MARKETING: The 3 Best Ways to Use a Content Strategy to Promote Your Restaurant
As an ambitious restaurant owner, you must have been searching for some additional strategies to attract more attention to your business. Let us introduce you to the content strategy. By using a strategic marketing approach, you will be able to create and distribute valuable and consistent content that will attract guests and earn you their loyalty. If you’re not quite sure how to make the most out of it, the following advice will clear your doubts.
DID YOU KNOWS…
What Influences Gen Xers' Purchase Decisions?
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the median income of households led by householders aged 35-44 years and 45-54 years are $78,368 and $80,671, respectively, compared to just $62,294 for households led by 25- to 34-year-olds and around $40,000 for even younger householders. Interestingly, marketing to Gen Xers requires a totally different approach than targeting Millennials, who practically live their entire lives online. According to a poll conducted by YouGov on behalf of MarketingCharts, TV ads and word-of-mouth are the most important purchase influencers for the Generation X, beating any type of paid online advertising by a significant margin.
Starbucks Signing Store
Yesterday, Starbucks opened its first signing store in Washington, DC. The store is entirely staffed by people who are partially or completely deaf, and capable of communicating via ASL. Starbucks converted an existing location into their new signing location and is modeled after a signing store the chain opened in Malaysia in 2016. Here’s a video on the store (in ASL).
Kangaroo Chili
A Nebraska school cook was fired after putting kangaroo meat with beef into chili he served to students. The cook said he added the meat – which is touted as being lean and flavorful – to give the chili a nutritional boost. Parents, however, felt otherwise.
TOO MUCH OF A GOOD THING
Why it matters to you: There are too many points of distribution in our industry.
Are you hiring? Have you been looking for a second location property and can’t find one? Does it feel like there is a restaurant on every nook and cranny near you? If you answered yes to any of these questions, then you know the effect of too much inventory in our industry. That doesn’t mean order less hamburger; it means there are too many restaurant locations for the demand in the market. Think in terms of these two competing statistics. Traffic counts have fallen continuously for the past two years and the Generation Z cohort spends more on food than any other expense. Those facts alone are proof that supply is outstripping demand.
Just look at chains like Ruby Tuesday’s and Smokey Bones, closing restaurants in droves -- or the difficulty so many small fast casual chains have experienced in the past two years. The competition is strong and the options for consumers abound. There isn’t much you can do if you are a single unit operator except weather the storm as you have for decades. We would caution anyone that is considering expanding to be thoughtful and consider alternative ways to grow. We are in for a correction and it is coming sooner than you may realize.
[Source: RestaurantBusinessOnline]
TIME TO MEET GENERATION Y & Z
Why it matters to you: Knowing who you serve is how you succeed in serving them.
If you were born before 1982, you are NOT a Millennial or Generation Z member. However, they are largely the people you are employing in your restaurants. We have, for years, touted the importance of understanding the Millennial’s attitudes about work and their expectations of you as an employer. Now that the next generation of workers, those born after 1998, are also an important component in your staffing we can look at them together. This infographic does just that and it tells us several valuable things about these employees and how to best employ them.
To start, 73% of Gen Z say the reputation of a restaurant influenced a decision to apply there. We can’t offer you a better reason to care about your reputation than improving your access to the labor pool. The reasons these two generations leave your employ is just as revealing. When 31% of them leave for something better, we should understand they think there are better places than a restaurant to work. However, the two things they say would retain them are better pay and a good manager. With the tension on labor, you will certainly have to consider higher wages to keep staff, but being a good manager doesn’t cost a penny extra.
[Source: Nightclub & Bar]
