|
Restaurant Marketing is a crucial element in the success or failure of any restaurant.
Great food and great service are the other obvious elements.
If you get the latter two elements right, over time your restaurant will be a success if you’ve done your market research thoroughly.
The length of time it takes to succeed will be dependant on how well you market your restaurant.
Market research is an essential component of your restaurant marketing efforts.
If you get your market research wrong, the chances are you will position you restaurant in the wrong area of the marketplace.
Before you spend any more on opening a restaurant or promoting your existing restaurant, you need to consider what your unique selling proposition (USP)
is and whether it’s appropriate and appealing to potential customers in your immediate location.
Restaurant marketing starts with market research to determine whether there is a demand for your restaurant’s offering, and if not, what your alternate USP should be.
Initially you need to identify all the existing restaurants in your potential catchment area.
By then categorising them into their different cuisine types you will start to get a feel for the customer needs in your area.
Next you should visit and preferably dine at as many of those restaurants with similar cuisine type to your own.
But before you go, you need to plan your research in advance.
Make a list of questions you should be asking yourself whilst your dining at the competitor restaurants, for example:
-
What price level is their menu aimed at?
-
Are they busy? Did you have a problem getting a table?
-
How well is the food presented?
-
How well is the restaurant decorated and in what style?
-
What was the service like?
-
What marketing materials do they use?
These questions are just a sample.
Make a comprehensive list of questions and then rate them whilst dining, for example give them a rating of 1 – 5 for each question on your list.
Do the same for all the restaurants you visit.
Then based on your results, position each restaurant in a position matrix as follows:
The blue dots represent the restaurants in visited in your research exercise.
You will note in this example a cluster of high price/high quality restaurants in the top right quadrant.
If you were to position your restaurant in that segment you would face stiff competition from established restaurants.
You will also note a cluster of low price/low quality restaurants in the bottom left, again probably not the area to enter.
The top left quadrant with only one restaurant in it would suggest that low quality high priced food is not a winning combination!
In this example, you want to position your restaurant in the red circled area,
and differentiate your restaurant as a high quality / reasonable price provider.
Restaurant marketing becomes a whole lot easier when you can clearly differentiate your restaurant from others.
Hopefully the example above shows you the value of market research and product positioning in your restaurant marketing effort.
You can still apply this technique to an existing restaurant, the results will be that you either change your prices or your product quality,
of if there are no obvious sectors to target, consider even relocating your restaurant or changing your product type totally.
The next step of your restaurant marketing process is to formulate a strategic marketing plan.
For this stage, having chosen where to position your restaurant, select the 3 restaurants positioned closest to you in the positioning mix.
For these three restaurants perform a SWOT Analysis.
A SWOT analysis is basically a structured way of looking at the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats of each of the restaurants.
Draw up a quadrant similar to that above, then title each of the fours squares as Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.
From your market research notes, put your observations into the Strengths and Weaknesses boxes for each restaurant.
From their strengths and weaknesses you should be able to identify their opportunities and threats.
Now using your SWOT data for each of the restaurants, you should be able to complete a SWOT quadrant for your own restaurant.
Fill in your own strengths and weaknesses.
From your SWOT and the SWOTs for the other restaurants, you should be able to formulate a list of opportunities and threats.
To improve the quality of your restaurant’s SWOT we suggest you survey your customers
(give them a free drink in return for their feedback) and also survey your own staff.
And if the truth hurts when you see their responses, think of it as an opportunity to improve your product.
Your opportunities will be:
-
to market/advertise your restaurant’s strengths
-
possibly reduce the potential impact of your threats
-
pursue opportunities to build on your competitors’ weaknesses
-
pursue the same opportunities you’ve identified for your competitors, only implement them before your competitors
Now if you take all the actions associated with your identified opportunities and priorities them and give them timescales for implementation,
you will have a strategic restaurant marketing plan for your own restaurant.
|