possible due to power of internet technology and social media tools. Never in the history it has been this easier and faster for any restaurant to spread their ideas and create a great brand which would take years with the traditional medias.

Hope you realize the potential of social media and use it to your advantage. Have you tried using social media for your business marketing. Please share your experience below and any questions you have. So we all can help each other. Thanks.

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