MARKETING: How to Market Your Gameday Menu
Your new gameday menu will be a vital spoke on your marketing wheel when it comes time to promoting your overhauled gameday experience. Determining the strengths of the menu and presenting them front and center will help sell guests on why your establishment deserves the marathon sessions of patronage that come with a full day of sports indulgence.
DID YOU KNOWS…
America’s Favorite Drunk Snacks
If you make a lot of booze sales, or are even in an area with a very active nightlife, your kitchen might be staying open a smidge later to get those sweet drunk sales. In fact, 82% of Americans admit to being “drunk snackers.” And in a recent poll, people revealed their top drunk snacks. The list is high in fat and carbs, including the #1 spot – pizza.
The States Getting High on Marijuana Jobs
The Bureau of Labor Statistics refuses to count or report on job gains in the marijuana industry because it remains illegal at federal level. A new report from cannabis website Leafly states that an estimated 211,000 people are now employed in the industry full time while close to 100,000 other jobs indirectly depend on it. Florida added the most jobs in 2018 with 9,068 and Pennsylvania had the largest percentage increase at 4,208%.
Feast for Advertisers
As basketball fans across the U.S. are looking forward to finding out who will emerge as the winner from this year’s NCAA tournament, sports fans from other parts of the world tend to be surprised by the attention given to the event. After all, it’s “only” college sports. The love of college sports is in fact unique to the United States and what better way to gauge the popularity of any sporting event these days than to compare TV advertising spending.
THE DUDE ABIDES
Why it matters to you: Stella Artois aims to do some good. Help them and you can benefit as well.
If you watched this year’s Super Bowl, you saw the Stella Artois commercial where Carrie Bradshaw and the Dude visit a bar and order a beer instead of their notoriously acknowledged cocktail favorites. What you might not know about that campaign is that it also helped raise money to provide clean water to folks in the under-developed world. This initiative is a collaboration between Matt Damon’s organization, Water.org, and Stella. Full disclosure, we DO NOT work with Stella in anyway, but we think this type of program is a perfect way for you to do some good and create good will with guests.
We have often beseeched you to hook your wagon to the star of a national brand. This is a way to do just that by coopting the Water.org and Stella Artois collaboration. Simply carry the brand and market the fact that each time guests order a Stella Artois, you are delivering fresh water for a month to someone who needs it. You can report to your guests how much water support you’ve earned in human terms by the number of Stella Artois purchases at your restaurant. It’s a simple and super low cost way to engage your community and earn the reputation as a good citizen. No, this idea isn’t for everyone, but the concept of thinking outside the box is what we are hoping to inspire.
[Source: Delish]
TAKE US HOME
Why it matters to you: Are consumer packaged goods (CPG) your next big revenue stream.
We’ve heard a lot about delivery and catering as the new it trend in restaurant management, but is that the right strategy for your restaurant? Maybe your food doesn’t lend itself to 30 minutes in a car waiting to be delivered to a guest. If you are considering how to grow your business, maybe you need to look for a different partner -- the grocery store. You’ve seen items like TGIFriday’s Potato Skins as you peruse the frozen food aisles searching for your Hot Pockets. Branded for the Friday’s restaurant, and made famous by an omnipresent placement on their menus for decades, these types of items are all over the place in grocery stores.
There is plenty of work to do before you start selling your sauces or foods at a grocery store, but it isn’t so much different than vetting a delivery partner. This cool primer from Toast POS takes you through the various steps to creating CPG from your menu favorites. By taking a signature item and making it available in local grocery stores you are also extending your marketing reach. Your restaurant transforms into a brand. Take a look at your menu and if there’s an item that guests have a real connection to consider it as a potential CPG. It can be a sauce or a prepared food. But no matter what, you’ve got to be thoughtful and patient if this is the direction you take. The primer will at least get you started.
[Source: Toast POS]
