How to Promote Your Restaurant in 2014 - Tony Sternad, Habanero Marketing

Marketing a Restaurant in 2014 is a very different animal than just a few short years ago. 

This post will discuss this transition, and bring you up to speed on how things have changed, with respect to marketing your Food Service business in today's cell phone, and internet search driven Restaurant marketing reality. 

Firstly, a brief discussion about 'old school' marketing for Restaurants, which is still very valuable and pertinent today. 

Back in 2001 I managed a very large Brewery / Restaurant in the Napa Valley. 

A $7000 night at the bar in Napa

Every wine maker knows the saying: "It takes a lot of great beer to make good wine" and our brewery was packed with folks from the wine industry, as well as much of the youth of the town, late into the night. 

A couple of years later, I landed a Management gig at an up scale eatery in Calistoga frequented by the elite of the valley, and wealthy tourists on vacation in the Wine Country. 

Brannan's Grill in Calistoga

The starkly different management experiences taught me much about the difference between a downtown spot all the locals know and love, and a restaurant off the beaten path dependent on first time tourist visitors who might never visit the restaurant again.

Marketing Fine Dining in Calistotga

The method of marketing couldn't have been more different. 

At the Brewery, we did our best to keep our quality of service high, and our reputation in town at a level that would allow us to maintain our popular status. 

We would advertize ourselves in the local paper, detailing our entertainment for the most part. 

Promotion of Value Added Services

 Our location and reputation is what enabled us to do $17,000 in sales on one particular Fourth of July day. 

At the 'high-brow' Restaurant in Calistoga, it was a very different story. 

We needed to be creative in how we marketed, with much less of a budget to work with, and a much more difficult target audience to reach. 

This was, of course, the days before the internet was used by the somewhat older demographic we favored, so we relied on specific print ad placements in wine country centric travel magazines and radio spots on Classical Music stations. 

Along with a good working relationship with the marketing folks at the local wineries, the quality of the food and service was crucial, because this audience was one of the first to use Restaurant Reviews to select a place to dine, namely the Zagat guide. 

Zagat in Napa

 

Published reviews could make or break a restaurant like ours, and more than just managing the quality of work of mouth, one or two reviews from only a few 'customers', ie professional Restaurant reviewers was the goal. 

This meant we had to be on our game, every day, every meal. 

Fine Dining at its best

And, once acquiring a good review from these powerful people, how to specifically use these key reviews to market the Restaurant. 

This varied experience managing Restaurants with divergent marketing needs taught me much about how to make this all work using 'Old School Marketing' techniques.

Fast forward ten years or so, and we have a very different story. 

Today, in 2014, the use of the internet to search for a restaurant has changed the game, and with the often thin margins in this industry, it is now essential to understand how to market your Restaurant online. 

The following Video is a brief discussion of exactly how things have changed, and by the end of the clip, you will have a good idea of how to bring your Restaurant up to internet speed. 

It details how you can use these 'old school' marketing techniques with which most of us are familiar, in harmony with the advanced techniques of Website, Content and Social Internet Marketing of today. 

 

Feel free to reach me directly, Tony Sternad, HabaneroMarketing@gmail.com and you can get more information about Internet Marketing on The Marketing Lunchbox Blog  

There is not time like the present, follow me on Google+ to find out more about how to Market Your Business Online in 2014 with Habanero Marketing.

Tony Sternad

HabaneroMarketing@gmail.com

510-545-2054

MarketingLunchbox.blogspot.com