Marketing and Menu Reboot
Ready to reboot your marketing plan? I can help you analyze what's working and what's not, including what's on your menu. I’ll offer recommended branding and menu changes, along with a full marketing plan and budget designed to target new customers, while encouraging repeat business. Pricing includes analysis, recommendations, marketing plan, and budget. This is a 12-16 week engagement.
How can marketing and menu revamping help my restaurant?
Marketing a restaurant is the act of showcasing your restaurant or food service concept and offering your services to the general public to win their business. It's a large part of what builds up a restaurant brand. Broken down, marketing is the strategy behind how you engage with your customer base. The most obvious benefit of restaurant marketing is that it grows revenue by increasing both foot and online traffic to your business. A promotional plan depends on your concept and can include:
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PR & opening events
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Signage/curb appeal
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Printed menu and other materials
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Website & SEO
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Google Business page
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Loyalty program
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Paid advertising
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Social media marketing
Menu engineering is the art and science of how and where to place menu items that will produce the highest gross profits. So, the first step is understanding which menu items make you the most money. At the beginning of a Marketing & Menu Reboot project, I look at sales reports to identify the biggest sellers. We cost out each menu item (which can be fairly time-consuming) to then determine profitability.
Now we can analyze what’s working and what’s not. The low sellers with low profitability might come off of the menu, or we might figure out why it’s not selling as well as we had hoped. Based on competitive analysis, can we raise any prices to improve the profit margin? At this point, we have the data to determine which items we want to sell more of.
The next step is working with a graphic designer to craft a menu in line with branding while influencing the buying decision. It’s a fun process for me, but usually takes a lot more analysis than independent owners have time for. A professionally “engineered” menu can increase sales by 16% or more. My goal is for this project to pay for itself in under six months, but this varies based on sales volume.