Why Marketing is more important than the product itself in your restaurant?
Restaurant entrepreneurs and chefs are obsessed with producing the best products ie the best food in the town. Some times not even giving much thoughts about the marketing required for a restaurant success in this digital age of Facebook, Youtube and Twitter. By any means I am not suggesting that the food-the product should not be the priority. But the level of priority of the food comes only after marketing.
What does the best product means when you don’t have a system in place to market those products. When you can not tell about it to other people then the best product means nothing but an object or a thing that sits on a ware house or at the cooler of a restaurant. There are good companies who have the best products but don’t have a system to market those products. Some times despite their great effort they can’t do the marketing well enough and they can’t sell even after having the best product. On the other hand there are companies who have the best marketing system with an average product and they are selling their food like hot cakes. The classic example of that restaurant is McDonald’s. So for a successful business or a restaurant it has to prioritize what to give importance first and to what degree.
Some of you may not agree with me. But let me put my argument here to back up my claim why marketing is more important than the product that you sell in your restaurant. Let’s take an example of the one of the most successful restaurant chain – McDonald’s. McDonald’s doesn’t have the best food in the town. May be it doesn’t even come close to the quality of the food that you serve in your restaurant and yet it is one of the most profitable company in the restaurant industry. They have best systems in place with a smart team who produces the best marketing campaigns which helps to promote an average quality hamburgers, fries and colas. That’s why McDonald’s is successful and more profitable than any company in the restaurant industry.
Should you have different viewpoints on this topics please feel free to express your opinions. With fruitful healthy discussion we can think not differently but opposite to traditional way of thinking and may be it will help us grow and succeed in the business that is changing rapidly with the growth of internet and social media.
Seth Godin is one of the most reknowned marketer that I can think of today. His thought process in regards to marketing is not just different but opposite. That’s why he is the best at what he does and that is marketing whether it is with his books or personal brand. He has consulted several companies around the world to take a different approach with their marketing which has helped them with fantastic results. His marketing philosophy is very relevant in today’s changing world which is shifting from mass media marketing to direct permission based marketing. He puts it in 3 simple words and that is Anticipated, Personal, and Relevance.
What is tribe? Why you need tribe?
Tribe as put by Seth Godin is a group of customers that are insiders which belong to your community. This is a relationship between you and your customers which is built on mutual trust. The leader in the community cares about the tribe, listen to them and provide the best product or service to it’s community and in turn they give the business to the leader. Thus they support each other benefitting both the parties. In your case your unique Greek Restaurant for example, serving only to the Greeks and Greek food loving clients would be the tribe. You as a leader of the restaurant and your customers, would listen to them and understand what they would like and provide them exactly what they like instead of generic food. For example if your cutomers need Greek goat cheese then they would come straight to your restaurant. They wouldn’t go to other restaurants or look for sale at Costco or Walmart. They know that your restaurant is the best Greek restaurant in the community and no one other than you can provide the highest quality possible. So with out thinking twice they would come straight to you. This is the benefit of having the tribes and most importantly being the best on what you do and providing the best product that your customers want.
So why do we need tribe? The reason you need tribe or say target clients is to differentiate your restaurants from thousands of other boring restaurants in the crowded space of generic restaurants. Seth Godin calls it Purple Cow. Purple cow is essentially a different cow than most of the regular cow that are generally white or black and sometimes with both mixed colors. He puts it this way. When you drive by a country side in US or in France, you see thousands of cows grazing in the field. All of them are the same color. Nothing is special about them. So you never bother to even notice them because they are simply boring cows. Now if suddenly you see a purple cow in the crowded cows, your eyebrows might rise and you would be curious to find more about it. See the human beings reaction to this. You who were least interested in cows suddenly got your valuable attention. That is exactly what Seth Godin is talking about in Purple Cow. More importantly he recommends your restaurant to be one of that purple cow.
When you have a tribe that is built on trust, over a period of time, it is long lasting for years to come. It makes them the most loyal fans of your restaurant. Once they like your restaurant they even do the marketing for you , most of the time without you telling them. Best of all they do it free. That is the most powerful advertisement or marketing you can get which you might not be able to buy paying millions to televisions, radio or newspapers. The perfect example of this loyalty is displayed by the tribes at Dell, a computer company. The user base is so loyal fans of Dell computer they paricipate in the forums and connect to each other online and most importantly give feed backs to the company to make their computers and laptops more better in speed and quality. They don’t get paid but they still do it for the love of the product, the company and the leadership. If you look at restaurant industry, the tribes loyal follower factor is displayed best at Korean BBQ restaurant (kogibbq.com) where their loyal customers chase their taco truck in the middle of the night just to eat their delicious tacos. It boggles my mind to hear that the customers wait in lines for hours just to get tacos or burritos. They do it because they love this unique concept, love this new way of dinning and have built a strong kogi culture that is built on mutual trust, fun and love of the food. The customers shoot videos of them enjoying tacos on the road and they submit them to Youtube. Some times on the middle of the night they take a pictures of their friends eating tacos in their subconscious mind and they upload them on flickr. They have their own community on the web and share their happy and sometime a little embarassing moments in photos and videos may be in funnier way. No wonder all of the community is so strong and love sharing their stories and moments of their exotic dinning life.
Restaurants get sometime get so hung up on the features rather than the benefits of their product. Instead of focussing on delivering the value and the best customer service/experience possible some time we think that we have to have the best steak. No doubt we have to provide the great products but we have to also go beyond providing just the best steak. Customers come to restaurant not just eat the steak but to enjoy the happiness when they are there which create never forgetting experience in their mind. One should be focussing more on the benefits and that is great experience. For example iPhone is an example of a great product though has great features focuses more into benefits. They have huge fan base including myself. May be there are other phones with tons of features but they don’t sell as much as iPhone. On the other hand though Nokia is a leader in cellphone they never thought of making iPhone in the first. They only focused on making an average mobile phones at the cheapest price possible and making it available to as many people as possible. But Apple took an opposite route. Instead of focusing on average feature creep product they made revolutionary product may be not the cheapest phone available but well worth to certain group of people that are the tribes of Apple’s iPhone. Instead of saying it is availabe on a mass scale they limited to certain quantity making those fans to stay overnight to stand in a line to get the iPhone. I myself had to preorder my iPhone and got it only after a week. This tells how direct selling approach they are taking as oppose to following the mass selling approach. They are doing the opposite of traditional way of selling a product.
With all the above examples of tribe based company built around loyal customers, it should have convinced you or at least made you realise why it is important to adopt a Leadership Marketing based around community that is based on mutual trust.
In response to control the damage by Youtube hoax video made by two of the Domino’s employee President Patrick Doyle of Domino’s USA, apologizes for the incident and reaffirms that Domino’s will take every measures to not let such thing happen again in the future.
In the video he goes on to say, in his own words-
“It sickens me that the actions of two individuals could impact our great system,” “There are so many people who have come through with messages of support for us and we want to thank you for hanging in there with us as we work to regain your trust.”
To rectify the flaws in their restaurant system he states that Domino’s is going to conduct a complete review of hiring practices to ensure he says “people like this don’t make it into our stores.” He also said that the restaurant where the employees worked, located in Hanover, North Carolina,was completely shut down and is being sanitized.
Domino’s in their wildest dream had never thought that this was coming. This incident though was a hoax there is no doubt that it has done a considerable brand damage as accepted by Domino’s President Doyle himself.
I also saw the video where one of the employee was putting the cheese into his nose and rubbing the salami at his back. It is one of the disgusting scene that one can see of a restaurant on Youtube. Though they blocked the video now by taking out from Youtube there were already 750,000 views worldwide. That means those many people had seen and told to you know how many other friends and families. The compounding effect of word of mouth bad marketing didn’t work that well here this time for Domino’s. It is sad but this is the reality of digital world.
Though they stopped the video by taking out of Youtube I believe the wound might be gone or possibly forgotten but the scar will still remain for years to come. The visual effect is so powerful that it is hard to erase from any one’s mind. Like for me the visual that I have of Blimpie brand sandwich is wilted tomatoes as that was my experience with couple of Blimpie restaurants that I visited in Atlanta. So I have never eaten the sandwich there after. Like wise with the Domino’s it was little different because I didn’t see it myself at the store. It was someone who made the video. But still human minds can not forget things even it was hoax. It is the perception that gets built into customer’s mind that determines the value of the Brand. This time customers and friends that I have talked to so far don’t seems to have that good perception of the brand.
Smart restaurants are those who learn from their own mistakes. Smarter restaurants are those who learn from other restaurants. Hope you draw some lessons for your restaurant.
Lessons that can be learnt from this incident at Domino’s
Hiring And Screening Process
Team Building & Internal Policing Mechanism
Brand Monitoring System
Hiring And Screening Process – Lots of restaurants cut corners in this process just to save some money. But I believe one should take all the necessary steps from criminal back ground check to hospitality IQ test internally at the HR department. At Least if you do the rigorous screening process you will make sure that you are not mixing bad apples with good ones. I have also seen some restaurants hiring high school kids without any background check or hospitality IQ tests with the lure of cheap labour. I am not against saving money on labour but please don’t compromise your brand for 50 cents per hour on bad employees. The result you will get is like the one that happened with Domino’s. You never know what kind of stunt those unprofessional and wild mannered employees will come up with when they are bored to death at work.
Team Building & Internal Policing Mechanism – Even after the best practises of Hiring and Screening process there is no guarantee that you will end up with the employees without any flaws. Nothing is 100%, however you can take some measures to minimize that risk to virtually zero. I call it Internal team building and Policing Mechanism. This is how it works. You will will create 3 or so different groups in your whole restaurant. You will create an incentive program where by,the group who performs well with the sales number and also without any stupid acts or any complains from the customers will get rewarded with some cash prizes. Cash is the king and motivates workers and keeps their mind free from thinking such stupid thing.The program should be designed in such a way where only if all the team members succeed to achieve those points then only would the whole group would win. This creates environment for every one to help each other because cash is the motivation here at the end of 2 weeks or a month. This is also good as it
also acts as a policing mechanism because if one of their team mate made stupid moves the whole
team is punished by not letting them get their cash prizes. This will naturally help the employees police themselves than you trying to police via web cam from your home which is realistically impossible. You would have better things to do than just watch via webcam to see if any one makes stupid move at your restaurant.
Brand Monitoring System – In the video the president Doyle of Domino’s told that some of their customers alerted them. That is why it took so long to respond and control the damage in much earlier stage lets say may be when it had merely views in 100. I still think you should be faster than that. I am surprised Domino’s given their size and so much marketing budget they have at their disposal they couldn’t control in much early stage. I thought that with those big corporates they have one or more dedicated person to handle all the digital brand monitoring for the mother ship brand.I envisioned that as the minute they uploaded the video on Youtube with the tags like Domino’s it would alert to them via some sophisticated brand monitoring software. Then the dedicated digital pr person would dig into it to find out whether it was good or bad thing. If it was good then pr person could engage with them and nurture the relation further. If it was bad one then they would go straight to investigate more and report it to the main head quarter and then follow their standard emergency procedure that they might have set up in case some one attempted to damage their brand online. It seems apparent that even if they had one there were some flaws in the system or they were slow in reacting to this brand damage control.
I hope all the restaurants whether it is fine dining, fast casual, or pizza restaurants have learnt a dear lesson. It is critical to have your brand monitoring system in place to deal with this kind of brand damage
attempts that occurs some time online.
Facebook is one of the most popular social site in the world with 200 million users so far as confirmed by Facebook recently. Started on college campus and popularized by high school kids it is a digital home to many around the world. It has been a trend where the mums and dads of those high school kids have out numbered them. These mums and dads and baby boomers are one of the population segment that has the most purchasing power. So starting to build relationship with this segment of population and Y Generation customers should be of great interest to your restaurant for your business.
There are so many restaurants that have already made it to Facebook Profile Pages popularly known as Fan Page. Some of the biggest brand on Facebook that I have seen so far are PizzaHut, Dominos, and PapaJohn. You can check them out for your self to see how many loyal fans they have in Facebook.
Now that we know Facebook should be an integral part of our restaurant marketing strategy, the question arises how do we start? What are the best practices on Facebook to be successful.
To answer all these questions, I recommend you to watch the video and learn the secrets to effective brand building tips and techniques on Facebook from the experts around the world.
Four Tips on Facebook Marketing for Restaurants
1. Be Yourself
2. How much is too much personal information
3. Don’t be too Salesy
4. Talk business the right way
Be Your Self- When you create a profile you have to create your personal profile and then on top of that you can create a fan page for your restaurant. But when you start building relationship create your unique style and voice to your restaurant. If you like being funny and bring some smiles to your customers then make your updates with some fresh, unique updates with a twist of humour. It might bring a smile on your customers face and brighten the whole day. Share some of the relevant information with your customers and occasional personal thing like what you are doing for to improve your business or express simply some opinions about some popular chef’s interview that you might have seen on some foodnetwork tv.
How much is too much personal information- Since your personal profile page and business public profile page is lumped up on the same page, you have to draw the line how much personal information to share. It is totally up to you to create that boundary line and make sure that there is a line between personal and business life and therefore it essential to maintain that balance. Just make sure that what ever updates you make on your facebook that should not hurt you in your business. So before you make any updates just make a careful decision on what words you are using.
Don’t be too Salesy – Facebook is a platform to make connection with new people and building a relationship. It is not a place where you pitch your sales for your business. If even some one has already connected with you and if you start off with a salesy pitch it will turn off that relationship and might be over even before it get started. So BIG WARNING ! Don’t come across as Salesy.
Talk the business right way- Well you might think then when should you do business on Facebook. At certain point of the relationship you do have to propose right. Other wise there is no date and no marriage. You are right but you just don’t ask for a date and straight marriage just the night you meet a girl. You take time to understand each other well before you make any move. You tell right thing at right time while both are on the same mood. Same thing applies at Facebook while you are proposing your business deal. If you are passionate about restaurant, talk about the different foods you like or the popular chef’s interview that you listened to provided both you and your fans like food. Demonstrate your self very knowledgeable in the eyes of your fans by sharing great information or articles on Facebook updates and making a subtle sales which I like to call Presell. When you sniff a sale, take to them to an appropriate place like email or phone to talk the business on private. So this way you balance the Facebook presence with out being salesy and yet doing the business and making the deal as intended well before getting into Facebook.
Please feel free to share your own opinions on how to balance your personal and business profile at Facebook. I would appreciate if your thoughts and experience can benefit other fellow restaurant owners, operators, managers or any interested individual.
Just downloaded the Seesmic Desktop. It is another desktop application for Twitter updates that is competing with TweetDeck which has been favourite of mine so far. But when I saw Seesmic Desktop application lately in their video, it looks more promising with more cool features.
One of the first thing that I liked is that you can create multiple accounts and monitor simultaneously different Twitter accounts from the same window. It is so simple that you just drag and drop. If you had one account for your restaurant and the other for your personal use you can manage the twitter updates from the same window without changing the accounts. You can reply, search and do virtually everything with all your multiple accounts.
Grouping or I should say segmenting can be done for whom you are following. Say if you want to just get the updates from certain number of people then you can segment it and get the twitter updates just from them. This way you will not lose the important tweets coming from those individuals or companies. They don’t get lost in the loads of millions of twitter updates that stream through your regular twitter updates. This alone might be great use for your restaurant or any business or individual.
Another cool feature that I liked is to take the picture right from your webcam and post the picture to Twitter. Since Seesmic is more towards video micro blogging, this is where they shine the most and obviously do the best job I believe.
There are other so many features that they have built into it and also adding new features at every new upgrades. So it worth checking out.
It might help your twitter chaos to be little more organised and more efficient with this application. Speed is critical in any business whether it is to reply your hungry customers query or general questions from your vendors and joint venture business partners. So to accomplish that speed Seesmic desktop looks promising.
You can download and see for yourself the magic it can do for your restaurant business. Please do share your thoughts how you liked the application so it might help other individuals and restaurant business who might want to use this application.
Recently Evan Williams CEO of Twitter was interviewed at Tekzilla. There were several questions asked by Twitter followers direct to him via twitter. The first question was regarding an advice what he would give to someone trying to build their own startup. His answer was very obvious:
The core thing would be “just do something awesome”. Try not to get caught up in the echo chamber. That is probably the toughest thing when you are trying to break out and do something original.
A lot of things are evolutionary, and it is easy to get caught up on what the geek subculture thinks. There’s lots of valuable businesses that can be built there, but I think that is where a lot of people tend to spin their wheels, and I’ve been caught up there before. When I’ve had more successful things, I’ve thought, “Back to basics. What do I want? What do I want to see in the world?” And create that.
Later during the interview when asked,what he thinks about Facebook’s Twitter-like redesign. He joked by saying “Did they redesign?” Then he goes on to say that he is impressed and hints that some of the things Facebook did is on Twitter’s own design roadmap. (Maybe Facebook got some ideas from their acquisition discussions with Twitter which fell apart). One thing that Twitter plans to do better is make it easier to share videos and photos, perhaps with inline viewing. Now, that would be awesome. Williams says:
Yeah, I think we should support images and video better than we do today, it does not mean we should host them, maybe viewing in line. I don’t want to get into competition with YouTube. Twitter is lubricant for Web content.
Even though his answer was for tech start up company, his message is to all types of companies regardless of what business they are in. It applies to even restaurant business. Evan William is a smart entrepreneurs who has built so many successful companies including the recent one Twitter. So it is worth listening to him and internalising his core messages.If he was talking to the restaurant owners, operators and managers, then I would interpret his messages as follows:
Build Something Awesome
Look beyond your business and have a long term vision to reach out the wider world.
Plan and create a road map to success and have fun along the journey.
Always plan and make your product or service better
Build Something Awesome-This is the main message that he gives to all businesses including your restaurant business. You have to build something awesome so that people would want to have it, admire it and make a remark about that is worth making a remark about and spreading the idea. The perfect example of an awesome product is an iPhone which is admired by millions around the world. It is so dear that they would never leave them alone. Most probably they would held them closer more than their own girl friend or boyfriend. Another example of awesome service is Twitter itself. The fact that you are able to tweet right now and communicate with thousands of people is amazing. It has empowered even a small restaurants to compete with 800 pound gorilla companies. No wonder you and I get hooked on Twitter for hours and love every day. That is how a product or service should be or at least aimed towards that level of perfection. Well you might think you are in a restaurant business and how can we be awesome. Well Kogi Korean BBQ restaurant has built a cool brand with in few months because they had a unique concept. They have mouth watering delicious Korean Mexican fusion food. Instead of selling it from a traditional stand alone building they sold their food in a mobile truck by marketing online via twitter and blogs. Your restaurant doesn’t have to be mobile but please, you have to create some thing different and not boring products that people are used to. Please don’t create the same boring sandwich that I can make better at my own office or home.
Look beyond your business and have a long term vision to reach out the wider world - Twitter though was popularized by a hard core techie culture they didn’t focus only to serve those people. In fact they have a vision to take it to a broader main stream and reaching to the whole world one day. So here the message is to have a long term vision and look your restaurant beyond just as a food business. Look at doing some thing different like building Green Restaurant. Install energy efficient equipments at your restaurant. Promote using only paper products with the aim to protect the environment. In the process you might lead a revolution in the restaurant industry by saving on energy cost and more importantly saving a planet that your grand children might thank you for. You might be able to create another business in conjunction to the restaurant business. Never know it could bring you fortune. Can you see the picture of doing some thing different and some thing bold.
Plan and create a road map to success and have fun along the journey – Even though he is a great entrepreneur with lots of pressures he is cool and take it easy with fun. It seems he is enjoying his entrepreneural journey though sometimes it can be bumpy and scary. You have to be passionate and enjoy what you are doing. If you don’t then you might be in a wrong business. Great business have a road map for success. It is a step by step plan to get to the destination. Your business should have a road map plan to do your restaurant marketing. You should have some sort of plans on how to market your restaurant in this complicated digital world. You should know which road to take whether it is Facebook, Twitter or blog.
Always plan to make your product or service better - Twitter is already in plans to make it easier and faster to tweet even pictures, videos in their later releases. They are putting their effort to improve every day. So you should also plan to make your service better and faster. Have you planned on making the service at lunch hour faster? Have you thought about making your pizza delivery time less than 30 minutes? Recently Chipotle released their iPhone mobile app to let their customer order via iPhone and have them pick up at the counter without having them to wait in the line. Have you thought of similar ideas to stream line your ordering process? Have you thought of creating a live band show on the weekends and letting those happy moments of your customers to be shared with their loved ones world wide by streaming a live tv show via Ustream.tv ? There are so many things one can improve to make your customers experience easier. See if you plan and work on it even if it seems impossible you can make it happen. Now since internet has leveled the marketing field so plain that you can even compete and win even the big companies with big marketing budgets if you plan, learn and execute all those ideas.
Well these are just the ideas that I am throwing at you. There are so many other things that you can come up with and make your restaurant more unique and fun place to be. People come to a restaurant not just only to eat. They come there because it is a cool place to be where there are lots of happy people with full of fun and joy. So if you want to create a successful restaurant business or any business just remember What Evan Williams CEO of Twitter said, “Just Do Something Awesome.”
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:
Not Trackable-
Frauds – Internally and Externally
Creates Confusions among Customers
Chances of Loosing the Cards
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.
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:
Lessson Number 1 – Don’t think you control the message any more in the information age.
Lesson Number 2 - Give to Get
Lesson Number 3 - Participate in the Conversation and don’t be snob in the virtual world.
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.
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.
How Chipotle has been successful in positioning its brand as a leader in the Restaurant World of Mexican Grill?
Brand Positioning is so important for overall success of the restaurant brand that one should not neglect it but more importantly try to position your restaurant brand by being the leader in trying “out of the box” marketing ideas to be the number one in the game of brands race.
Mexican Grill, a fast casual restaurant concept is a hot growing trend in the restaurant industry. It is one of the most promising segment as there is a great potential in this market. No wonder lots of restaurant brands are competing for the maximum share of the pie and the same position and that is to be the number one. Among the numerous restaurant brands that has entered into the race and that stands out are Chipotle-Mexican Grill, Moes South West Grill and Qdobas. Since Chipotle has longer history in the business and looking at its growth rate, it seems clear that Chipotle is leading the race.
Why even being the second in branding race, it is important to be right behind the competitor and not let them leave you far behind?
Though Moes South West Grill and Qdobas and many other similar concept restaurants are behind Chipotle, the question is who is going to take the second position as in every segment there is number one and number two. Hopefully very close to each other. If you look at the burger world there is McDonalds and Burger King, if you look at the world of coffee there is Starbucks and Caribou Coffee. In most cases the number one and number two position in brands is very close to each other. But it is surprising to see in the world of coffee, Caribou coffee is way far behind. In one of the article that I read in the past, if I am correct it stated that Starbucks create one whole Caribou Coffee corporation in a month or two. What that means is that Starbucks opens that many number of coffee shops in couple of months that Caribou Coffee as a whole company has. So in this case the Starbucks has left the Caribou very far behind and I don’t know how long will it take Caribou to even come close to Starbucks. The point here is when you are on the game of restaurant brand race, you try to avoid this situation and try to be as close as possible if not right on top of it’s nose poking at them without letting them to crush you.
Why implementing technology to stay ahead is very critical to the overall success of the your restaurant branding?
When I think of technology in brand positioning it reminds me of two company and that is Fedex and UPS. Fedex most probably is considered the number one in the documents shipping business as it is one of the first company to introduce overnight express delivery in the midst of doubtful cynics. Fedex was also the first company to introduce the first shipping tracking system in the world. So it has been positioning its brand as a leader who understands the importance of technology for efficient tracking of all the deliveries and help customers to have more control over their packages tracking and keeping them well informed at a comfort of their own computer or mobile phones. At the same time, UPS was almost 6 months or so behind the technology. Once they realised that they had to catch up with FedEx they worked day and night to finish up the technology and be up to the speed with the technology. Determined and with hard work they managed to atleast come closer to FedEx and in some areas they have far exceeded. The point behind this story is that same principle applies to the restaurant brands too. I would compare Chipotle as FedEx for now. Moes South West Grill and Qdobas like United Parcel Service (UPS). Chipotle has already introduced it’s mobile ordering system on iPhone for its customers which is like Fedex introducing GPS tracking system with its all deliveries. Had UPS not accepted the technology to introduce it’s GPS tracking system to its deliveries though it was 6 months or so behind of FedEx, I don’t know if I would be talking about UPS. May be I would but the story would have been a sad one. But today when we look at these two brands, they are very close in their ranking. So with this historical example of two brands right infront of us, there is no doubt that implementing technology in your business is very critical to stay ahead in this competitive restaurant market.
Well we will have to wait and see if Moes South West Grill and Qdobas will speed up their technology for mobile ordering systems that is really in demand for the tech savvy customers that have a fast paced life who are not willing to wait even another five minutes waiting in the line to get their burritos. They want to order from their iPhone while they are on their elevator, pay it with credit card online and pick up their food straight at the register counter without waiting in the line. They will show their text confirmation code and cashier verifies the order and voila the customer’s transaction is over within 10-15 seconds. Such demanding the customers have become. If your restaurant can’t keep up with these demands, then they will move on to another brand at a push of a button on their iPhone. So hopefully Moe’s South West Grill and Qdobas and other restaurant brands that are competing for the same share of the pie will speed up their effort in providing easier and faster way of ordering their food especially during the lunch time by introducing mobile ordering system.
