Many new restaurant owners put their hard earned money (or more likely the money of their friends, neighbors and relatives), and a great idea of time into re-decorating.I will never forget the seemingly endless spent re-finishing a bar top in the first place I owned.  It was beautiful!  Birds-eye maple.  Several coats of varnish made it look like glass and, after many days of curing, you could slide a pint glass the entire length with a gentle push.  A bar owner friend came by just before we opened and commented on how much he admired the bar top.  Then he said “But, if you do the business you hope for it’ll be covered with elbows and glassware”. 

He was absolutely right.  The old bar top would have done just fine and saved a lot of time and money.  That new bartop didn’t put one dime in the till.  Likewise neither do most of the so-called improvements we make.  when it comes right down to it isn’t it more for our own ego?  Are we just building monuments to ourselves? 

“Making it your own” is exciting and one of the benefits of owing your own business.  It’s understandable that you’re anxious for the place to reflect your style and imagination yet, many operators allow that effort to supersede other, more operationally valid, efforts.  

That initial funding goes very quickly and, unless you’re financially independent, your first job is to get the business open and generating revenue as soon as possible. 

A quick Google search will yield many “how to” sites devoted to restaurants.  One site in particular, which I consider a leading authority on restaurant and bar operations lists their main departments as follows:  

• Business & Financial
• Business Plans
• Food & Beverage
• Menu
• Customer Service
• Marketing
• Startup & Growth
• Technology

None of the sites I visited included a department devoted to decorating.

It’s important to create the proper atmosphere, one conducive to dining, rockin’ out, or whatever your concept is,  but it’s easy to allow the emphasis to become the focus. It’s not by accident that major management websites do not include painting instructions.

You’ll find that 99% of the “decorating” can be accomplished between open hours.  Unless there are major repairs, like major plumbing for instance, just do it after close.

It aint rocket science! Quality, Service, Cleanliness. Get the cash coming in and make changes on the fly.

Statistics can be quite sobering, sometimes and if you are thinking about entering the food and drink industry for the first time you may be worried to hear that as many as 90% of all independently owned businesses fail within the first five years. How will you ensure your restaurant success? You need a significant amount of preparation to help you beat the odds.

A restaurant’s success is dependent on a combination of factors and it will literally require you to intersect all these elements before you will come out on top. It is not good enough to succeed in one area and not another and this is where many entrepreneurs fail. They come up with a particularly good concept, but fail to back it up with the right team, for example.

In a large suburban area you will find a wide assortment of restaurants, some part of the various chains and others independently owned. They may cater to all tastes and budgets and while there may appear to be saturation to the untrained eye, anyone with a well thought-out business plan has a chance of success.

People will always want to eat and want to socialize as they do so. As human beings we have a very diverse palette and look forward to exploring different tastes within different environments. While we certainly accumulate favorites, we do like to try alternatives and your restaurant success could hinge on the way that you package and present your option.

To ensure your restaurant’s success you will need to choose the correct piece of real estate, perfect your concept, select the best people possible for your team and ensure that you have enough cash flow available to carry you through the difficult times. Don’t rush to select the first piece of real estate that you find, unless you are sure that your chosen concept will work perfectly according to the demographics, the size of the catchment, marketing visibility and so on.

Do not underestimate the amount of money that you will need to fund your restaurant as it grows. You may well have judged the capital required to purchase assets, equipment and decor, but remember that negative cash flow is likely for a considerable period of time until you get on your feet and this is where many would-be restaurateurs fail.

A restaurant’s success or failure is often determined doing the planning phases. The concept of a formal business plan can appear daunting and may be overlooked, but the process of establishing the plan often focuses your attention on what you might otherwise consider as minute detail but what could be essential in the long run.

Try and engage in something you are passionate about and something that will motivate you to get out of bed during those early mornings. Businesses have a much better chance of succeeding if the owner is truly passionate and has designed his or her concept around something that drives.

Lots of people dream of starting their own restaurant, but very few people can do it with just the cash and assets they personally have available. A restaurant is not the kind of business you can start on a shoestring, or easily bootstrap you way into a bigger operation. As a result, the financing of a restaurant startup is often the most challenging aspect of getting started for any entrepreneur looking to get into this field.

The first step in any financing plan is to have a very well thought out restaurant business plan. You can’t begin to finance a project of this magnitude without a very good understanding of what you are actually going to end up getting. Well, you can, but the results are almost always a disaster!

Equally, or maybe even more important in some cases, is a financial plan that shows you the exact cost you will incur to launch your restaurant, including not only the cost of getting to the point of opening the doors, but also the amount of additional capital required to keep the doors open until you reach the break even point- where the business generates enough cash to pay all its bills every month.

Once you have your restaurant business plan and some carefully crafted financial projections in hand, you can begin evaluating your options for financing. The first place to always look is your own funds. Not only are these the easiest to get, but few other people are likely to put any money into your restaurant if they know that you yourself aren’t investing in the business.

The next most likely place to look is friends and family. While there are pros and cons to taking money from these sources, statistically they are one of your best bets for raising startup cash.

If you have put together a reasonable stake from these sources, you can often leverage the rest by using an SBA loan. A reasonable stake means 50% of the total you will need if you are starting from scratch, or 10-20% of the total if you are buying an existing business. The SBA favors borrowers who can show they have related industry experience, so if you don’t have any, now is the time to recruit some mentors and advisers to your team who do, to make your application look much stronger.

If you are buying a business, you will hopefully also have some financing coming from the current owner. These funds, while they don’t put actual cash into the deal allow you to pay a part of the purchase price over time, thereby reducing the total amount required to get started. Owner financing, combined with bank financing is the lowest cost way to get into the restaurant business for most people.

Another option, if you are looking at franchises, is third party financing arranged by the franchise company. While many franchises have steep net worth requirements, if you qualify they will often help you find the actual cash you need to get into the business.

Once you have exhausted the above options, you can pursue outside investors. While it is difficult to find an investor interested in funding a restaurant, it does happen, so be persistent. Your best bet is to find a successful business owner already in the restaurant business who may want to expand and have the capital, but not the time. This is where you come in, with a concept and the passion, but not quite enough cash.

Venture capital is a dead end for restaurants. The only time you will get interest from these investors is if you already have a chain of five or more locations, and a concept that can turn into the next Starbucks. Another dead end is grants. While the guy on late night TV promises that the government will give you money to start any business, don’t believe it. There simply are no grants for restaurant startups.

If you are persistent, and you have a solid business plan, anyone can eventually find the money to start a restaurant, even if you are starting with nothing else. All you need to do is keep at it and not give up, and you can succeed. For more ideas on how to raise money, find investors, borrow from family and friends and more startup related info, check out CapForge.com.

When consumers plan to dine out, they now have a wide range of restaurants to choose from. With so many restaurants available, a restaurant has to come up with ways to stay competitive. Many restaurant owners want to know how to improve their business. Fortunately, there are a number of things a restaurant owner can do to make their restaurant more attractive to customers.

1. During these difficult economic times, many people are looking for ways to cut down on costs. Take time to reevaluate your menu prices. Are your customers normally big spenders? Or do you have customers that enjoy a reasonably priced meal? If the latter frequents your restaurant, make sure your prices are sensible and fit with the type of restaurant. Consider implementing daily specials or a special menu with a number of meals at a discounted price.

2. The meals you serve should be high quality and delicious. Your food should be fresh and prepared properly. The dish should be pleasing to the eye. It should also fit with the theme of the restaurant. Be mindful about providing some healthy dishes. It is important to keep up on consumer lifestyle habits.

3. Your restaurant should be warm and inviting. The decor should be pleasing to the eye. Make sure you use proper color schemes, comfortable seating, and a pleasant view. Consider adding something unique to the restaurant that makes it stands out from the other restaurants. Examples could be a water fountain, replicas of historical paintings…etc.

4. Arrange special promotions at the restaurant. This can include a special brunch on Sunday, a buffet night, a theme night such as the 1950′s, musical performers, sponsoring sporting and charity events…etc. You can also have a really fancy and delicious dessert that is unique to any other restaurant. It is important to come up with new and exciting marketing strategies. Without constant marketing, people will forget about your restaurant and visit restaurants they see advertised. Make use of fliers, local newspapers, websites, radio, and sponsoring events

5. Cleanliness is essential to a successful restaurant. Take a walk through the restaurant and look at the floors, walls, fixtures, decorations, lamps, and the bathroom. Do you need a paint touch up? Should you give the restaurant a total scrub down? Remember, restrooms have to be spotless with no unpleasant odours. What does the exterior of the restaurant look like? The exterior is the first thing a customer will notice. Is it bland, unattractive, or messy looking? Perhaps you should fix up the outside to make it eye catching and attractive. Add bright colors, and unique decorations. Your parking lot should be easy to access.

6. It may be time to do a staff evaluation and retraining session. Your staff should be dressed professionally, neat in appearance, and clean. They should also be courteous, gracious, and pay special attention to their customers. As well, they should be welcoming, hardworking, dedicated, and respectful. Customers should feel welcome and that their patronage is appreciated.

Regular assessment of your restaurant will allow you to make the essential enhancements, improvements, and additions that will ensure a constant and steady loyal customer base.

What is “Front of mind Awareness” and how will it help me keep my restaurant during this bad economy?

Before you read this article ask yourself this question. What is a loyal customer worth to me over the course of 1 year? A couple who visits your restaurant once a week and spends $50 could be worth over $2,600 to you in a year. A frequent loyal couple who visits twice a week will spend over $5,200 per year and that does not include people that they bring or recommend to your establishment. What is it worth to you to keep them happy and establish “front of mind awareness” with a customer?

Restaurant owner are struggling to keep the doors open in 2010. Are you one of them? The economy continues to lag and restaurants, as well as many other businesses are feeling the strain as people choose to eat in to save money or are spending less when they do go out. Competition for dining out dollars is fierce and “Me To” advertising in the local papers alone is not going to drive diner’s through your door or profits into your bank account.

You need to develop an effective Customer Marketing Campaign that utilizes the power of the internet and an automated email communication system to create “front of mind awareness” with your customer.

Restaurant owners and management need to combine their traditional advertising efforts to include the goal of identifying, capturing and communicating with every customer that walks through the door, so that you can establish the “front of mind awareness”, that will keep them coming back when they choose to dine out again.

The easiest and most cost effective way to establish a “front of mind awareness” restaurant marketing campaign with your customers, is to combine traditional marketing, a trained staff and a web based and automated email communication system. Below are five essential steps to establishing an effective marketing campaign that any restaurant can implement.

1. Restaurant Management Needs To Capture Every Customer

Restaurant ownership, restaurant management and staff needs to make a 100% commitment and set a goal to capture every customer that dines at your restaurant or just comes in for a drink at the bar. By “capture”, I mean get their permission to collect their contact information and communicate with them via email in the future. The type of information you are going to want to collect include:

* Full Name (must)

* Email Address (must)

* Home Address (optional but helpful)

* Birthday (month and day – optional but helpful)

* Favorite meal (make it fun and track what they like)

* Suggestions (optional)

We have all seen the pads of registration cards stained and crumpled sitting on restaurant tables saying “join our mailing list”. Alone they are a waste of paper as there is little or no motivation for the customer to respond to this type of marketing.

When I bring up this first step to success with restaurant owners, the answer I get is nearly always “we do that already, look at our tables”. Let me be clear, leaving a pad of cards flung on a table to be filled out based solely on the spontaneous motivation of your customer is a very different strategy than committing restaurant ownership, management and staff to invite every patron to become part of your restaurants family by joining your dining club.

Every member of your wait staff should be trained and tested to present the opportunity to join your “restaurants family” and they should be held accountable for their results (contests are a great motivator).

You can have the best food in town, but a poorly trained staff and fail. You can have average food, but a great and well trained staff and be successful. A guests willingness to join and share their information is an effective indicator of how your customer was treated and whether they feel compelled to return in the future.

First, you have to understand that you are not going to get something for nothing and a person’s contact information is a valuable commodity that needs to be earned. Good service and a gift is the motivation that is needed in most cases. Maybe it is a free dinner next time they come in or $10 off the next meal, you need to offer a reasonable enticement to make the connection and capture the customer.

Just prior to the waitress or waiter presenting the check for the meal they should be trained to:

* Ask if they enjoyed their meal or have any suggestions for them or ideas to pass along to the owner or management.

* Present them with an invitation card to join your “Customer Appreciation Program” and join the restaurants family.

* Take a moment to explain the program and give them a pen to fill out the card.

* Explain that members will receive periodic news, updates on special events as well as coupons for future dining by email.

* Tell the guest that for signing up tonight they will also receive a special gift certificate that will be emailed from the owner directly.

* Ask if they have any questions about the program and always add that we do not share our customers contact information with anyone.

* If they say “no’, thank them for coming and leave them with the bill as normal.

* If they start to fill out the card just tell them to leave it with the bill and you will pass it along to the owner or manager. Leave the bill

If a guest does not sign up when the waitress or waiter picks up the paid check they should inform the manager on duty who should if at all possible visit the table immediately to make sure that everything was acceptable, thank them for coming, did the server mention your “Customer Appreciation Program” and is there anything he or she can do.

Some times people will not give out private information for any reason…but you need to make every effort to make sure every guest leaves with a smile.

Track your registration results by server, manager and night of the week to see what trends develop.

2. Respond to Complete the Capture and Establish a Relationship

Remember “out of sight – out of mind”. Your goal is to get your customer to opted-in to your email list so that you can establish a relationship and begin to establish “front of mind awareness” for your restaurant. Every time they are hungry or want to go out to eat, you establishment should pop into their mind first. That is “front of mind awareness”

The next day, after they visit an email from the owner or General Manager should be sent thanking them for visiting the restaurant the night before. You also tell them that you want to make sure that their information and email address are correct so you can send them their gift (coupon or free dinner) by email and keep them up to date with specials, events and coupons in the future that only go to “Family Members”. Once they click on the respond button and opt-onto your list you can begin to communicate and cultivate them as a loyal customers.

3. Communication – Automated Email Campaign

To create “front of mind awareness” you need to keep the lines of communication open with your customer. Let me be perfectly clear that there is a distinct difference between keeping a customer informed and facilitating a dialogue with them as opposed to being a pest.

A short entertaining and value added email once every week or two is more than enough to establish a dialogue. Every email should include something of value for your customer. It may be a coupon, announce a special dining event, share a holiday recipe or wish them a seasonal or birthday greeting. A majority of these emails can be automated to send on a regular schedule once a customer becomes part of your database. Low cost, minimal time and potential big return is a recipe for success.

Remember the goal here is to add value to the customer relationship and not a pain in the butt. People who send out emails that do not offer value or send out to many emails will only motivate the customer to opt-out of your list and you have lost them.

4. Make Your Customers Feel Important!

Make sure that you are sending your list members at least one coupon of value per month to help motivate them to visit. You may want to set up a dining club card where you can offer a free meal once they buy a certain number of meals. Use your imagination and that of your managers and staff to try different promotions to see what works and what doesn’t in your community. Some will be great and some will flop. Track your results and keep trying. Let your member know that they are special and glad that they joined.

If someone uses a coupon from an email, train your waitstaff to inform a manager or owner to take a moment to stop by their table. that re-enforces the power of the program by acknowledging that they are special guests who receive special recognition.

5. Consistency is Critical – Keep It Going!

Finally, ownership and management need to commit to a program like this to make it really work. It will not show glaring results overnight, but it will work and it will create “front of mind awareness” with your customers over time. Commitment and training are the two key essentials.

As I mentioned before, challenge your staff and give out awards for those who sign up the most new members. Keep track of results and post them religiously. If the staff knows that ownership and management is committed, they will be to. If they see your interest waning they will not put the effort into it that is required for true success.

Restaurant Owner – Call To Action

Do not become a statistic in 2010. Develop a strategy and take action to stand out amongst the competition and create “front of mind awareness” with your customers. It is not hard, it is not costly, it just takes planning, training and commitment. As always let me know how I can help you achieve success.

It’s the endless circle of irony – your business needs to do some aggressive marketing because you really need to increase sales and guest counts, but you don’t have money available to spend on marketing because your profits are down. What’s a cash-challenged restaurant owner to do? The following are some low cost restaurant marketing ideas that can help get the guest counts and profits moving in the right direction. 

• Crowd Marketing – Sit down and make a list of where crowds gather in your town. When you stop to think about it, the list can become large – Professional Sporting Events, Concerts, Parades, High School Games, Political Rallies, Parks on Sunny Days, Shopping Malls, etc. The front door approach to market to these crowds is to approach the organization that plans the event and become an official sponsor. This often requires an investment of hundreds or thousands of dollars. With limited funds, you’re looking for the back door method to reach these crowds. Put together a street team of employees or hire the local church youth group who are trying to raise funds. Place your marketers on the sidewalks outside the event as it ends. They pass out flyers, brochures, menus, or coupons that will direct the people to come to your restaurant. It’s a personal contact with potential customers, less expensive than official sponsorships, and often far more effective.
• Social Marketing – Tap into the power of the internet with social marketing. Everyone says ‘word of mouth’ marketing is the most powerful kind, and ‘word of mouth’ is now digital. With Facebook, Twitter, and other social networks, people are connected now in ways they never have been before. It’s not unusual to see friends lists of 500 to 1000 other people. Then they join groups that can number up into a million users. Find a reason for these people to start talking about your restaurant, and you’ll get massive exposure for very little or no investment.
• Fund Raiser Nights – Drive traffic by holding “percentage of the sales” nights at your restaurant. For example, the high school band is raising money for a trip. You offer a certain percentage of the sales on a Tuesday night for their fund raising. They in turn distribute flyers to the whole school plus family, friends and relatives to drive traffic on Tuesday so they can raise more money for their cause. It works best to do this on your slower nights, so you have plenty of capacity and aren’t turning away customers or missing sales you would have had anyway.
• Bounce Back Coupons – Your current customers are a great target group to try to increase sales. Just give them a reason to come back sooner than they normally would. Maybe it’s a coupon that’s only valid for the next seven days. Or if you are open in multiple dayparts, at dinner you give away a coupon valid for breakfast, and at breakfast give away coupons valid for dinner. Not only can this increase your guest’s frequency, it may open them up to visit you at a whole different daypart than they ever had before. 

You may be thinking the little guy can’t make any real money in the restaurant business these days, but the world is full of multi-millionaire restaurant owners. And the really successful ones are spending very little on advertising. Copy their techniques and watch your restaurant turn around overnight. Here’s how.

There are two problems with most conventional advertising

#1. Most advertising programs are very expensive for the little guy.

#2. Worse than that, they don’t work.

Conventional advertising consist of radio, TV, newspaper and other print ads.

Most restaurant owners don’t know that their ads are not working. And if they ever track an ad and find out that it’s not working, the ad sales person will tell them that they need to run the ad more to make it work.

Conventional, “image advertising” may work for the large chains, but in most cases it is a total waste for independent restaurants.

(There are a few situations where print ads are profitable, i.e. resort areas, etc. This will be discussed in a future article, but if your restaurant is losing money, other measures should be done first as described below.)

If any ad rep tells you how great their ad will work for you, offer to pay them based on a percentage of the new business the ad brings in. I’ve never found an ad salesperson yet who would sell an ad with the price based on results.

If your restaurant is not making money, consider immediately stopping ALL image ads

This act alone will save you a lot of money and you may not see a noticeable decline in business if you did no advertising. Of course, you have to do some type of marketing because you are constantly losing customers. You have to have new customers to stay in business and grow.

The most cost effective way to get new customers is to do direct marketing. Start with what I call the three “M” type marketing. The three “M” words are. . .

Message, Market and Media

Your Message: “What would you say to someone to get them to come to your restaurant?”

Your Market: “Who would you tell this message to?” “Who is your potential customers?” A hint, they are probably like your existing customers. Find out where they live, what they do for a living and for fun. Find out as much as you can about your existing customers to find out who your most likely new customers will be.

Your Media: What media should you use to reach these new customers? I would suggest you try a direct mail campaign to your target market. Obviously conventional ads are not working, so you need to do something different. Here’s one last thing for you to consider:

Track it or trash it

Apply this one concept to ALL of your advertising expenses and your restaurant WILL be profitable.

This is the biggest secret of successful restaurant owners.

This simple process will quickly show you which advertising programs to drop. Eliminate the advertising money that is being wasted on ineffective advertising programs and the money will go straight to the bottom line.

Even more important, by eliminating the wasted advertising money, you will free up money for truly effective advertising.

Baseball managers and baseball fans are the only people who track statistics more than restaurant owners. Restaurant owners track everything . . . EXCEPT advertising campaign results.

Track ad results for only ONE day and you will know more about what’s working and what’s not working than 90% of your competitors.

Nothing you could do today could pay bigger dividends than personally asking every customer who comes in what convinced them to come to your restaurant today.

This is the first step to turning your restaurant around.

Creating the best and most useful design for menu printing can be a task unto itself. While other restaurants may just print menus on the fly (emphasizing more on the food), a good and strategic, restaurant owner sees menu printing as an integral part of restaurant management.

While the food is the main product of the business, they think of full color menus as the salespersons and marketing agents of the restaurant. Therefore, when it comes to menu printing, the same focus must be present in designing them as in the cooking of the dishes.

For the strategic restaurant owner, you can apply six main strategies to create effective restaurant menus.

1. Pictures are King – Every restaurant owner should know this. Pictures are the best things that you can place in a menu. Almost everyone who eats in a restaurant have a high chance of ordering something that they can see in a picture.

This is because most of us can be visual as well as nasal with our “food” senses. Printing high resolution and sumptuous photographs of your specialties will almost guarantee people choosing them for their meal. Once people see something good to eat, the deal is basically done.

2. Nice understandable descriptions – Of course however, pictures are not the only story for menu printing. If you placed pictures for every kind of dish you have, you will get yourself a catalog in the process. So have pictures of your specialties, but for the rest of your dishes you will have to do descriptions.

Always remember to compose nice and very understandable descriptions of your dishes. Not everyone can know about the various types of ingredients and cooking styles. So try to describe dishes clearly, if it is fried, boiled, grilled, dried etc. Also, try to be as nice and polite as possible however brief your description is. Your customer service attitude must also extend to your menus.

3. Clear but artful fonts – Also, do not forget to use font styles that are clear but are still aesthetically pleasing. People must be able to easily read the name of your dishes and their description lest they order the wrong thing. Most menus usually have a slightly stylish font for a dish’s name while beneath a clear and simpler font is used for the description.

4. Emphasis on Specialties – Do not forget as well to place emphasis on all your specialties. Always place them on the top and center of a menu so that people will easily notice them. Try to mark specialties with bolder text and sometimes you may even opt to use an icon or symbol indicator that says “house specialty” or something similar. Since your specialties are the best of what you can offer to your customers so much so that it pays to put more emphasis on them.

5. Using different languages – Printing your menu in different languages is also one of the greatest strategies that you can use for your restaurant, especially if you notice that you are drawing in a more international crowd. For example, you may usually have an increased amount of Japanese tourists going to your restaurant. Why not print a Japanese menu just for them? They will find your place more welcoming and they might even recommend it to others if you do. You can do this to every significant amount of foreign customers you have to increase your standing with them.

6. Detachable and customizable pages – Lastly, do not forget to have detachable and customizable pages. With the dynamic nature of the food business, it pays to have your menus easily customizable. If you have a new dish you want to promote or you want to emphasize on a different kind of dish for each season a customizable menu will be very useful. You can change pages at will giving you a chance to focus on the dishes that you want.

Those are the six main strategies that you can use for menu printing. Hopefully you have learned a lot from these strategies. Take note though that they are just guides, and you should not be limited to only them. Think of your own menu strategy if you can to further improve your restaurant menus and hopefully your business in general.