Post-Recession Thinking For Restaurant Operators

Post-Recession Thinking For Restaurant Operators

November 23rd, 2009 // 10:24 pm @ Jeffrey Summers // 4484No Commentshttp://restaurantworx.com/post-recession-thinking-for-restaurant-operators/Post-Recession+Thinking+For+Restaurant+Operators2009-11-24+05%3A24%3A40Jeffrey+Summers

1. Stop being afraid of your environment or your market.
2. Stop the spiraling toward commoditization. There are many fewer seats in many more markets now. Start to differentiate yourselves or you will fall into a second stage of category commoditization and there will be even fewer seats in even more markets.
3. Continue the aggressive marketing posture the recession has forced you to engage in. But do so in terms of adding value to the overall guest experience more than addressing price. Guests don’t necessarily want lower prices, they want better value.
4. Don’t start building again. Focus on raising existing unit volumes, adding revenue streams and penetrating markets that have been historically underserved.
5. Stop paying lip service to service. Start training your managers and staff now to deliver a better guest experience. I mean REAL training and REAL Coaching. Hint: Your existing HR departments/people are not currently able to execute this.
6. Reinvest in your people. Give your managers additional business and leadership training outside your existing, staid, anti-creative, anti-innovation programs. Hint: Your existing HR departments/people are not currently able to execute this either.
7. 86 your existing ‘loyalty’ programs (which are nothing more than frequency schemes) and create real loyalty through actual guest engagement programs.
8. Two words: ‘Social Media’.
9. More community involvement. Cause marketing works.
10. Stop rolling over and playing dead every time some politician wants to create more legal mandates that don’t make any business sense. Start working together for industry causes and issues. There are several extremely important ones coming at you right now.
11. Get back to being restaurants instead of food businesses. If you’ve been in this business long enough, you’ll know what I mean. If not, call me.
12. Create a real marketing strategy that will help you achieve the level of success you really want.
13. Stop going it alone and ask for help. You can get further down the road of success with help than if you go it alone.

Related posts:

1. Strategic Thinking for Restaurant Operators

Category : Top-of-the-House