These Guys Boosted Sales 400% With Creative Marketing

Photo by Dean Rutz, Seattle Times Ivar’s Seafood Restaurant in Seattle, Washington pulled off a brilliant piece of restaurant marketing recently, resulting in a 400% increase in clam chowder sales.  The story was...

Simplify Your Life: Reduce Your Restaurant Menu Items

In these times of economic uncertainty, it is easy to get lost in trying to do many things all at once. A good example is restaurateurs trying to manage their inventories, their staff, their operations, their books, their sales, their marketing… Do you know anybody like that? I thought so. You need to simplify your life and focus on just a few basic core competences to make your restaurant the best it can be to stand out...

80/20 vs. 4: Restaurant Marketing By The Numbers

The Pareto Principle has long been hailed as the Holy Grail of marketing, the one rule by which all marketing efforts succeed or fail.  The principle itself is pretty simple: 20% of your customers drive 80% of your sales.  There’s always a core group of loyal customers who not only spend money in your restaurant, they...

Is There Money To Be Made After Hours?

The 24/7 lifestyle has been creeping further and further into American cities over the course of this decade.  People are out later more frequently, and many restaurants, especially in urban centers, are responding by catering to late night diners.  If done right, the late night scene can energize your restaurant and your bottom line. To be sure, late night dining isn’t right for every restaurant.  Several factors must converge...

A Glossary of Restaurant Lingo, Slang & Terms

A     * All Day – the total amount.  If table 12 orders two orders of salmon and table 19 orders four orders of salmon, that’s “six salmon, all day.” B     * Back of the house – the back end of the restaurant, the kitchen and storage areas, where the chefs, cooks, prep people and dishwashers primarily work.     * Bev Nap – the little square paper napkin which a beverages rests on.     * Brigade...

8 Restaurant Marketing Tips

In these tough times, restaurants can use all the free marketing they can get. If a pricey restaurant marketing consultant is not in your budget, read on to discover ways to get your eatery in the customers’ minds, without spending a dime. 1. Talk to your customers.  Ask how they found you. If it’s not your usual source, follow up to see if you can connect with that niche market. 2. Don’t play by the rules.  How...

3 Reasons Food Prep Equipment Helps You Cut Costs & Improve Quality

There’s nothing quite as exciting as watching a busy restaurant’s kitchen gear up for the dinner rush.  Every chef and restaurateur knows that thorough preparation is the only way to effectively combat the chaos that is a kitchen during peak dinner rush.  And that’s why the kitchen starts prepping hours before the guests...

Green Restaurants: Turning Food Scraps Into Electricity

San Francisco restaurants are often on the cutting edge of sustainability and green practices.  They’ve pioneered ways to turn food waste into fertilizer, reduce food miles by sourcing locally, and decrease waste through recycling and composting. More recently, the East Bay Municipal Utility District has started converting...