Do You Change Your Menus Seasonally?
Howard Tinker • April 14, 2015
Is There a Need for You To Change Your Menus Seasonally?
Seasonal Menus
I often talk about using your menu for marketing and one great way to do this is to change your menu seasonally. It is an effective marketing strategy that not only delights your customers but also saves you cash...There are lots of great reasons for doing this:
1. People crave seasonal foods
- When it’s winter, everybody wants comfort food; and
- During summer, everybody wants salad.
So, adapt to your menu.
2. In-Season produce is cheaper
- Using produce when it is bountiful and at it's best is not only good for your customer but it's good for you too... it's cheaper when there's lots of it about.
3. Marketing benefits
- You can market out to your database with each season's menu.
- Have your new menu posted on your website.
- You can advertise the “coming attraction” of a new menu in house.
Seasonal Menus, a great way of inspiring and staying in touch with your customers.
Want to know more about marketing your restaurant? Book in for a quick, no-obligation chat with Howard by clicking the button below.
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One of my clients asked me whether the time was right for them to do some social media on TikTok. So here are my thoughts on TikTok marketing for restaurant owners - you might be surprised to learn what I said.
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As a marketing consultant who specializes in helping restaurant owners grow
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life. It makes you money now, and it will make you wealthy in the future
too.
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Experience tells me that this is where your success or failure is decided.
Our calendar is amazing because we have everything from New Year's Day to
Anzac Day to Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, Father's Day, and Melbourne
Cup.
We used email marketing to successfully launch a new menu. In this case, it
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Remember people nowadays are looking for businesses that have high
standards, high values, and care about them as a customer. It is worth
bearing in mind that this might push a few buttons. I'm sure that some
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on…" But that doesn't really matter when it comes to having a great
business and also feeling great about yourself as a business owner.
I was business coaching a commercial lawyer who works alongside
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Make sure you link all of your restaurant marketing channels.For example, when you send out an email make sure you put your website and social media links in it; and, make sure those links work and take the recipient directly to those channels.
Emails come from real people not from businesses? So send them from a real person to a real person! When you send out an email from your company, make sure that it comes from a person.
Goldfish Bowl Draws are a simple and effective way to collect data for your database. People drop their business cards into the fish bowl, you draw a card out once a month or once a week and you give away a prize.
Attracting repeat business is something I talk about a lot. Of the 4 Ways to Grow Your Business, it is the second way and it's incredibly important. One way to get repeat business (and also new business) is via 'smart' sponsorships.
Running a Profitable Restaurant is more than just having good food and good service. In fact, if that’s all you've got going for you, you are going to struggle.
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Last night was the NSW Good Food Guide Awards and as usual our clients were amongst the awards...
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This is a great new business strategy that is easy to run. Focus on your quiet nights and send out a 'Buy one get one FREE' invite to your top clients. Why your top clients?
Once you're collecting a database, you can start communicating with it. Talk to the people on your database as VIP Members and then run events where they are invited solely because they are a VIP Member.
If not, then you should! They're a really great way to make money for your restaurant. All you have to do is promote them on your website, in your bill-folds, in your restaurant; just let people know that you sell gift certificates.
If you are doing Wine Nights, start to segment your database for those people who come to wine events and create your own ‘Wine Club’.When people are dining in your restaurant, tell them about your wine club and ask them to join.
Some of the wineries are going through tough times right now so, why not get on the phone, ring the local wineries and see if they want to get involved with you and run wine nights? If they have their own database too, they can invite their customers to come to your restaurant.
I often talk about who you can partner with in business in your local area. If you have gyms within 3-5 Km of your restaurant, they will be attracting the same people who you want to dine at your restaurant.
We’ve all seen people taking photographs of meals and dishes in restaurants and it is a great opportunity for you to make use of this. One of the things we do is we use MyGuestlist, it is an electronic platform and within that you can run competitions.
Ten years ago, when we first started doing our seminars, I used to ask who is in the yellow pages and I would say that 99% of people would put their hand up and then, I’d ask who’s got website then maybe only 10% would say they had.
One of the best questions that I was ever asked by a business coach was, "Who Has Your Customer Now"?That question doesn't mean: "Who is your competition? Which restaurant are they at now?" It means: "Where are they now? Who else serves them in terms of businesses?"
Let me tell you about one of my clients and what they did one year. So when the family came in for Father’s Day, they took a jar of lollies to the table. It was a jar that they had put together for them by a little company with their own logo on and their own branding so it would belong to the restaurant.
It’s a great question. It might be very trendy, it might be very well graphically designed but does it actually attract people?I have seen restaurants where the name is outside, but there is nothing else to tell people what it is other than the name.
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