By David Scott Peters

Following a few of my favorite four-wall marketing ideas.

Have a calendar of events to tell people what’s going on in your restaurant. Include everything from live music to the night when kids eat free. Include happy hours and special event celebrations, such as a prime rib dinner for two for New Year’s Eve. Put the calendar wherever it’s appropriate in your restaurant: on the tables, in your menu, on the walls, etc. But please make sure to keep it current. Replace those calendars on the first of the month without fail.

Put a fishbowl up front to collect business cards for a free lunch. Do a drawing for one winner a day for something small. Let your frequent diners win something. They won’t want to eat their free meal alone, so they’ll be sure to bring their friends. Or go bigger and pull a card a week for a happy hour for 10 of their closest friends. Include a set number of drinks and appetizers. They’ll have so much fun; they’ll stick around and spend more money. Then post who won and bring attention to the fact that your frequent customers are rewarded.

Try a bounce-back, something that encourages people to come back to earn their reward. This is like a frequent diner card. Give customers a card and once they get 10 punches, they get a free meal, appetizer, something. But make sure it matches what they’ve been spending. If you punch the card for sandwiches, reward them with a free sandwich, not a free drink or bag of chips.

In full-service restaurants, give them a bounce-back coupon with their checks to drive other parts of the business. For example, for lunch customers, you could give a $1 off a breakfast order. Whatever your bounce-back is, make it worthwhile. Give them a reason to come back.

Marketing within your four walls to the people who are in your store is a great use of your money.

David Scott Peters is a restaurant expert, coach, trainer and speaker, specializing in teaching independent restaurant owners how to use systems for increased sales and increased profits. He is the nationally acclaimed restaurant coach whose unique “SMART Systems” approach to boosting profits has earned him the title of, “The man who can walk into any restaurant in America and find $10,000 in undiscovered cash before he hits the back door – Guaranteed!” Visit www.TheRestaurantExpert.com for more. Learn more tips, tricks and secrets in David’s free five-part e-course, “How to Explode Your Restaurant Profits NOW!” Simply sign up to receive the e-course at TheRestaurantExpert.com.

By David Scott Peters

Restaurant Tip of the Week

There are only three ways to increase your sales:
1. Find new customers.
2. Increase their visits.
3. Increase their ticket size.

The most expensive and slowest way to increase your sales is to focus on finding new customers. The easiest and fastest way to increase your sales is to increase visits and ticket size. Focus your marketing dollars in these two areas.

David Scott Peters is a restaurant expert, coach, trainer and speaker, specializing in teaching independent restaurant owners how to use systems for increased sales and increased profits. He is the nationally acclaimed restaurant coach whose unique “SMART Systems” approach to boosting profits has earned him the title of, “The man who can walk into any restaurant in America and find $10,000 in undiscovered cash before he hits the back door – Guaranteed!” Visit www.TheRestaurantExpert.com for more. Learn more tips, tricks and secrets in David’s free five-part e-course, “How to Explode Your Restaurant Profits NOW!” Simply sign up to receive the e-course at TheRestaurantExpert.com.

By David Scott Peters

Restaurant Tip of the Week

Tell people what’s going on

Put a fishbowl up front to collect business cards for a free lunch. Do a drawing for one winner a day for something small. Let your frequent diners win something. They won’t want to eat their free meal alone, so they’ll be sure to bring their friends. Or go bigger and pull a card a week for a happy hour for 10 of their closest friends. Include a set number of drinks and appetizers. They’ll have so much fun; they’ll stick around and spend more money. Then post who won and bring attention to the fact that your frequent customers are rewarded.

David Scott Peters is a restaurant expert, coach, trainer and speaker, specializing in teaching independent restaurant owners how to use systems for increased sales and increased profits. He is the nationally acclaimed restaurant coach whose unique “SMART Systems” approach to boosting profits has earned him the title of, “The man who can walk into any restaurant in America and find $10,000 in undiscovered cash before he hits the back door – Guaranteed!” Visit www.TheRestaurantExpert.com for more. Learn more tips, tricks and secrets in David’s free five-part e-course, “How to Explode Your Restaurant Profits NOW!” Simply sign up to receive the e-course at TheRestaurantExpert.com.

By David Scott Peters

Make your restaurant fun and profitable again

I teach independent restaurant owners how to use operational systems to be more efficient and to position themselves to compete with the chain restaurants around them. But running a successful restaurant goes beyond systems. It requires the right attitude as well.

You work hard every day to make your restaurant a success. But if you’re not having fun, do you think your employees are? So give yourself a timeout and see if your restaurant could benefit from implementing any of the following ideas. I know you can make your restaurant fun and profitable again.  

• Appreciate your guests. There is an acronym in the industry that focuses on putting your customer first. GUEST stands for greet, understand, educate, satisfy and thank. Without your guest, you have nothing, right? So show them that you appreciate them and that you appreciate that they want to spend their discretionary income in your restaurant. Make them glad they chose you to do business with.
• Appreciate your employees. One of the best ways to make work fun is to make it fun for everyone who works with you. And you can make coming to work and being at work more fun in the way you treat your employees.
• Try some new and inexpensive marketing ideas. When you’re lean on cash and can’t afford a lot of advertising — outside your four walls — I encourage you to look inside your four walls for advertising opportunities, also known as four-wall marketing. You’ve got them in your doors, now you need to tell them what you do. Give them more reasons to come back. 
• Increase the chatter. Teach your employees that they have everything to do with how much money they make. If they simply take orders instead of taking an opportunity to sell with each order, it’s their bank account that suffers. If they can increase ticket averages, they can increase their take-home dollars. It’s the art of the upsell.
• Create a little competition. Develop server incentives and contests that encourage upselling and increase sales. Not only teach them how to upsell, but pick items, whatever it is that you want to sell, and create a concept, something fun. For example, the server who sells the most specials one night gets the prize. Or whoever sells the most bottles of wine in one night wins. Get them to compete with each other, increase their ability to sell, increase their average ticket. They make more money, you make more money. It may have cost you a little bit of money to put up, whether it’s a cash prize or movie tickets or whatever, but it’s a lot less than advertising. And it fuels great customer service, giving your customers the feeling that they’re special.

You spend a lot of time inside your restaurant’s four walls and so does your staff. But it shouldn’t be a struggle. A few simple things can make work fun again. I challenge you to implement just one of these ideas and see the response you get from customers and employees. If it works, let me know.

David Scott Peters is a restaurant expert, coach, trainer and speaker, specializing in teaching independent restaurant owners how to use systems for increased sales and increased profits. He is the nationally acclaimed restaurant coach whose unique “SMART Systems” approach to boosting profits has earned him the title of, “The man who can walk into any restaurant in America and find $10,000 in undiscovered cash before he hits the back door – Guaranteed!” Visit www.TheRestaurantExpert.com for more. Learn more tips, tricks and secrets in David’s free five-part e-course, “How to Explode Your Restaurant Profits NOW!” Simply sign up to receive the e-course at TheRestaurantExpert.com.

By David Scott Peters

Restaurant Tip of the Week

Tell people what’s going on

Have a calendar of events to tell people what’s going on in your restaurant. Include everything from live music to the night when kids eat free. Include happy hours and special event celebrations, such as a prime rib dinner for two for New Year’s Eve. Put the calendar wherever it’s appropriate in your restaurant: on the tables, in your menu, on the walls, etc. But please make sure to keep it current. Replace those calendars on the first of the month without fail.

David Scott Peters is a restaurant expert, coach, trainer and speaker, specializing in teaching independent restaurant owners how to use systems for increased sales and increased profits. He is the nationally acclaimed restaurant coach whose unique “SMART Systems” approach to boosting profits has earned him the title of, “The man who can walk into any restaurant in America and find $10,000 in undiscovered cash before he hits the back door – Guaranteed!” Visit www.TheRestaurantExpert.com for more. Learn more tips, tricks and secrets in David’s free five-part e-course, “How to Explode Your Restaurant Profits NOW!” Simply sign up to receive the e-course at TheRestaurantExpert.com.