Thursday, June 14, 2017
MARKETING: Game’s On? Make Sure Your Spot is the Hotspot
If you run a bar, it’s never too early to start thinking about football season. We all want to make sure our spot is the go-to place to watch every game. So how do you get fans in the door? And how do you keep them coming back for more? Like this.
The Football Marketing Bootcamp is just 12 days away! Have you registered yet?
FINANCE: Battle of the Coasts: East Coast vs. West Coast Food Costs [Presented by Orderly]
If one thing is for certain, it's that the East Coast and West Coast share a bit of a rivalry. But when it comes to restaurant supplier food costs, who gets a better deal? Orderly digs into 390,235 supplier purchases to find out.
DID YOU KNOWS…
Everyone is on the Unicorn Train
It started with Starbucks unicorn frapp. And now McDonald’s and Arby’s are getting in on the action. McD’s is serving fries in a rainbow-colored box at certain locations to celebrate of Pride Month. Meanwhile, Arby’s is mocking the unicorn trend by presenting the “liger” shake, which is brown and orange with dark brown stripes (like a liger). This shows some great and unique ways big chains are marketing themselves.
NFL Network to Air 16 Live Preseason Games
The NFL is hoping to improve its viewership from last year by airing 16 live preseason games. Last year, the NFL Network averaged 1.1 million viewers even when up against the Rio Olympics. The NFL Network will show all 65 preseason games, most on tape delay.
Ice-T Promotes Sonic’s Frozen Teas
Think Ice-T thought about his post-rapping career when he chose his artist name? Among his other commercials and gigs, he was just tapped by Sonic to promote the restaurant’s frozen teas, including a Facebook Live event. Makes you wonder why you haven’t used live streaming to market your venues, huh?
SPIRIT SIPPIE CUP
Why it matters to you: Alcohol served accidentally to a child can be deadly.
A Georgia family got a big surprise when they tasted the juice that was served to their 18-month-old daughter and it was straight alcohol. Unfortunately, the little girl consumed several tea spoons and later her blood alcohol content was .063. While that is below the legal limit in most states, it’s never legal or safe to serve alcohol to a child. The risks are serious and the damage can be permanent.
Fortunately for the little girl and her family, she was ok in the end. The manager of the restaurant was horrified and did everything he could to make it right… except not letting it happen in the first place. Let’s be direct, this is a colossal bit of negligence. If you aren’t already, you should require that 100% of your service staff (bartenders, servers, hosts, door people and even bussers) are responsible alcohol service certified. It’s an inexpensive requirement that gives you more peace of mind that you won’t make a mistake from which there is no recovery.
MAKING YOUR MENU GREAT AGAIN
Why it matters to you: You are walking past profit if you aren’t focusing on menu design.
Creating a great menu is more than just copywriting and image editing. The real value of your menu is how it influences guests to order more of your best items in terms of profit and popularity. You have tremendous data available to you with your POS product mix reports and your item margin data. Modern POS makes identifying the most popular and profitable items easy and you can’t afford to ignore it any longer.
The key is to manage the mix of items that are either popular or have wide appeal to their best advantage. You may have items whose flavor is such that guests either love it or hate it. An item like that makes no sense in a featured position on your menu. This post by Nation’s Restaurant News gives you some good activities you can initiate right now that will help transform your menu into the growth tool it should be.
