To make a profit in the restaurant business, eating venue owners need to have a competitive advantage. If hard work alone would do it, most restaurant owners would already be wealthy.
There are actually only a couple of real and long term competitive advantages anyone can have in the restaurant industry.
Owners of restaurants can't obtain the best cooking artist or the best location or the best menus or perhaps the cheapest prices -- at least, not for long-term. Chefs could get a better offer, road construction, building projects and population shifts turn great sites into not so desirable locations. Great recipes might be swiped perhaps even improved upon. And of course, trying to have the lowest prices will not be the way to go.
There are only two real and long-lasting competitive advantages any owner of a restaurant can have -- Innovation and Marketing.
Author and management master, Peter Drucker, declared, "Creativity is the only lasting competitive advantage a company can ever have in any business."
To loosely quote Ray Kroc, the McDonald's founder, realized the importance of innovation when he said, "McDonald's can innovate faster than the competitors can copy."
Using unique promotion techniques is a significant part of innovation because --
Marketing is the only thing that delivers profit for a restaurant. Anything else is an expense.
Marketing, if handled correctly, is the most beneficial investment any restaurant owner can ever make. In the stock exchange and also in real estate a person may expect to get a 5% or maybe even a 20% return on their investment. But in marketing, a $100 investment in promotion of your business could return $1,000 in profit and often times much more.
For example, altering only a few words in a headline can easily generate two to ten times more profit with the same ad. And the only cost to render the update would be the the short time it took the restaurant owner to discover how to write headlines. What kind of return on investment is that?
The average restaurant entrepreneur considers it his job is to "simply run the restaurant." He doesn't have time to promote his restaurant -- or even to learn how to market his business. Perhaps that's why he is average.
A restaurant owner cannot expect to make $100,000 a year doing $10 an hour work. A restaurant owner's duty needs to be to market, innovate and promote his/her restaurant.
The restaurant marketing plan used by many restaurants is primarily based on whatever the most recent ad salesperson was promoting. When thinking about promotion, many business owners just replicate what the big boys are doing. That can spell disaster for almost any independent restaurant.
Most restaurant owners put in very long hours, but it doesn't have to require long hours to use innovative marketing techniques to promote a restaurant.
Look at it this way, a restaurant owner who masters innovation and marketing can exchange restaurants with any restaurant owner in the area. Let him have the locality, the menu, the chef and staff and a year from this time the restaurant owner who is aware of how to market creatively would have the highest potential for profit.
Learn to stop chasing the so-called competitive advantages which are temporary and non-sustainable. Put emphasis on Innovation and Marketing and start to see your restaurant profits skyrocket.
Success For Small Businesses Is All About Being Seen On Google Maps
Today, the name of the marketing game for locally based businesses is to figure out how to get on Google maps. For the bulk of the last century, it was relatively easy for a locally based business to attract new customers.
Consumer Association Marketing - A More Complicated And Imperative Ability Than You Know
As a professional in customer relationship merchandising, I can tell you that it is much more difficult than most people think. Customer merchandising, in most people's evaluations, is a pretty simple matter.
The Ideals Of Marketing - Not Always The Exact Same As The Ideas Of Ad Campaigns
I felt that I knew the principles of advertising pretty well, but I knew that my lack of education in the field was holding me back. Basically, even though I was highly educated, I did not have any background in the principles of merchandising.
The Necessary Elements Of Deciding Upon Another Key-Word For Your Christian Business Web-Site
The selection process begins when you first write a web-page, continues as you analyze your pages for the amount of traffic, and the amount of bounces off your web-page, as well as the conversion rates.
Marketing Promotions - Specificity Is The Key To Advertising Success
I have always felt that merchandising promotions were broadly applied but not quite well thought out. Promotional merchandising in some ways is a fairly good idea for a wide array of things. You can give out pens, calculators, or other little trinkets with your brand name on it.
If You Have Ever Considered Starting Your Own Company, You Need To Learn A Little Bit Of World-Wide-Web Merchandising
Have you ever considered starting your own business? Perhaps you've always wanted a chain of hotels, or a chance to open your very own restaurant. Perhaps that coffee shop idea you had back in the 80s wasn't such a bad concept after all.
Specialized Promotional Advisor - A Good Job For Someone With Marketing And Advertising Familiarity
With my background in merchandising and advertising, I can go basically anywhere I want to in the industry. I have worked on market research merchandising, viral merchandising, guerrilla merchandising - you name it, I have done it.
Related Articles
- Learning How To Get On Google Maps Has Replaced The Yellow Pages
- 5 Mobile Marketing Text Message Advertisement Blunders A Business Should Avoid
- Top Five Mobile Marketing Text Message Advertising Mistakes A Business Should Avoid
- Top Five Mobile Marketing Text Message Promotion Errors You Must Avoid
- 5 Mobile Marketing Text Message Advertising Blunders A Business Must Hold Off
- Some Common Mobile Marketing Text Message Advertisement Errors You Must Avoid
- Top Five Mobile Marketing Text Message Advertisement Blunders A Business Must Hold Off
- Success For Local Businesses Is All About Being Located On Google Maps
Resources
Loading ...
