MARKETING: 7 Sports Bar Marketing Tips to Grow Your Fan Club Chapter
Even if you already have a dedicated fan club chapter that calls your restaurant home, you must still actively promote your events to keep the group growing. Start by using your establishment as its own marketing channel, by putting up table tents on the bar, flyers in high traffic locations, and hanging a team banner or flag outside to show that you will be the local meetup location for your new team. Here are some other marketing tips to grow your sports bar’s fan clubs.
DID YOU KNOWS…
IT’S ARRRRRT!
Have you seen the story about the duct-taped banana worth $120,000? Or the follow up story of how another artist ate the banana in front of everyone but the “artwork” is still worth $120K because the banana is replaceable and just “an idea.” Well, Popeyes is jumping on that wagon hard. They riffed on the taped-banana by duct-taping their popular chicken sandwich to a wall. This is a great example of taking what’s currently hot and making it your own.
Are Americans in Favor of Impeachment?
Up until the end of September, around 53% of Americans opposed impeachment or said that impeachment proceedings should not be started in Congress. That shifted in early October, with a high of 50.3% of Americans supporting it on October 14. Since then, the margin between both positions has grown narrower again.
The Biggest Bourbon Drinkers
According to Distilled Spirits Council (DISCUS), Spain’s the top bourbon lover of the world. The country drank more than $88.5 million in bourbon last year. Japan came in second at $66 million and Australia rounded out the top three with $55.75 million in the American-imported spirit. Check out the full list here.
RECYCLE YOU
Why it matters to you: Follow Blue Bottle Café as they reduce their landfill contributions by 90%.
We speak often about ascribing a purpose to your restaurant business plan. This means not working for profit alone, but to also fulfill some more high minded goals, like social justice or supporting a local cause you favor. In the case of Blue Bottle, a specialty coffee concept based in Oakland with almost 80 outlets, the purpose is to reduce their landfill waste to only 10% of their trash output. They are accomplishing this by simultaneously changing their packaging and incentivizing guests to bring their own coffee containers for a refilling.
When you consider that a single location goes through on average 15,000 disposable single-use cups per month in the U.S. alone, which adds up to 12 million cups per year, you don’t have to leap to far to appreciate the reduce impact on landfills that they are now using compostable sugarcane-paper cups and, earlier this year, introduced paper straws to all of its U.S. cafés.
Now, you don’t have to make a commitment to reducing waste that equals that of Blue Bottle, but you can review your carryout containers. With off-premise dining exploding into our industry, this will become even more important. Consider that Famous Dave’s Barbecue did 15% carryout as recently as five years ago, but now delivers 55% of their sales for takeaway, the call to action should be obvious. And don’t forget that your main consumer class, Millennials, will appreciate the effort and commitment to addressing climate change. You can consider it a marketing scheme that takes a little effort to implement, but that you can always promote as a true point of differentiation. It’s up to you to sound the horn for your own drive to pollute less and recycle more.
[Source: Boston.com]
HEY GAME-TENDER [Song]
Why it matters to you: Don’t let a good national cultural event slip through your fingers.
Have you heard of the board game café concept? As the name implies, it’s a full-service restaurant where guests can play various board games while they dine and drink. Their servers are called gametenders and the places appear to be nerd havens. We mention it because a version in Philadelphia, the Thirsty Dice, is living their playful mantra and have created a Star Wars themed menu. Presumably they are moved by the recent release of The Mandalorian on Disney+ and the impending premier of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker…oh, and of course Baby Yoda. The menu is brilliant. This is especially true given the audience they already serve is likely among the Star Wars universe fandom. But who could resist Chewbacca’s Nuggets (popcorn chicken nuggets with spicy horseradish sauce) even if they weren’t a Star Wars fan?
However, even more brilliant is the co-opting of a nationally recognized branding push to delight your customers with a new menu. This is what good internal marketing looks like and you don’t have to have gametenders on your staff to emulate it. You may not choose Star Wars as your thematic inspiration, but you can pick something. Whether it’s an Oscar’s themed menu in February or a March Madness focused menu inMarch, there is no limit to how many of these co-opting events you can leverage. The key here is to make it fun and keep it simple. You don’t have to even create fully new items. This is an opportunity to make your restaurant marketing relevant on the coat tails of wider cultural event and it costs little or nothing to do. It also gives you excellent social media content to post and a reason to invite guests old and new to visit and that’s what marketing is supposed to do.
[Source: FSR Magazine]
