stuff4restaurants

If you want to clear a room of business owners really fast, start talking about business plans. Most business owners would rather crawl across a car-park littered with broken glass than spend their time committing themselves to the hypothetical, mental gymnastics that are required.

Instead they run off to their accountants office and get them to do the grunt work required. In fact, the vast majority of business owners I know, only prepare a business plan when their bank manager demands one, usually when extending their overdraft to cover “temporary” cash flow shortages.

These documents are prepared using word processor templates and are about as interesting to read as the obituary column of a suburban newspaper. And, the bank manager doesn’t read them anyway, they only demand them as part of a banks policy to pretend to be doing their “Due Diligence”, that is to say, they are merely attempting to cover their pretentious backsides from the threat of subsequent litigation.

BUSINESS PLANS ARE ESSENTIAL

Quite simply, a business without a business plan is an accident waiting to happen. A true business plan is not a static document that is prepared in haste then thrown into the bottom of the least used drawer of your desk.

A Business plan should be a live document, it should start off as a whole lot of considered guesses, and over time (say every three months) be revisited, revised and updated.

It’s YOUR road map and YES, you personally have to be involved in its preparation, you can use your accountant to lead the process, but the future figures the real life stuff and marketing objectives, can only be provided by you.

Your business plan is the only PREDICTIVE reporting document you have to keep track of your objectives and your progress.

If the whole business planning thing scares you, or you are reluctant to start, DON’T. Work with someone you respect, turn it into a game, do it in pencil so you know from the start that it’s not some negative game of “GOTCHA that is going to embarrass you later.

It’s the same as using a road map and a watch on a journey in your car, you set off with a whole lot of intentions and assumptions, and you frequently check your progress and refine your objectives to suit the reality of your circumstances, all, so you can arrive at a predefined destination.

The following video will give you a good idea of all the stuff that should be included and why.

Video from VideoJug: Business Plans

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This three and a half minute video will teach you and your team exactly how to avoid being scammed by this age old confidence trick.

Each year business losses billions of dollars to these very cunning tricks and it’s not always easy to teach each member of your team exactly what to look out for, I hope this video (and more to come) will help.

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This is a MUST SEE for every restaurant team.

It shows exactly how scamers go about eating and running without paying.

I have posted it here so you can show your teams what to watch out for.

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I try to very hard to keep this site interesting, and on good days, I’m reasonably happy with my humble efforts, however today, I had one of those chilling attacks of “The Green Demon of Envy” jealousies, that I try very hard to banish from my thinking.

Naomi Dunford is a new blogger, she has created a site about marketing for small business owners called IttyBiz.com.

There’s nothing too special about that, after all, the so called Blogosphere is awash with “Marketing Sites”, many produced by self proclaimed Guru’s and “Get Rich Quick” merchants peddeling little more than the rehashed wisdom of the past hero’s: John Caples and David Ogilvy.

But Naomi Dunford is different… and very special.

She is one of those, all too rare, marketers who actually understands, and can produce, Advertising material that has a uniquely interesting voice, and is effective.

You only have to visit her site and read her copy to fully understand exactly how good she is.

Within the first few sentences she reached out from my screen, grabbed my attention, and made me want to read more. All, with a style that had me believing I was having a two way conversation with an old friend.

Please believe me when I say, I have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on copy writing over the years, on behalf of large and small clients, and it is very, VERY, hard to find people that write with this degree of clarity, focus and ability to call a reader to action.

And shes not just good with words…

She also has an entrepreneurial flair for substantially leveraging opportunities, that is to say, she knows how to stretch your Advertising buck till it screams, and drive it right into the heart of big chunks of potential customers.

If you spend any money on Advertising, you should stop whatever you are doing right now and visit her excellent site , then before you buy one cent more of Advertising space, talk to her about what you should put in it.

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Click on pics to enlarge

This is a fascinating set of photographs of families from all around the world, alongside their weekly food provisions.

The full set of about 30 photographs is displayed in two parts and the copy alongside each provides the families weekly expenditure and list their favorite food items.

The photographs are all from a book entitled “The Hungry Planet” by Peter Menzel, Faith D’Aluisio.

I found these photos at Time Magazine’s Web Site

It’s not easy to find GOOD articles on how to market restaurants, there’s heaps of stuff that prattles on with non specific, thinly disguised, commercial B.S., but very few are actually helpfull.

So, it was a real pleasure to come across The Quantified Marketing Groups excellent web site. These people are obviously a class act, and don’t over hype their skills and abilities.

Heres a link directly to some very good articles , but take some time to look around at other the other excellent stuff they have there.

These photos show how fast food chains actual products are failing, just a tad, to live up to the fabulously presented photos in their advertisements.

It is a chilling example of “OVER PROMISING and UNDER DELIVERING” which is one of the quickest way known, to BURN customer relationships.

O.K. nobody expects a 15 year old kid, under full production pressure, to turn out exact replicas of what was produced by a team stylists and photographers, under perfect lighting conditions in a commercial studio.

However, the samples above and the many more HERE are graphic examples of a failure to meet customer expectations, expectations that the companies were responsible for creating.

Before your next photographic shoot, It may be wise to ensure, what is delivered to the customer, is reasonably well reflected in your Advertising. After all, the disappointed patron may have a law degree, a blog or a website, some time on their hands and a highly litigious personality.

LINKS TO MORE PICS HERE

Paul Bocuse is claimed to be France’s number one celebrity chef, he was even voted “Chef of the Century”

His restaurant is located just outside Lyon in France and receives a constant flow of tourist buses all coming to experience the food from a master.

In a way he is the incarnation of the French chef on the numerous TV shows where he appears.

He commands immense respect across the nation and amongst professional cooks. He has a number of restaurants, food product lines and books.

The picture above, I discovered whilst searching for ideas on “Things to do to create photo opportunities” and when I saw the pic above I thought “that’s a clever thing for a famous chef to do” and I still think it is… however,

I then read the article it was attached to, what a sad, pathetic and all to common, story, of how a business owner has failed to live up to his publicity and reputation.

The full, well written story is on fxcuisine.com

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O.K. I admit this is a shameless, self serving, piece of promotion for my new blogsite stuff4business.com .

stuff4business.com has been produced to provide the broader community of business owners with the same type of promotional and Advertising ideas this site provides to the restaurant and hospitality industry.

I have produced this site after much encouragement from readers who have contacted me over recent weeks. You know who you are and I thank you all sincerely for pushing and encouraging me in this exciting new direction.

NOW I NEED YOUR HELP…

Please check the site out for yourself here , and if you think my humble effort is worthy, I would greatly appreciate your help in letting your friends know about it, and please don’t forget to add it to your own r.s.s. reader.

CLICK HERE FOR stuff4business.com

My favorite business book of all time is: The E Myth revisited, by Michael Gerber.

Over the years I have used quotes from this book and given hundreds of copies away as gifts to friends and prizes at seminars.

It is an immensely powerful book that has the capacity to change the way you think about your business, unlocking you from the thoughts that cause stagnation and providing you with new ways of thinking that regenerate the way you do business.

I was recently reminded of this book when reading John Cricket’s excellent blog “Business Opportunities and Ideas ” where he explains how: he recently read the book after having put off its reading over the years, and how important he too, thinks it is…

Following his post, many of his readers also admitted they too had “put off” reading it, then, when prompted by him, had read it and were “gob smacked” by the power of it.

So, if you too have not read it, or have put off reading it, leave your computer right now and go get a copy of it, it’s not a hard read. Gerber has the unique ability to convert the tomes of academic stuff into a story telling style that is both easy to read and learn from, whilst being emotionally powerful enough, to make you WANT to change.

Thanks for the reminder John

Let me know what you think…

Brian Clark at Copyblogger.com recently posted one of the best articles I have ever read on how to write persuasive copy: the stuff that makes readers ACT…
Persuasion is generally an exercise in creating win-win situations. Your job as a communicator, is to present your case in a manner that your readers will find beneficial to agree with.
You make them an offer they can’t refuse, but not in the manipulative Godfather sense.
He explains in full detail exactly how the use of:
Repetition, Reasons Why, Consistency, Social Proof, Comparisons, Agitate and Solve, Prognosticate, Go Tribal, Address Objections and Storytelling will put real persuasive “grunt” into your writing.

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Whilst he is mainly talking to the writers of blogs, his advice will work for every business owner that needs words to persuade customers to purchase. i.e. every business owner.
If you do nothing else today READ HIS EXCELLENT ARTICLE here…

I came across this excellent article recently on the “RESTAURANT MARKETING BLOGG … it is well worth a visit…

In an article entitled “Two Kinds Of Restaurants. Which One Is Yours?” the author of the article Joel Cohen states…

There are two kinds of restaurants. “Commodity Restaurants” and “Heart & Soul Restaurants.” “Commodity Restaurants” do knee-jerk marketing, send out discounts all of the time and are convenient to go to. Management is hired just to keep the status quo. There is no growth in “Commodity Restaurants.” There is no growth from discounting. There is no growth from hunting down target groups and seeing the very few which fall for the gimmicks. The “hunting” approach to marketing is dead.

To read the full text of this article click here

I have seen some really DUMB ways to treat customers, but this little gem left me absolutely speachless…

What looked like a full tasty sandwich with lashings of ham and cheese on the shelf at a bakery turned out to be anything but. “The offending sandwich looked to be three layers of ham and one layer of cheese as the front of the sandwich was displayed for all hungry patrons to see. It wasn’t until the sandwich was opened that customers discovered its true worth (or lack of) with three of the four layers of ham and cheese not even making it halfway through the sandwich! All for the sake of a few lousy cents, this shortsighted owner has lost the trust and “LIFE TIME VALUE” of every customer (and their friends) exposed to this amateurish, miserly con.

This story was found on the New Zealand Herald’s Blog site “Sideswipe”

The majority of promotional material I read, lacks PASSION…

They just blah blah, blah, on about how interesting they think they are, or they are so esoteric I just don’t get it, nor do I want to waste my time trying to “get it”.
It’s a bit like the fact that I have always this secret, deep seated envy, for people who can REALLY appreciate music.
Don’t get me wrong, I enjoy music, in fact I enjoy most types of music, I can tap my fingers to it, and if I think no one can hear me, Sometimes I even attempt to sing along or at the very least, hum the melody.
But, I really envy those rare individuals who can do stuff like, listen to two musicians play the same piece of music, then describe to me the nuances of personal mood and interpretation they employed making the rendition uniquely theirs…
When they hear a great performance they become noticeably inflamed with passion, I’ve seen them moved in a way I’m yet to experience.
Maybe you have an ability just like that, if you ARE one of those rare people who can appreciate music or the arts this way, you have my absolute envy.
So, what’s all this passion stuff got to do with marketing?
One of my early and most influential mentors in the Advertising business used to mercilessly criticize Advertising that lacked passion… He would go into tirades about it.
As a young designer I would produce what I considered was a great advertisement, He would often take one look and ask:

“Where’s the passion in it? what’s the problem… does the product bore you? When you produce adds you have to go for it, damn it! You have to be, and show, your excitement, your enthusiasm has to leap off the page, you can’t pull back or play it safe”
The advertisement must RAVE about your product. You have to tell the reader how great it is, how every single feature of it will benefit them, they have to believe it feels good, looks good, smells good, works good, how it will make them feel better, look better, how it will make them richer, healthier, thinner, more charming, sexy and desirable.
There’s enough boring Advertising in the world don’t add to it…

Now, out of his highly critical gaze at last… I look back and agree, he was absolutely right!
Most advertisingIS boring, you can tell it was produced by people who lack passion for what they are trying to sell to us. And if they aren’t truly excited about it, how do they expect us to part with our hard earned dollars.
After all, We have millions of alternatives to choose from.

My challenge to you is: Collect all your promotional material together and read it again, do you really believe it will make the reader PASSIONATE enough to act…

At a recent seminar I challenged several of the participants to join me on stage, and use the telephone system we had previously wired into the rooms sound system, to place a call to their restaurant, just to learn exactly what their customers experience when they make that vital, first contact that set the scene for their dining experience.

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If you are cringing right now, grateful that you were not exposed to this potentially embarrassing little test, you have got picture already…

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One or two of the responses were O.K. not great but O.K. the rest were downright embarrassing for their owners to have exposed in front of their piers and opposition.

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To be fair, I offered the remaining participants in the audience, who were by now so obviously enjoying the “outing” of their opposition, the opportunity to put their business to the same test, this time I was not surprised to discover a whole new air of solemnity sweep across the audience.

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And before you blame the teams and trot out the “you just can’t get good…” clichés.
You as the owner, MUST take total responsibility for how your business is presented. If your team is not delivering the level of service you wish, only YOU can change it.

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If your team are not delivering the service you wish, it because they don’t know: why it’s important, how a customer perceives it, and exactly what it is they should be saying…
If you have this or a similar service problem, you must move quickly to establish scripts and performance systems that clearly spell out each word that must be spoken and each task that must be performed during this vital first encounter.

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The bookshops are full of “customer service” books that have sample scripts and systems that will ensure your customers experience a high level of service at each phase of their dinning experience.

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I would strongly suggest that the $30.00 investment in a book like this, will prove to be the highest performing investment you ever make.

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