Menu Make-over

I jumped into a conversation today about menu makeover which is really lesson in menu engineering.

It is worth a look.

______________________________________________________

It started on www.Restaurant-Community.com run by KNG (Formerly King Uniform and Menus)

Here are a couple threads:
In response to my offer to have the restaurant community forum take on a menu design make-over, Lynn from The Soda Fountain has requested your help and advice on their menu. Please follow this attachment to see their current menu Soda Fountain Menu

Please ask questions and make suggestions by replying to this thread. If you are not already a member, please sign up and join the fun

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10 Ways to Revamp Your Ineffective (and Boring) Business Card

Here is quick read on how to stand out with your business card.  i think it is very applicable to the restaurant business and wanted to share ~ Jonathan

10 Ways to Revamp Your Ineffective (and Boring) Business Card
by Noah Rickun

I just returned from a week in Phoenix, Arizona, where I attended an industry conference and had the chance to rub elbows with roughly 1,500 potential partners, vendors, and customers. As I unpacked my bag, I grabbed the stack of hundreds of business cards people gave me and I found myself struggling to remember who some of these people are. A handful of the cards have handwritten notes on the back (I always write something to jog my memory if I know I intend to follow-up after the show), some have photos on them, but most are indistinguishable from the rest. Isn’t the point of a business card to provide a tool for follow up after meeting someone for the first time? A business card should reflect your personality. If you’re boring, have a boring business card. If not, then here are 10 ways to revamp your ineffective (and boring) business card:

1. Be creative. Especially with the title. Have fun and call yourself something that will make people smile. Don’t be a salesperson, be The Sales Cowboy. Don’t be a Customer Service Representative, be a Customer Loyalty Specialist. Don’t be a receptionist, be the Director of First Impressions. Don’t be an assistant, be the Chief Executive Assistant. Don’t be an Account Manager, be The Princess of Profits. Got it?
2. Be clear. About what you can DO for someone, as opposed to using a nondescript and professional (think, faceless) title.
3. Be memorable. If someone lost your card, would they call and ask for another? Or would they not even realize they had lost it?
4. Be valuable. Provide a tip, an idea, a link to more information, or a code for online redemption.
5. Be different. Be so different that ANYONE you give your card to shows it to EVERYONE they know.
6. Be “WOW-able”. If people say, “WOW! I’ve never seen anything like this before,” then you know your card is working for you.
7. Be easy. Include your office phone, your cell phone, fax number, email address, Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn accounts.
8. Be shapely. If your card is the standard size and shape, it fits nicely in a pile of all the other cards people forget about. Make your card a different shape or size so that it stands out — and stands alone. A great card can’t be put in a pile.
9. Be YOU. Put your picture on your card.  And not your high school yearbook picture—make sure your picture looks like you do.  If you’ve changed your hair color, lost or gained more than a few pounds, or aged more than a few years, get a new card.  You want people to look at your card and remember meeting YOU.
10. Be independent. Worried that your boss won’t pay for your new cards?  Or that your boss won’t allow you to make creative cards?  Ask for forgiveness rather than permission.  And you probably won’t have to ask for forgiveness when you bring back success stories as a result of all the new connections you’ve made with your creative business card.  About the money—you can now buy business cards online in large quantities for less than the cost of that new shirt you bought to wear at the tradeshow.  Your boss didn’t pay for your shirt, did he?  Invest your own money in the most important person in the world – you.

As I began sorting the cards in my hands, I made two piles:  one for scanning and filing, and one for immediate follow up.  Guess which pile is bigger?  I’ll help you. From the hundreds of cards I started with, I kept twenty on my desk. There are two ways to get into my short stack—the one that means I’ll be reaching out to you within a week after meeting.   You need to offer GREAT value when we meet or you need to have a GREAT business card.  If you have both, you’re guaranteed that I (and most everyone else you meet) will want to get in touch quickly.

Think you’ve got a great business card? Email a copy to noah@gitomer.com and, if I agree, I’ll post it on my blog at www.rickun.com.

Noah Rickun is a Speaker who presents to companies on sales, customer loyalty, and attitude. His seminars are both engaging and memorable. For bookings, please contact his friendly office at 704-926-5582. Click here for more information on Noah Rickun or visit www.rickun.com.

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How to Market Restaurant Specialty Items for the Holidays

A question was posed by one of our Restaurant Success Monthly Members, Buddy Guilbeau:
Do you have any ideas on how to increase my corporate hams sales for the holidays?  How about ideas on advertising my hams for the holidays?

I thought this may be one of those questions that others may want to ‘hear’ the response, so I’m posting it for all to see.  Buddy’s question:

My response:

I think that advertising for Ham Sales, in your case, or Gift Cards or even specialty meals packed to go for the holidays all have a similar approach.

The low cost / no cost restaurant marketing tactic is always “4 Walls Marketing”. Make sure the 4 walls of your place are communicating the message you would most like to push. This includes a multitude of ways and media to communicate the message.
4 walls:

Signage

Bathrooms Signage (one of my favorites) on the mirror or the back of the stall. Think about the captured audience potential.

Entrance Signage – Hit them before they even get in the door.  You program them to be thinking about anything you want before they even open the door.  I like to use a question “How Can You Get A Free Ham This Holiday?”.   It plants the question and they will want to figure it out and will most likely ask.

Interior Signage - Wherever appropriate, get a sign conveying your message.  You can even play off the door signage and either answer the question or ask more questions and make it a game.

Table tent or flyer on every table in the place.

Bag stuffer in every bag that goes out the door - whether it’s To Go food or delivery.  Get one on every plate or tray served or with every check you present. Don’t just bury it in the check presenter; put it right on top. Put the bag stuffer with every catering order and in every box lunch.

Email your list – craft a series of emails that keeps your message in front of your guests and intrigues them.

Website – Post it on your website.  Have a link from the promotion in your email to more details available online.  Online you can spell out all the details and benefits and exactly who the offer is perfect for or applies best.

Contest – Have a contest to give away a FREE item that you are promoting then have a big sign and a business card drop or little form to be filled out. The people that “Opt-in” the contest must want the prize so even if they don’t win send them a runner up prize for a special discount or offer that works with what you are promoting.

Mail your list – A direct response mail piece targeted to your existing guests, that already know you will cut through the mail clutter and can draw a huge response.  It doesn’t have to be fancy or expensive. It could even be part of a regular mail cycle like a newsletter.  Something you may want to try is drop out piece/insert that takes them out of the newsletter and is obvious when they open it.

Buy a list of the top 50 employers in your area and mail them.  This message needs to be a little different because they may not know who you are. In this case you want to use direct response tactics like we teach in the Restaurant Success System,  i.e. Headline, compelling copy, offer, expiration to just mention a few.

At the end of the day there is no magic bullet that is going to sell a million products but when you combine a bunch of methods you will reap results from all of them and your overall response will be tremendous.

Just like with everything else you have to take action.  Start with the items that you like from above and that are easy for you. Then work to add one a day until at the end of a week or so you have a tremendous amount of communication and marketing all working to sell your product.

For details and examples of everything mentioned above check out RestaurantSuccessSystem.com/noriskoffer/

In the Restaurant Success System you not only get examples, tactics and strategies you also get done for you downloadable pieces.  Yes the actual pieces that all you have to do is change your restaurant name and print.  It is worth a minute to check it out. RestaurantSuccessSystem.com/noriskoffer/

Thanks for the question, Buddy.  I’m sure your interest has helped others out!

Jonathan Munsell
Founder & Creator
Restaurant Success Monthly
Restaurant Success System

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Outrageous Advertising: How Can You Make Your Burger Outrageous!

A recent article in Nations Restaurant News prompted me to give some thought to Outrageous Advertising.  What product can you take and make over the top and even gain fan fair and maybe even some press?

Here a couple products that I think are way over the top and have garnered both of these restaurants huge press and local buzz.

Diger’s Diner in Brush Colorodo “Home of Colorado’s Biggest Burger”

Colorado’s Biggest Burger

Diggers Diner is serving up a fun filled meal with it’s new State Champion Burger.  With 3lbs of ground beef, a pound and a half bun, 8 slices of cheese, 1/2 a tomato, 1/2 an onion, 1/2 a head of lettuce, 1/2 cup of pickles and of course 12oz of fries it is sure to satisfy even the hungriest.  Although this burger can be split by at least 6 and still satisfy the brave might choose to compete in the burger challenge.  If you Eat ALL of it yourself (includes fries) you will be placed on the wall of fame, get a certificate of completion and of course we will by your burger! There is a 1 hour time limit.

7-patty Whopper promo strikes chord

By Alan J. Liddle

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How Automating Your Restaurant Marketing Changes Everything!

Jonathan Munsell, Founder & Creator of Restaurant Success System and Restaurant Success Monthly, discusses with Susan Roseman how to take the bits and pieces of restaurant marketing done every month and roll them into a well crafted well oiled machine through automation.  Specifically they discuss the hugely positive impact that RepeatRewards has had on systematizing and organizing the majority of the monthly marketing tasks.  (this is the advanced preview of the  audio portion of a webinar which is being produced into a DVD and is still in the production phase)
>>>Click Here To Download Enrollment Forms<<<

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download to your MP3 or Ipod Right Click Here : Automate Your Restaurant Marketing

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Do Restaurant Promotional Pranks Work?

I love the idea of a big promotional prank to garner some attention, especially when the promotion can get you some FREE Marketing in local and in the case below national media.

Let me know the best promotional prank you have done or have heard of Leave a Comment

Check out this story from Nations Restaurant News – Well done Ivar’s – My hat is off to you!

Enjoy!  Check out the video it is great!

Jonathan Munsell
Founder & Creator
Restaurant Success System
Restaurant Success Monthly

Ivar’s admits to underwater billboard prank

By Alan J. Liddle

One of Ivar’s fabricated underwater billboards Click Here for Ivar’s Website Complete Story

SEATTLE (Oct. 23, 2009)
Sinking the hopes of anyone who wanted to believe that billboards recently pulled from Elliott Bay may have been remnants of a decades-old submarine advertising scheme by eccentric restaurateur Ivar Haglund, Ivar’s Inc. officials this week admitted the soggy signs were a promotional prank.

Seattle-based Ivar’s, which operates three dinnerhouses and 27 fast-casual seafood bars known for fish and chips, has a history of advertising and promotional silliness that stems back to its late founder, the jingle-crooning Haglund, who died in 1985.

“One goal was to see a five point gain in customer counts,” Bob Donegan, president of Ivar’s Inc., said of a motivation for the company’s advertising gambit.

“Another goal was to bring humor to the dismal fall in Seattle,” he said, pointing to seasonal bad vibes caused by the struggling local professional baseball and football franchises and “nasty political campaigns.”

The billboard-related food offers are available through Nov. 22 and include a bowl of chowder for 75 cents, which is down from the regular prices of $3.29 at the company’s seafood bars and $3.95 at its three dinnerhouses. Also being offered is a free child’s menu entree, normally priced from $4.95 to $7.25 depending on the concept visited, with the purchase of a regular entree.

Explaining results so far, Donegan said, “We have seen a doubling in sales of the cups of chowder since the campaign began, [but] not as strong redemption in the free kids’ meals portions.

“Overall,” he continued, “it looks like the campaign may be worth up to 10 points in customer counts – but there is still a month to run and all elements are still not in place, [as] some more [replica] billboards go up next week.”

The sunken signs first came to the public’s attention in late August when a salvage crew, which was in on the gag, pulled from Elliott Bay a rusting, algae-streaked and barnacle-dotted billboard advertising clam chowder at prices out of the 1950s. Two others were later pulled from Puget Sound, Ivar’s representatives said.

As word of the discovery spread, Donegan, straight faced but tongue in cheek, explained that the signs had been located using documents uncovered by a historian working on a book about Haglund. The old documents, he indicated, suggested that the underwater signs may have been Haglund’s advance work for an advertising campaign in the future when, the restaurateur suspected, regional commuters would use submarines.

From the start, Donegan said the company couldn’t be sure if the billboards were real or someone’s idea of a joke until authentication measures were completed. But in the meantime, he said, Ivar’s would honor the apparent 50-year-old deals on the signs, design and sell themed T-shirts, create and distribute replica billboards, and launch a contest using radio, TV and the Internet.

Videos of the make-believe sign salvage operation, along with information about the documents supposedly supporting the submarine advertising theory, were posted at the restaurant company’s website.

“We knew Seattle would respond to humor, and it has,” Donegan said.

Donegan said the company “gets calls, visits and e-mails daily from people who have just discovered a sign or the offers in the restaurants and love them.” For instance, he said, “We can’t keep in stock the T-shirts our crews are wearing showing the submarine. Our retail store on Pier 54 and the webstore keep selling out of them.”

Though the submarine-signs campaign only officially runs through late November, “we hope the goodwill lasts through the winter,” he said.

Donegan said the campaign was planned and conceptualized over a three-month period, with the on-water video shoots lasting two days. The campaign was executed in less than two weeks, he said, thanks, in large part, to creative contributor Terry Heckler, who has worked with the company for 24 years and created its iconic TV spot, “Dances with Clams,” a spoof of Kevin Costner’s Academy Award-winning movie “Dances with Wolves.”

Jack Barrett of WackoFilms “knew us and was very effective and efficient,” and publicist Tamara Wilson aided and abetted the effort through her “good relationships with the media,” Donegan added.

All in all, Donegan indicated, the undersea marketing adventure will cost about $200,000, plus whatever product costs are tied to the food discounts.

“We bought during low cost times for TV and billboards,” he said, and “we traded [out] a lot for radio [time].”

As it stands, the Ivar’s Inc. president said, “Our business remains strong almost everywhere and unless we have a disaster in the fourth quarter, this will be among the best years in Ivar’s history – Almost like we found underwater treasure.”

Author of Nations Restaurant News Article:  Alan J. Liddle at aliddle@nrn.com.

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Test Results: How Long Should Your FROM Line Be?

Maybe you’ve never thought about it.

Typically length is a concern that comes up when discussing subject lines – how many characters you can fit in a subject before your subscribers’ email programs cut it off.

But the same thing applies to your “from” line; if it’s too long, subscribers won’t be able to read all of it while viewing their list of emails.

Here’s what I mean:

Emails From My Inbox With Long “From” Lines

Within the last 48 hours, I’ve received messages from these long-named senders:

See how the “from” lines all cut off right around the same point? They’re longer than Gmail is willing to show me all at once.

What About Other Email Programs?

I wanted to find out if other email programs did this, and if so, at what point they did so.

So I ran a test: emailing different addresses of mine at the various webmail providers as well as in MS Outlook, with “John Jacob Jinglehiemier Schmidt” set as the “from” name.

Here are the results:

Email Client/OS	“From” Line Displayed	# Characters
Yahoo! (Windows XP)	John Jacob Jinglehiemi	22
Yahoo! (Mac OSX)	John Jacob Jinglehiemi	22
Gmail (XP)	John Jacob Jinglehiemier.	24
Gmail (OSX)	John Jacob Jinglehiemier.	24
Windows Live Hotmail (XP)	John Jacob Jinglehiemie	23
Windows Live Hotmail (OSX)	John Jacob Jinglehiem	21
AOL Webmail (XP)	justinsawebertest@yahoo.	24
AOL Webmail (OSX)	justinsawebertest@yahoo.	24
Microsoft Outlook 2007 (XP)	John Jacob Jinglehiemier Schmidt	32 (all)
Mozilla Thunderbird (XP)	John Jacob Jinglehiemier Schmidt	32 (all)
iPhone Mail	John Jacob Jinglehie…	20 (then the …)
Gmail (Android mobile phone)	John Jacob Jinglehiemier	24

Observations

• In most webmail programs, it didn’t matter what operating system you were on. Hotmail was the exception in that it cuts off the “from” line a couple characters earlier if you’re on a Mac.
• All my tests were in Firefox, so I can’t say whether the various browsers (IE, Chrome, Safari, Opera) would affect these figures.
• Where the width of the “Sender” column could be adjusted (notably Mozilla Thunderbird), I used the default width.

Users can obviously change this and so there’s no way to guarantee that the results of this test will hold true for every user.

• These email clients don’t all necessarily look at character counts for the cutoff; some may cut off after a certain number of pixels.

Individual recipients may set different settings that cause more or fewer characters to appear in the space provided (example: whether a recipient uses fixed-width or variable-width fonts can affect how many characters display).

I include these observations to give you an idea of why your results might vary from these; however, I’d categorize most of these as relatively minor issues and/or edge cases that shouldn’t affect how you use this information.

So Your From Line Should Always Be 20 Characters Or Fewer?

Not necessarily. Just like when you look at subject line length, there’s no one universally right answer here.

Short isn’t always better – not if keeping it short cuts down on your ability to achieve your email campaign’s goals.

Take a look back at the screenshot from my inbox. Some of them – like “Ebates Top Picks Newslet” – are easily recognizable even though they’ve been truncated. Others don’t fare so well. Who is “Maggie L. Fox, Alliance”? I had no idea when I got that email.

• Recognition is a determining factor here. If a long “from” line makes it harder to recognize who you are, then shorten it.
• Position is another factor. If your “from” line is going to run long, get the most important and recognizable parts at the beginning.For example, MarketingProfs’ small business newsletter is called Get to the Point. Their “from” line is really long, but they make sure I see the branded part even when Gmail cuts off the rest – “Get to the Point: Small .”

Your “From” Line Suggestions?

What have you learned about creating effective “from” lines? Done any testing of them?

How did you determine what to use for your own?

Share your thoughts below!

About the Author ~Who Is AWeber?

Posted by Justin Premick with AWeber

Founded in 1998, we create email marketing software to help small businesses automate email follow up and email newsletter delivery.

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Immediately Effective Cost Control Tips & Tactics – 131-142

This is the last post in a number of posts I will be providing to offer cost effective tips and ideas for your restaurant biz.

Included Categories:

1. Food Costs and Kitchen Management

2. Bar, Cellar and Beverages

3. Packaging, Paper and Consumables

4. Cleaning Costs

5. Labor Costs

6. General & Administrative

7. Utilities

8. Repairs and Maintenance

9. Event Management

10. Safety

[Content protected for Inner Circle members only]

Could have used these great tips in your restaurant business, consider joining our awesome group here at Restaurant Success Monthly.

please click on the “Add to Cart” button to register through our secure shopping cart.

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• Immediately Effective Cost Control Tips & Tactics - 91 - 100 This is the 11th post in a number of posts I will be providing to...

Immediately Effective Cost Control Tips & Tactics – 111-120

This is the 13th post in a number of posts I will be providing to offer cost effective tips and ideas for your restaurant biz.

Included Categories:

1. Food Costs and Kitchen Management

2. Bar, Cellar and Beverages

3. Packaging, Paper and Consumables

4. Cleaning Costs

5. Labor Costs

6. General & Administrative

7. Utilities

8. Repairs and Maintenance

9. Event Management

10. Safety

[Content protected for Inner Circle members only]

Could have used these great tips in your restaurant business, consider joining our awesome group here at Restaurant Success Monthly.

please click on the “Add to Cart” button to register through our secure shopping cart.

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Immediately Effective Cost Control Tips & Tactics – 91 – 100

This is the 11th post in a number of posts I will be providing to offer cost effective tips and ideas for your restaurant biz.

Included Categories:

1. Food Costs and Kitchen Management

2. Bar, Cellar and Beverages

3. Packaging, Paper and Consumables

4. Cleaning Costs

5. Labor Costs

6. General & Administrative

7. Utilities

8. Repairs and Maintenance

9. Event Management

10. Safety

[Content protected for Inner Circle members only]

Could have used these great tips in your restaurant business, consider joining our awesome group here at Restaurant Success Monthly.

please click on the “Add to Cart” button to register through our secure shopping cart.

Related Posts

• Immediately Effective Cost Control Tips & Tactics - Tips 21 - 30 This is the 4th post in a number of posts I will be providing to...
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• Immediately Effective Tips & Tactics - Tips 11-20 This is the third post in a number of posts I will be providing to...

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