You’ve got a Restaurant with Great Food, a Great Experience and provide Great Value, now you just need Great Marketing.
Date: 10-08-2017
The Just Eat share price has fallen 15.1% in the last 2 1/2 weeks as concerns mount about their ability to grow revenues. This comes after the 26 July release of what on the face of it was an upbeat Half Yearly report. We break down the numbers to look at what may have caused such a big sell off,… More »
Date: 14-07-2017
The AFR is reporting that Menulog is confident that they will be able to achieve revenue of $100,000,000 in coming years. Former Groupon CEO, Alistair Venn is predicting that Menulog will continue to grow despite increasing competition from Uber Eats, Deliveroo and Foodora and from Restaurants ‘cutting the cord’ and using a Free Restaurant OnLine Ordering systems to take orders… More »
Date: 06-06-2017
Stevan Premutico is has announced that he will be leaving Dimmi at the end of the month. Dimmi, which was purchased by Tripadvisor in 2015 for an undisclosed amount, with Jared Chapman taking over as CEO on the 1st of July. Chapman, who is listed in Linkedin as the Sales and Operations Director, previously worked for Menulog and Delivery Hero.… More »
Date: 31-05-2017
There has been significant discussion recently about some of Dimmi’s nefarious practices, but this one is actually pretty hilarious. Customers finding the Dimmi page for Brae, Dan Hunter’s restaurant in rural Victoria, which was recently voted the 44th best restaurant in the world, are directed to 4 other restaurants which are “alternatives” to Brae. The number 1 alternative in all… More »
Date: 31-05-2017
Too many restaurants are having their customers stolen by Dimmi (owned by Tripadvisor), though a practice known as restaurant adwords arbitrage, from the one place on the internet that their customers details should be safe and that is the Google search for their own website. The practice is known as adwords arbitrage. When restaurants sign up with Dimmi, many believe… More »
Date: 19-05-2017
The UK’s Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) has referred it’s proposed acquisition of Hungryhouse for an “in-depth investigation“. A Just Eat CMA investigation could derail the proposed merger. The deal, which was announced in December 2016, requires CMA approval to go ahead. The CMA launched it’s merger inquiry on the 10th of March and gave Just Eat the opportunity to address… More »
Date: 22-04-2017
Online Restaurant Reservation Systems have seen continued growth and changes in 2017, with new entrants and some getting a lot quieter. We do a comparison of some of the big online Restaurant Reservation systems and go through the pros and cons of all of them. In our opinion some are significantly better than others. When it comes to Quandoo vs… More »
Date: 07-03-2017
A witty restaurant chalkboard ad can stop you in your tracks and choose to dine in that establishment among the many other restaurants in the area. Chances are, other passers-by will take a picture and post it on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram then it will go viral. Either way, it’s definitely a win for the restaurant to grab your attention… More »
Date: 24-02-2017
Fast food, hospitality, retail and pharmacy workers will have their Sunday and public holiday pay rates reduced as ruled by the Fair Work Commission who announced it Thursday, 23 February 2017. But the rates will not be as low as Saturday pay rates being asked by Employer groups, clarified by Justice Iain Ross, Commission president. The Commission had decide to… More »
Date: 11-02-2017
The Age has released a special report into Domino’s Pizza and how the pressure that they put on franchisees results in underpayment of wages for employees. This is an important story, because many in the industry see Dominoes as the price leader and see pressure to provide meals for customers at prices which are unsustainable. Just yesterday I was talking… More »
Date: 15-01-2017
Just Eat shares have fallen 11% over the last 4 days after it released it 2016 Full Year Order Update. Bloomberg reported that growth was easing for Just Eat as the space becomes increasingly crowded. Amazon joined UberEats and Deliveroo to take market share from Just Eat. Like for Like year to date order numbers grew at 36% for the year, which… More »
Date: 12-01-2017
The team at Marketing4Restaurants works with Restaurants around the world on finding more customers and turning them into repeat customers and one of the issues they have is Restaurant Facebook Marketing. We audited 100 Restaurants in Australia to see how many have a Facebook page, how many likes they have, how often they post and how effective it is. How… More »
Date: 22-12-2016
Why do restaurants listen to podcasts? Podcasts in the restaurant industry is getting very popular among restaurant owners, staff, managers and foodies. There are podcasts for almost anything and what makes it a hit is not just about the topic, but also the convenience. Imagine learning from industry experts and success restaurant owners how they came up with the concept… More »
Date: 20-12-2016
Further consolidation is occurring in the Online Ordering space with TechCrunch reporting that Just Eat is paying £240M for Delivery Hero’s UK Operations and in a separate deal £66M for Canada’s SkipTheDishes. This comes after earlier this week it was reported that Delivery Hero was acquiring the remaining stake that it didn’t own in Foodpanda. Hungryhouse, which is owned by Delivery Hero, is… More »
Date: 22-12-2016
As predicted in an earlier blog article, Delivery Hero is closing down it’s main brand in Australia. Delivery Hero has just emailed out it’s user list stating that after five years, they are consolidating with Foodora.com.au. The Delivery Hero accounts for each of their users will no longer be active and it requires a new signup with Foodora. Foodora, which was… More »
Date: 14-12-2016
The team at Marketing4Restaurants is very excited to announce Restaurant Docket Printing as a new feature for the Free Restaurant OnLine Ordering system. We have had hundreds of customers sign up and we now have restaurants using FROLO in 3 countries. The number 1 feature that people have asked for is Restaurant Docket Printing, so we are very proud to… More »
Date: 14-12-2016
In another sign of the consolidation going on in the online ordering market, Business Intelligence is reporting that Foodpanda has been bought by Delivery Hero. Both countries are based in Berlin with a common shareholding of Rocket Internet. The acquisition adds 20 more countries to Delivery Hero, with Foodpanda being relatively strong in Asia and Eastern Europe. It will also… More »
Date: 30-12-2016
2016 has seen huge changes in the Restaurant industry with consolidations, closures, openings, some big wins and huge losses. We look at what we are seeing as shaping up as the big restaurant trends for 2017 and further in the Restaurant industry so that you can better position your Restaurant to benefit from these big trends. Update: You can now… More »
Date: 11-11-2016
Multiple sources have reported that Groupon agreed to buy LivingSocial, one of their tough competitors in the daily deals via email war, for an undisclosed sum. The acquisition posted the quiet exit of LivingSocial, which was partly owned by Amazon.com and was once worth over $US1 billion during its peak. The acquisition, however did not sit well with Groupon investors… More »
Date: 10-11-2016
Multiple articles today are reporting that Priceline will scale back their investment and expansion for it’s online booking service, OpenTable as the number of OpenTable alternatives increase and limit growth rates out of the United States. OpenTable is the dominant player in the United States, but has struggled to gain market share outside of it’s home country. Based in California,… More »
Date: 03-09-2016
The AFR Weekend is reporting a decision from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission regarding the price which Hotels have been able to charge their customers. Until now, they have been precluded from offering cheaper prices than the prices that they offer to sites like Booking.com and Expedia. These two companies control over 80% of the online travel booking market. They… More »
Date: 27-08-2016
Last month Dimmi Restaurant bookings data was released detailing the number of bookings made online with Dimmi. The figures only relate to Restaurants using Dimmi for their online bookings, which is only around 3,000 restaurants. which according to Ibisworld, has 25,680, so Dimmi’s market share of all Restaurants is only just over 10%. Stevan Premutico, Dimmi CEO, said in an… More »
Date: 25-08-2016
This article has been taken down due to legal action by Menulog.
Date: 22-08-2016
The team at Marketing4Restaurants recently saw an ad for a Sensis Website and it was trumpeting the fact that they get 28,000,000 visits per year to their 10,000+ customers. We thought that we would dig into the numbers, because online marketing is all about the data! We can’t be sure of the number of websites, it just lists 10,000+, but… More »
Date: 15-08-2016
Pokemon Go Marketing can be a simple way to increase restaurant customers and revenue, but it does involve an element of luck. Pokemon Go has created a massive phenomenon and is driving a huge change in people’s habits – for Restaurant owners looking for smart Restaurant Marketing ideas, Pokemon Go marketing could be the perfect opportunity to capitalise on what… More »
Date: 03-08-2016
Singapore’s Michelin Guide has an amazing story about Chan Hon Meng, a a street food Hawker, whose stall, Hong Kong Soya Sauce Chicken Rice and Noodle is now the world’s first Michelin-starrred street food hawker. This is a really inspiring story, with a lot of lessons for all chefs and all Restaurant owners all over the world. Very few chefs start… More »
Date: 03-07-2016
This June Instagram hit the milestone of 500 million active monthly users with 300 million using the application daily. 80% of users are outside the United States. Instagram is pushing now to the 1 billion active monthly users mark. How long this will take is hard to tell, but it did grow it’s last 100 million users in just 9… More »
Date: 01-07-2016
Startup Daily is reporting that Alistair Venn, the former CEO of Groupon is the new Managing Director of Menulog. Following the $865 million acquisition of Menulog by Just Eat from the UK, Menulog has grown it’s market to 7,000 restaurants in Australia and New Zealand, however it is currently facing an ACCC investigation to the market power that the combined… More »
Date: 25-06-2016
With the upcoming Federal Election Restaurant owners need to think about who they will be voting for, everyone seems to have a reason you should vote for them and so the M4R Team thought we would would come up with our Election Policies for 2016! Too many Restaurants are paying too many Restaurant Taxes to be profitable. We need to… More »
Date: 11-04-2016
We’ve had a number of customers moving across to us from Guestful over the last month and this week we’ve learned that Guestful, the Free WordPress addin to take Restaurant Bookings has closed down and is no longer supported. Guestful had a strong market base with Restaurants wanting a system to enable them to take bookings on their own website,… More »
Date: 09-04-2016
The Fin Review is reporting that the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission will investigate the merger between Menulog Eat Now as to whether it led to a substantial reduction of competition in online ordering. “It will be looking to determine if there was a breach of section 50 of the act, which prohibits acquisitions that substantially lessen competition in a… More »
Date: 08-04-2016
The team are very excited to announce our first customer using Free Online Restaurant Booking Software. The software, which has been in use in Australia and New Zealand, has taken over 300,000 seats of bookings. It provides a view of the bookings for each day like a Restaurant Diary and provides customers with an easy portal they can use to… More »
Date: 03-04-2016
Skift is reporting that Priceline, the owner of OpenTable, may be looking to acquire TripAdvisor. Dennis Schall writes that Priceline has talked about it’s unappreciated competitive moat, and an acquisition of TripAdvisor would make a big statement and widen the moat for Priceline. What would the merger of the TripAdvisor and OpenTable Restaurant services mean for Restaurant owners and the… More »
Date: 01-04-2016
March has seen the largest growth in revenue for the free Menulog alternative, the Free Restaurant OnLine Ordering system (FROLO). The order value increased 39% month on month adjusted for the longer month in March. More restaurants have been signing on and Restaurants have been getting their customers to order direct and save money. An increasing number of Restaurants are… More »
Date: 31-03-2016
The Age is running a story today about Menulog potentially breaching the privacy of over 1.1 million customers. A screen shot shows an internal Menulog portal which Restaurants have access to. The data breach contained names, email addresses and addresses. This is a serious issue for the privacy of your customers, but it is a nightmare scenario if your competitors… More »
Date: 26-03-2016
Fortune is reporting that the first drone delivery has been carried out in the United States. This paves the way for Restaurant Drone Delivery which will make a massive impact for Restaurants around the world. This is the first delivery that has been federally sanctioned drone delivery in an urban area and was flown without the aid of a human… More »
Date: 21-03-2016
I received an email this week from Tripadvisor encouraging reviews to be written about Restaurants that I have never visited. Tripadvisor fake reviews create a lot of stress for Restaurant owners, with many not knowing how to respond to them. It is also a big concern for Restaurant owners that Tripadvisor is soliciting for Reviews in this way – the… More »
Date: 09-03-2016
Souffles are something that I really struggle with. I follow the recipe closely, I set the oven temperature just right, I try not to beat the egg whites too much, but the result is usually a complete disaster. The kitchen is a mess, there is very little rising in the souffle and the taste is usually ordinary at best. It… More »
Date: 18-02-2016
In an interview with Business Standard, Pankaj Chaddah, co-founder of Zomato has said that Zomato will stop charging commission to Restaurants. This follows ongoing concerns about the Zomato business model. The surprising move given that Zomato has been rumoured to be going back to the market to raise further funds could create confusion as investors struggle to understand how cutting commission… More »
Date: 13-03-2016
Competing against Menulog and other Online Ordering companies is a big task for many Restaurant owners, but Take Away has always been an important source of revenue for many restaurants and for some Restaurants it is the main source of revenue. Take out revenue is great because each take out customer is a lot easier to serve, there is no… More »
Date: 18-01-2016
Just Eat shares have suffered a 16% fall in the last 20 days. The share price has fallen from 494.50 to 415.20, a fall of 79.30 since December 30, 2015 to January 18, 2016. One of the reasons for the 16% fall could be what we believe to be the adverse ruling that Menulog received in the Victorian Civil and… More »
Date: 13-01-2016
The Marketing4Restaurants team, as part of our move into our new 520 square meter office has launched a new Marketing Operations Centre to enable us to better understand the increasing flow of Restaurant marketing information that comes into our database each day. The Marketing Operations Centre consists of custom software written to aggregate data and 4 4K TVs to display… More »
Date: 23-12-2015
2015 has been a very big year in the Restaurant industry and so it is time to look for what the big Restaurant Trends will be over the next 12 to 24 months, to help Restaurant owners better understand the dynamics of the industry that will affect them. There certainly has been a lot of large moves by companies like… More »
Date: 11-12-2015
After almost 12 months in preparation, it finally appears that OpenTable Australia will start taking bookings in Australia. In September we wrote that OpenTable had announced the purchase of AS Digital. The launch, which is reported in Hospitality Magazine, is probably a soft launch, given that the Open Table Australia website does not list any restaurants as being available for bookings… More »
Date: 30-11-2015
A recent article examining the Zomato business model in the Financial Times questions whether Zomato has gone rotten. It quotes an internal email that describes how they have grown to be in 22 countries across the world, having launched organically in 15 of them and in the other 7 how they have acquired businesses to achieve market share. In India and Australia… More »
Date: 07-10-2015
Brandjacking – the practice of attempting to hijack a Restaurants brand and name is a common practice in the restaurant industry, which some restaurant owners are not even aware of. There are two types of restaurant brandjacking commonly seen in the industry, first there is bidding for keywords directly related to a Restaurant in order to get the consumer looking… More »
Date: 03-10-2015
The logistics of delivery food to customers in their home have always represented a significant problem for Restaurant owners. The costs are high and variable workloads makes it difficult to pre-plan staffing levels. One solution to getting food into the homes of customers could be the introduction of Restaurant Delivery Drones. Some Restaurants have already trialled Unmanned Aerial Vehicles for… More »
Date: 02-10-2015
Hospitality Magazine is reporting that this week Zomato Australia launched their online ordering app. What does it mean for your Restaurant? The article claims that Zomato has launched in Melbourne with 400 Restaurants using the services, which they are expecting to grow to over 1,000 in the coming weeks. Interestingly enough, on the website we could find only around 100… More »
Date: 30-09-2015
Techcrunch has an article about Groupon closing down in 7 countries, sacking 1,100 people and taking a pre tax charge of $35 million. It is pulling out of Morocco, Panama, The Philippines, Puerto Rico, Taiwan, Thailand and Uruguay. It also recently pulled out of Turkey and Greece and sold out of Groupon India to Sequoia. Prior to the closures, Groupon was… More »
Date: 23-09-2015
BRW has an interesting article with the history of Dimmi and online bookings in Australia. It is entitled Dimmi vs Goliaths – how the restaurant booking app held out for the best offer. The article raises a number of questions. Live Bookings evidently attempted to muscle into the Australian business early in the life of Dimmi, according to the article.… More »
Date: 09-09-2015
The WSJ is reporting that table management software and BookaRestaurant.com company, AS Digital has been purchased by Pricline Group owned OpenTable. Open Table, which employed CEO Lisa Hasen in January this year, has yet to start operation in Australia which is unusual. Open Table is well experienced with opening in foreign countries, now operating in 19 countries. Priceline stated in… More »
Date: 25-08-2015
The Restaurant Aggregators are the companies which collect up the details of Restaurants and provide an online service for them, be it Online Bookings, like Dimmi / Tripadvisor, or online ordering like Zomato Order, Just Eat, Fod Panda, Eat 24 and Grub Hub. Gopal Sathe wrote an excellent article discussing the backlash in India against Zomato Order and we are… More »
Date: 10-08-2015
The weekends article in the UK Independant puts further light on the serious dilemma facing Restaurant owners in the UK and around the world as they struggle in the face of significant pressure on Restaurant Margins from well funded aggregator sites like Just Eat and Delivery Hero. Thousands of high street takeaways fear that the huge growth of food-ordering websites such… More »
Date: 02-08-2015
Many Restaurant owners looking to save money look at some of the cheaper alternatives to getting a Restaurant Website, and many use the free option with Wix. Whether you choose the free version or the paid subscriptions, here are some things you might want to consider before spending the time to set up a Wix website. Recently a Restaurant owner… More »
Date: 17-07-2015
A report in Management Today talked last year about the large number of UK Restaurants wanting an alternative to the high fees that Just Eat charge. It stated that 81% of Restaurants paying “between £1,001 and £2,000 a month with Just Eat thought the fees were unfair.” The average Just Eat commission was £725 per month in fees. The article also quoted… More »
Date: 03-07-2015
An article in Startup Daily today, has announced the entrance of yet another Restaurant Booking system into Australia, Qandoo, an online booking company out of Germany. They evidently launched in Sydney last week with 50 customers. What is the Quandoo Business Model? We don’t have any details yet about the Quandoo business model, so it will be interesting to see what… More »
Date: 29-06-2015
One of the biggest things that single location Restaurant owners struggle with is time. There is never enough of it and they always seem to be the ones doing 70 hours a week. We look at 7 steps you can take to ready your Restaurant to be set up as a franchise and why you should do them, even if… More »
Date: 22-06-2015
A recent article in BRW by Adam Schwab, a minority shareholder in Menulog has detailed why he thinks the pricetag of $855 million at a Price / Earnings (P/E) ratio of 371 will look cheap in a few years time. The P/E ratio is a measure of how expensive a stock is. Most companies trade at between 10 and 20 times, so… More »
Date: 05-06-2015
In life sometimes an opportunity presents itself by chance that you have to take advantage of, which is certainly the case for the Ross Village Bakery in Tasmania. Located in the unspoilt historic town of Ross, the Bakery has operated on site for more than 100 years, and, surprisingly, has become the destination for Japanese fans of the popular anime… More »
Date: 05-06-2015
Phineas T. Barnum, the 19th century American showman and circus owner once said ‘there’s no such thing as bad publicity,’ or as Oscar Wilde once expressed ‘the only thing worse than being talked about is not being talked about.’ And Mike Duffy, owner of Wellington’s Ekim Burgers’ is certainly being talked about. It goes without saying that owning and running… More »
Date: 30-05-2015
Building a strong Culture is one of the hardest things that you can do as a leader of a Restaurant, but it is also one of the most important things that you will do as a Leader in your Restaurant. Building a great Restaurant Culture can have a significant impact on employee turnover and most importantly, on the bottom line.… More »
Date: 22-05-2015
It has just been announced that Eatability will shut down on the 30th of June. The site has seen a decrease in traffic over the last 3 years. Optus, owners of the website have stated that they intend to focus in other areas. The review website business has a unclear business model, requiring user generated content on the one hand and… More »
Date: 20-05-2015
Rumours of Dimmi being on the market have been going around the industry for a while and yesterday’s announcement that Dimmi had been sold came as no surprise, although it was our guess that the acquirer would be OpenTable, not Tripadvisor as it turns out. Dimmi, which is based in Sydney was founded in 2009 and has 2,500 restaurants using it’s booking… More »
Date: 18-05-2015
Creating a great Restaurant Wine Program for your Restaurant can make a big difference to your bottom line. It will increase the revenue and profit of the average customer as well as acting as a magnet to draw in new customers and turn them into repeat customers. We attended David Glancy’s session on building a Successful Restaurant Wine Program to… More »
Date: 17-05-2015
Day 1 of the 2015 NRA Show and we went to the Marketing to Millennials on Social Media session with Joshua Swanson. Joshua has done some awesome research into who Millennials are, what they are interested in and how they interact. As a demographic group, they are quite different and those differences mean that different marketing strategies. Lets have a… More »
Date: 10-05-2015
The Just Eat Menulog acquisition for AUD $865 million represents a whopping $150,000 per Restaurant that Menulog currently has as a customer. Just Eat Chief David Buttress defended the price paid, stating that Menulog was capable of driving dramatic growth over the next 5 years and was currently “growing like a train.” Just Eat’s shares have increased 70% since April 2014, when… More »
Date: 09-05-2015
Techcrunch has reported that UK Listed company Just Eat plans to acquire Menulog / Eatnow for an eye popping £445, which is US$687 and a AUD $865 million. The purchase, which will be funded by an equity issue, has been described by Jonathon Buxton from Cavendish Corporate Finance as having a “hefty price tag.” The Menulog acquisition comes only a few… More »
Date: 04-05-2015
What does the Menulog Sale mean for your Restaurant and do the numbers stack up? It has been reported today in the Fin Review that Goldman Sachs is running an international Menulog sale process that is expected to fetch up to $500 milllion. This is what we thought would happen, with our earlier blog about the Menulog IPO prospectus and… More »
Date: 03-05-2015
Alexa provides comparative analytics so that website owners can compare how their traffic compares to other websites. We have seen many restaurant owners think that they are dealing really well with their online marketing because they have an Alexa Ranking that is significantly better than their competitors. Alexa differs fundamentally from Google Analytics because Google Analytics provides much more detailed information… More »
Date: 23-04-2015
Zomato Book – The new online booking system coming to Australia. Zomato, the recent acquirer of Urbanspoon, has now acquired US based NexTable, and a cash and stock deal for an undisclosed amount. Zomato recently raised US$50,000,000 and is valued at over $1 billion. The deal will see NexTable renamed Zomato Book and the team from NexTable will come across… More »
Date: 17-04-2015
Having a Mobile Friendly Restaurant Website is more important than ever for Restaurant Owners. Google has announced that it is about to release a large update for the way that it collects and presents Search Engine results for mobile users. Google is changing the algorithm for mobile search rankings, giving mobile friendly websites a higher ranking when people are searching… More »
Date: 13-04-2015
OpenTable Australia has yet to start approaching restauants as fair as we know, but we have known for a while that OpenTable has been planning on opening up in Australia, and we have also seen that Lisa Hasen, the former BDM at Dimmi has been appointed to as the VP for APAC at OpenTable. Our latest blog article about the… More »
Date: 08-04-2015
Stevan Premutico was in an article this weekend in the Fin Review where he met up with Tatts Group CEO Robbie Cooke who is one of the investors in Dimmi. Stevan was kind enough to share so revenue number about Dimmi’s current performance. Dimmi Revenue Numbers He shared that Dimmi currently has around 2,500 Restaurants and is expecting $8,000,000 in revenue… More »
Date: 15-03-2015
Berlin Based Rocket Internet has acquired a 30% stake in Delivery Hero. Delivery Hero is a competitor to Rocket Internet’s FoodPanda. This is part of a major purchasing spree from Rocket Inter in a move that sees significant consolidation of the online ordering and food delivery business across Asia and Europe. It also purchased JUST EAT and Food Runner. These… More »
Date: 13-03-2015
A recent Linkedin search, showed that Lisa Hasen has left Dimmi to become the Vice President, APAC for Open Table. Lisa has extensive experience at OpenTable, having worked her way up from beingan Account Executive in 2007 to District Director, NorCal and Hawaii from January to May in 2013. We previously wrote about the imminent entry of OpenTable into the… More »
Date: 12-03-2015
Menulog recently purchased Eatnow for an undisclosed amount of money, but we expect that the figure would have been more than $5 million and potentially a lot more. Could this be part of a plan to list on the ASX? Eat Now Acquisition consolidates market position. Eat Now Services Pty Ltd was acquired my Menulog Group Ltd. Eat Now Services has… More »
Date: 04-03-2015
The Dirty Take Away Secret A Current Affair has featured Menulog and one of their ‘Restaurants’ that has been set up operating out of their house. “Curries and more” had been cooking and delivering food out of what appeared. The A Current Affair Menulog story, entitle “The Dirty Take Away Secret” details the practice of fake restaurants cookung and selling… More »
Date: 17-02-2015
Yelp buys Eat24 – What’s next? 2015 is shaping up to be a massive year in the Restaurant software industry as Yelp buys Eat24. This follows on from the Zomato purchase of Urbanspoon, Opentable set to launch in Australia, and the acquisition of Eatnow by Menulog. The Yelp acquiistion will be interesting. Yelp is a fairly natural channel for online ordering… More »
Date: 04-02-2015
Marketing4Restaurants today is very pleased to announce that we have completed integration with Stripe for our Free Restaurant OnLine Ordering system. This is going to allow us to dramatically decrease the amount of time that it takes for Restaurants to get paid. Stripe was selected because of the ease of setting up payments for Restaurants. The process had to be… More »
Date: 03-02-2015
So we blogged in October about the Australian Restaurant market being too small for 4 Online Ordering companies. The year is certainly off to a big start with Menulog and Eatnow announcing a merger of the two companies, as reported on Startup Daily. Startup Daily had multiple sources stating that Eatnow had been acquired for an undisclosed sum. Staff at… More »
Date: 20-01-2015
Can Open Table succeed in Australia? A recent Google search showed up some interesting information, a Restaurant Relations Manager position in Australia. Open Table Australia will join Dimmi, Book a Restaurant and our own Free Online Restaurant Booking System. Their entry into the Australian market comes just 12 months after Restalo entered the Australian market. Restalo lasted 6 months before… More »
Date: 20-01-2015
Web and Map Search Results now more closely aligned with the Pigeon Update Google has recently rolled out their Pigeon Update Australia, Canada and the UK. Pigeon rolled out in the US in July last year, but Pigeon has finally landed in these other countries and is continuing to be rolled out across all English speaking countries except India. The… More »
Date: 14-01-2015
Smart Company is today reporting further details of the Zomato deal. The purcahse price of $52,000,000 USD was paid all cash and sees Zomato planning to hire 300 people in Australia and an investment of $10,000,000. Smart Company has quoted Zomato CEO, Deepinder Goyal as saying that the deal has a lot to offer restaurant businesses in Australia with it’s… More »
Date: 12-01-2015
Zomato, the Restaurant recommendations website which is backed by Sequoia Capital has just announced that it has bought Urbanspoon from IAC. It appears that the purchase price was between $50 and $60 million. The purchase gives Zomato an entrance into the key US market as well as operations in the United Kingdom, Canada, New Zealand, Ireland and Australia. This is… More »
Date: 12-01-2015
How important is a Website for Restaurant Marketing? Some Restaurant owners still do not think that a Website is an important for their online marketing, so we produced a quick little video to show 24 hours of website traffic to some of our Restaurant customers. This is traffic from all of their websites as people search for Restaurants to eat… More »
Date: 31-12-2014
Some restaurants are getting really good at this. There are a lot of tools out there now to manage your online marketing – Pages Manager for Facebook, Tweetdeck for Twitter, email programs for your database and great analytics packages for your website. By combining them, restaurants are increasing the ROI of their marketing and we are seeing a big uptake… More »
Date: 31-12-2014
Too many restaurants have been ignoring the intellectual property of their business. There are a number of businesses that use restaurants to provide a service, such as Dimmi and Book A Restaurant. What some restaurants don’t understand is that they are sharing their customer’s details with these companies and these companies are commoditising the restaurant experience. Pick a cuisine and… More »
Date: 10-12-2014
We were looking at creating some new metrics to define the best practice online marketing for restaurants and stumble across a number that frankly amazed us – nearly 10% of our customers are bringing in $5 per visitor to their restaurant website. This is an incredible figure. We have always known that some of our customers are making a lot… More »
Date: 28-11-2014
Dimmi recently released a blog article comparing itself to Uber was quite prescient, but not for the reasons that Dimmi stated in the article. There are a number of similarities between Uber and Dimmi that very interesting to explore. Both Dimmi and Uber are facing changing markets. Uber is looking at completely replacing it’s drivers with Self Driving Cars and… More »
Date: 03-10-2014
Is your Restaurant Online Booking System sharing your Customer Contact Details? Most Restaurant owners understand the importance of their customer database, in fact, for many restaurants, their customer database is the secret sauce to increase customer numbers during the quiet months of the year and the quiet days of the week, but what many Restaurant owners don’t know is that… More »
Date: 09-09-2014
Is your website deserted ? The Marketing4Restaurants team see a lot of restaurant websites and we see the number of bookings that those websites take for Restaurants (our Free Online Restaurant Booking System is the largest online booking system for restaurants that is free for them for unlimited bookings!) We know what makes a great website that brings in the… More »
Date: 21-08-2014
Many Restaurants are creating Great Food, providing Great Value and a Great Experience, but without Great Marketing, many a Great Restaurant is destined to close and fail. To help Restaurant Owners better find new customers and turn them into repeat customers, we analysed the data from July 2014 for all of our customers websites to work out where the traffic… More »
Date: 08-08-2014
We had a customer call us late on a Friday afternoon 2 weeks ago. He was very upset because he had just received a large invoice from Dimmi, over $100. He looked at his website and he found that his Book A Table button was not working, but the Dimmi booking button was. His customers had been trying to book… More »
Date: 24-07-2014
At www.marketing4restaurants.com, we pride ourselves on helping our customers find new customers and turning them into repeat customers. We only do this for restaurant owners and every month we analyse marketing results across our customers, across their websites and across the bookings that they make. Here is our list of the most important things that a restaurant website should have:… More »
Date: 15-07-2014
There are a lot of marketing sharks out there preying on time poor restaurant owners, so we have written a guide to help you navigate the waters to work out if a marketing idea is a scam or not. Here is our list of Top 5 Marketing Scams targeting Restaurants that you need to avoid! Poor Quality Backlinks We had… More »
Date: 02-06-2014
We once had a restaurant owner tell us that his restaurant’s website and online marketing was working brilliantly because he had 100 visits a month. He was shocked when we told him that we had customers who received that much traffic in 1 day. Restaurant owners have not had access to information about how much traffic the average restaurant website… More »
Date: 26-05-2014
Industry rumours abound that Restalo, after raising $10,000,000 to enter the Australian market has shut up shop and plans to manage the accounts that it already has from Spain. Further investigations would indicate that this is the case. A number of people list Restalo as an ex employer in Australia, with their termination date being in May. Phone calls to the… More »
Date: 02-05-2014
A new customer signed up with Book A Table recently and yesterday was a pretty good day for them. By moving across to Book A Table, they have been able to enjoy all of the benefits of taking bookings online. You can imagine how busy the restaurant would have been with all of the enquiries and all of the bookings… More »
Date: 14-04-2014
Have a website: Many restaurants haven’t got a website because they think it is too expensive, too time consuming or they don’t need one because they have a Facebook page. The truth is that unless you are an ‘it’ restaurant where everyone wants to go (and realistically, less than .1% of all restaurants fall into this category), you need a… More »
Date: 14-04-2014
A guide to Search Engine Optimisation for Restaurant Owners: The 9 ingredients of the Secret Sauce you need to find more customers. In the old days restaurant advertising was quick and easy. The Yellow Pages rep called you and discussed how much you wanted to spend on your Yellow Pages ad. That determined how big it was going to be,… More »
Date: 07-04-2014
HBO’s Game of Thrones is an epic tale of strategy and tactics, influence, and luck, just like running a small business. There are many powerful and fascinating characters, so we thought we would look at the great characters in Game of Thrones and see what lessons they can teach us in running a restaurant. Daenerys Targaryen – Have a vision.… More »
Date: 28-03-2014
We aren’t having a go at Tunnel Bar-B-Qs ad. This ad ran in 1986 and Tunnel Bar-B-Q is still going. They must be doing something right! For 99% of restaurant owners, the good old days are gone where a Yellow Pages ad, a bit of word of mouth and good old fashioned customer service was enough to make your restaurant successful… More »
Date: 25-03-2014
At Marketing4Restaurants, we speak to a lot of restaurant owners every day and there are some restaurant owners who are looking for help in selling their restaurant, café or take away. This is either because of a change in circumstances in their life, discovery that running a restaurant is not for them, wanting to trade up to a bigger restaurant… More »
Date: 20-03-2014
Are you one of the 2,000 restaurants who every day has their customer details shared? Are you one of the 2,000 restaurants who PAYS every day to have their customer details shared? 2014 is going to be a big year in the online booking segment of the hospitality industry in Australia and New Zealand. Many restaurants do not know that… More »
Date: 21-02-2014
Restaurant Website Visitor Report Jan 2014 Marketing4Restaurants provides reports to our customers detailing the most effective way to market to restaurant customers. Our January 2014 web visitor report shows that the trend towards mobile and tablet devices with restaurant customers is continuing. The main points are that: • Mobile phone traffic is now 36% of all visitors; • Visitors to… More »
Date: 14-02-2014
Marketing4Restaurants released our Book A Table feature in April 2013 because it was one feature that many of our customers really wanted. Chefs and restaurant owners wanted to be able to take bookings online, without having to pay per seat, per table or have their customers sent offers from competing restaurants. When we introduced Book A Table, many restaurants who… More »
Date: 09-01-2014
We have discussed previously what happens when a customer books on your website through Dimmi and the emails that Dimmi send out to your customers once they make a booking with your restaurant. Is this the start of something bigger? Dimmi’s business model is to charge a monthly fee and a fee per seat booked. Most restaurants know and understand… More »
Date: 31-12-2013
There are a couple of other trends we think are worthwhile keeping an eye on. Communal dining can be great fun, increases the number of seats that you can have for a given floorplan. Farm to table is becoming increasingly popular and people are liking the experience of trying different parts of the animal prepared in unusual ways. Gluten free… More »
Date: 31-12-2013
Differentiation is the act providing a point of difference and it is becoming the increasingly popular secret weapon in restaurant marketing. We are seeing a lot of successful restaurants who are moving away from cuisine as differentiation towards much finer types of offerings. If you look at cuisines, such as Mexican, Thai, Indian, Burger or Fish and Chips, there is… More »
Date: 31-12-2013
When people think take away they think Pizza, Indian or Chinese, but a growing number of businesses are starting to offer take away or delivery. Take away food broadens your target market, delivery even more so. It offers a completely different experience – in home, no need to worry about a baby sitter or a drink driving. For restaurants, it… More »
Date: 31-12-2013
In Australia there is not as much focus of Happy Hours as there is in the United States where they are very popular. Many US restaurants do a great job of getting the most number of turns out of every seat possible. This is something that many other restaurants do not focus on, but in order to increase profitability, they… More »
Date: 31-12-2013
Big restaurants have big costs. The rent is high, the wage bill is enormous. We think there will be an upswing on micro restaurants, focusing like a laser on a product that they can produce to a very high level of quality and at a great price. Examples are Food Trucks and the Emapanda Kitchen in Queenstown. Great food at… More »
Date: 31-12-2013
2013 has been a very tough year for restaurant owners around the world. Many restaurants we’ve visited in the United States, Argentina, New Zealand, Australia, Hong Kong and Taiwan and elsewhere have all struggled with rising costs, increasingly fickle customers, employee turnover and limited or non-existent profitability. But all is not lost. Many restaurants are surviving and even thriving. Here… More »
Date: 27-12-2013
Closed door dining has really taken of in Buenos Aires. It revolves around underground restaurants, where you really need to know someone to find them. Casa Coupage was recommended by our concierge and they managed to squeeze us in. You receive the address once you make the booking. Timings where stressed in the booking and we started to worry when… More »
Date: 27-12-2013
I am a big fan of Celebrity’s kitchens. I have eaten on Celebrity Solstice and Century and both turn out an incredible number of meals every day at a very high level of quality. We had one ordinary meal on Solstice, which was the first one after boarding and I think the kitchen might have just been getting up to… More »
Date: 27-12-2013
Wayfare Tavern has a policy of keeping tables spare for walk ins. A couple of San Fran locals had recommended it and we thought we would chance it. The waitress at the front said “I’m sorry, we only have 2 seats at the Chef’s Table, would that be OK?” We thought about it for half a second and accepted. It… More »
Date: 27-12-2013
Peter Gawron has had Saffron in Arrowtown for over 15 years and turns out some incredible food at a remarkable price point. Arrowtown is a little historic town about 20 minutes out of Queenstown and Saffron is the culinary highlight of the area. Being a little of the beaten track, you do feel like you have stumble on hidden gold… More »
Date: 27-12-2013
The empanada kitchen is a little treasure tucked away in a tiny little space facing a park down by the waterfront in Queenstown. The chef, from Europe, has come up with an eclectic range of flavours, including Angus and Stout (he makes his own stout), cod and salmon, and pork and Chimi. Best thing is, they were just $5.50 each… More »
Date: 27-12-2013
No trip to Queenstown is complete without a Ferg Burger. It has long been an institution in Queenstown but getting listed in the Lonely Planet New Zealand travel guide projected Ferg Burgers success into the stratosphere. It is on most peoples list before they get to Queenstown, all the locals recommend them and if you don’t hear about it, the… More »
Date: 27-12-2013
Argentinian’s love a great BBQ and many places have elecated it to a high art form. One of the best that we had was at a Gaucho (Cowboy) Ranch about an hour out of Buenos Aires. The food was combined with cowboy riding and the owner of the ranch going through the workings of the horse stud to create a… More »
Date: 27-12-2013
EI Ateno is an old theatre which has been converted into a bookstore and part of the book store has been turned into a café. The bookstore is quite the tourist attraction in it’s own right and the café obviously creates value out of the many foreigners who can’t read Spanish. Submarinos are quite popular in Argentina, being hot milk… More »
Date: 27-12-2013
At Esquire, you expect great food and we got that, but when you are paying as much as Esquire charges, you really need more than that. The food was great, awesome in fact, but what really made the night was the Sommelier. When I commented that night to the maitre d’ he told us that our Sommelier was just 21… More »
Date: 27-12-2013
We have traveled far and wide this year to find some of the best meals. Generally, when you look at your restaurant’s target market your product can be measured by 3 things – Great Value, Great Food and a Great Experience. With all the restaurants we’ve visited this year, nearly all have issues with how tough the hospitality industry is. … More »
Date: 05-12-2013
Ever since we introduced our Book A Restaurant feature, which we offered free to our web marketing toolkit customers, we have been looking for ways to improve on it. Book A Table has grown to Australia’s largest booking system that is free for customers as well as being free for restaurant owners. We are always looking to make it better… More »
Date: 25-11-2013
Many business have suffered from fake reviews, stinging criticism and unfair absue at the hands of a range of social media and reviews sites. Often competitors can stir the pot writing great reviews about their business and dodgey reviews about their competitors. Small business owners often feel powerless in the face on unnamed criticism that may or may not be… More »
Date: 07-11-2013
It is always sad when a restaurant closes and so it was sad to see that Clara and Co has closed in Westfield Sydney. A restaurant like Cara & Co is a big group of people pouring their heart and soul into a restaurant trying to create a great experience for their customers, so when it closes, they all lose… More »
Date: 07-11-2013
The concept of Food Vans and Trucks is relatively new in Australia, with them only accounting for for 1.3% of all Fast Food sold this year, however this is expected to grow rapidly as Australian cities catch up with cities like San Francisco and London, and as the menu moves beyond the standard fare of donuts, gelati and low end… More »
Date: 29-10-2013
What makes a customer walk into your restaurant, and just as important what stops them walking. Depending on your marketing plan, you may need to bring in a large number of customers as they walk by. This can be particularly important if your restaurant is a part of an area heavily populated with restaurants, such as Lygon Street where many… More »
Date: 22-10-2013
Many restaurants are either looking for the capability to take bookings online or trying to determine if the online booking system they are using is right for their business. There are a lot of choices out there and knowing the pros & cons of each system enables restaurants to choose the best solution (software application) for their business There are… More »
Date: 09-10-2013
Some restaurants are not aware of what happens when one of their customers makes a booking on their website so we thought we would go through the process so that everyone understands the process and the implications for your restaurant. A few weeks ago a colleague made a booking at a restaurant in Chapel Street for lunch. They were using… More »
Date: 23-09-2013
Email marketing is one of the quickest and easiest ways to turn your new customers into repeat customers for your restaurant. Hopefully on their first visit they will have had a great time and now you just need to be top of mind for when they are planning another meal out. Email marketing campaigns for restaurants are also one of… More »
Date: 20-09-2013
A customer comes into your restaurant with 3 friends, they look at the menu and order some interesting things and some old favorites, along with a couple of beers or a bottle of wine. The food and drink come out and everyone has a great time. After desserts, the bill arrives and your customer looks at it and thinks, “that… More »
Date: 21-08-2013
Did you know that some restaurants in Australia are surrendering vital customer contact information to online booking companies? Did you know these customers then receive offers for competing local restaurants from these online booking companies? Did you know that some restaurants are paying $1 per seat to surrender this vital customer data? Did you know that this is an unfair… More »
Date: 19-07-2013
Taking bookings for your restaurant up until now has either been through an email form on your website where you always had to get back to the customer and ensure that you weren’t overbooked or you could use one of the online booking companies who charged per seat or table to take your booking. Either option was not ideal for… More »
Date: 17-05-2013
One of the big questions that our customers often ask us is “Which websites are worthwhile listing on?” so the team at Marketing4restaurants decided to slice and dice our data for April and discover which websites are referring the most traffic to our customers. The 6 websites that are most talked about are Dimmi, Eatability, Yelp, Tripadvisor, Australian Good Food… More »
Date: 26-04-2013
We know a restaurateur who ran one of the local restaurants. We had been there numerous times and they even catered some of our team lunches. Great food, great value and a great experience. We had spoken to them on numerous occasions about how their website was letting them down. On the face of it, the restaurant was very successful,… More »
Date: 18-04-2013
Restaurant Website Visitor Report Mar 2013 Marketing4Restaurants regularly reviews all of the information from all of our customers’ websites to provide them with insights as to how to best market their Restaurant or café online and the March 2013 report has some very interesting insights. The main points are that: Mobile phone traffic is now 29% of all visitors; Safari… More »
Date: 05-04-2013
Corporate customers are those customers who are organising a meal or a function as part of their work and the bill is picked up by the company. The guests may be members of the company, or it may be for entertaining customers. This is why corporate accounts have special needs if you are going to be successful in building up… More »
Date: 05-04-2013
Group buying campaigns are all about yield utilisation, making the restaurant look busy, and capturing new customers who you can convert into new customers. Marketing4Restaurants online booking widget, “Book A Table” has a range of features designed specifically to allow you to control your group buying and daily deals campaigns. Keep your campaign secret. I have seen people walk past… More »
Date: 05-04-2013
Many restaurants are using group buying campaigns through Spreets, Scoopon, Groupon and Living Social. For some, it is one of the first visible sign of a death spiral to closing the business and there have been famous incidents of what can happen when a Group Buying campaign goes wrong, for example, Need a Cake in the UK. We have seen a few… More »
Date: 30-01-2013
Michael Garcia, who has been a waiter at Laurenzo’s restaurant in Houston, put his job on the line this week when he refused to serve a group of regular customers because of remarks that they made about another customer. The other group of customers, regulars at the diner, have a 5 year old little boy, Milo, who has Downs Syndrome. … More »
Date: 10-01-2013
Our Book A Table feature is really gaining traction with Restaurants who had previously been paying around $1 per seat to take bookings online, now enjoying the feature as part of their online marketing package with Marketing4Restaurants.com. Some of our customers are saving over $500 per month by not paying for bookings that are coming from their own marketing efforts.… More »
Date: 10-01-2013
2013 is here and it is time to think about your business plan for 2013. To get the creative juices going, the team at Marketing4Restaurants has come up with our list of 57 photos and 57 marketing ideas to help you find more customers. We will Facebook a new photo and idea each day and at the end, release our… More »
Date: 27-11-2012
Driving customers to your website through Facebook, email marketing and search engine optimization is just part of the battle. Once there, your great food, great experience and great value will hopefully convince them to make a booking. with online bookings you can: Spend less time on the phone taking bookings during your busy times; Convert more visitors to your website… More »
Date: 27-11-2012
Many restaurant owners today are using applets provided by marketing companies to take online bookings for their restaurant. There are a lot of good reasons why you would want to take bookings online. These booking gadgets generally charge a fee for the number of bookings that they receive – so it is a success fee, if there aren’t any bookings, you don’t… More »
Date: 07-11-2012
As restaurant advertising and marketing moves from leaflets and Yellow Pages to Facebook and Websites, getting great photos of your restaurant or take out has become increasingly important. Great images can make or break a website, and your postings on Facebook have a much better chance of going viral when they are accompanied by great photos. In this blog article,… More »
Date: 24-10-2012
Being successful in your restaurant, café or Take Away business is hard work, and one that that really increases your chance of success is ensuring that you have a business plan. The process of creating a Restaurant Business Plan helps you to focus on who your customers are, how you are going to build the business, how it will operate… More »
Date: 07-10-2012
Does the sight of customers tapping on mobile phones at your restaurant or cafe annoy you? Well it shouldn’t! Whether you know it or not, they may well be your best Word-of-mouth marketers. Mobile Check-in’s on Facebook and Foursquare are having phenomenal growth. If you think that social media is for people who like to tell the whole world about… More »
Date: 07-08-2012
Marketing is critical to the success of your business, but if your product is no good, your marketing will be much less effective, partially because the marketing message will not be attractive enough to get new customers in and partially because they won’t want to be repeat customers. The 3Gs of a restaurant product are: Great Food; Great Value; and… More »
Date: 07-08-2012
A great dessert from Becasse Bakery. The Bakery and Charlie and Co survived,but sadly nothing else in the group. In the wake of the collapse of Justin North’s Becasse and associated businesses, with only Charlie and Co and Becasse Bakery surviving to be sold to Jones the Grocer for $430,000, with the dust starting to settle, it is probably worth… More »
Date: 07-08-2012
Best practice for dealing with poor reviews on Review Websites We have written before Restaurants commonly come up with the problem of reviews on review websites like Eatability, Urban Spoon or Australian Good Food Guide. Sometimes the reviews seem quite harsh, sometimes the review seems a little odd and sometimes the review seems to come from someone unfamiliar with the… More »
Date: 10-07-2012
Tuesday night, unless you are next to a cinema, is the worst night of the week. You pay rent on your property 7 days a week, so you want each day that you are open to be as successful as possible. If it isn’t busy each day and night you are open, you will struggle to maximize your yield Here are 7… More »
Date: 10-07-2012
Many people don’t do email marketing campaigns for their restaurant, café or take away. Sometimes they think it is too much like spamming, sometimes it is too difficult and sometimes people think they just aren’t going to be able to make a difference with an email, but many restaurants make a huge difference to their business with their marketing campaigns. … More »
Date: 09-07-2012
There are two types of customers – those who have been to your restaurant and those who haven’t yet. Generally, it is a lot easier to market to an existing customer and get them to return than it is to attract a new customer, but most restaurants don’t market to this very important part of their target market. Here are… More »
Date: 12-06-2012
So we were looking for somewhere to a couple of nights ago in Sydney. Not really too sure what we wanted and we were wandering aimlessly, when we came across Dan’s House. It has been a while since we had a good Peking Duck and so we thought we would give them a try. I am no food critique, and… More »
Date: 12-06-2012
Every business should have a Unique Selling Proposition – it is the one thing that differentiates your business from every other one. Many restaurant owners have motherhood statement USPs like “Our food is the best Italian, Home Style, Chinese or some other type of cuisine in town.” That is a tough one to market, because it implies a lot of… More »
Date: 08-06-2012
Sadly, Justin North’s restaurant portfolio has been place into voluntary administration, according to the Australian Financial Review. The North Group, which includes Becasse, Quarter 21, Becasse Bakery, Le Grand Café and Charlie and Co, had appointed Ferrier Hodgson as the administrators. The group also included Quarter Twenty One Providore which provides ready-to-make meals for time poor workers and The Cookery… More »
Date: 30-05-2012
Many restaurants and other businesses have run into troubles with Coupon marketing campaigns. There are a number of things that can go wrong with a Groupon campaign, but if you do need to run one, we’ve got a couple of tips to help you get the most out of it. Groupon campaigns can be great at finding you a whole… More »
Date: 02-05-2012
Yield management is about making the most of a limited resource. The resource restaurants have is available seats, and it is a wasting asset – if you don’t fill the seats tonight, the possible revenue that you could have made is gone and making the most of them is important because it feeds into revenue and ultimately profit. Airlines are… More »
Date: 30-04-2012
Recently I asked my ex-restaurateur mother why she bothered to advertise our restaurant every fortnight even though we were always busy. Her reply: “So customers knew we hadn’t closed down”. That got me thinking, maybe she’s right. With so many restaurants and cafes closing down these days, do customers need to be reminded that you’re still in business? The Awareness… More »
Date: 11-04-2012
The Melbourne Food and Wine Festival came and went in March. The idea of heaven for chronic foodies! As customers, the Melbourne Food and Wine Festival gives us an excuse to try new restaurants, or rub shoulders with our food and wine “stars” at educational themed events. During the festival I was delighted to do a “Through the Back Door” tour of Donovan’s in… More »
Date: 10-04-2012
Does the sight of customers tapping on mobile phones at your restaurant or cafe annoy you? Well it shouldn’t! Whether you know it or not, they may well be your best Word-of-mouth marketers. Mobile Check-in’s on Facebook and Foursquare are having phenomenal growth. If you think that social media is for people who like to tell the whole world about… More »
Date: 19-03-2012
Marketing a Fish and Chip shop can be difficult. But by breaking the marketing process down into steps, creating a marketing plan and executing on it, you can gradually increase the number of customers coming into your Fish and Chip shop. The process is quite similar for Take Away Pizza, Chicken and Chips, and some of it extends to take… More »
Date: 14-03-2012
So, you’ve got a loan, signed the lease, hired the chef and started getting the fitout done on your new restaurant or take away. One thing that many owners don’t do when they are opening a new restaurant is think about the marketing of the restaurant or take away. Update: May 2016 – This is one of our most popular blog… More »
Date: 05-03-2012
There are a lot of free and cheap website providers out there. Weebly and MYOB Atlas are two such vendors who both offer free websites to small business customers who are time poor and don’t want to spend money on a website. Just what exactly do you get for your money? MYOB CEO Tim Reed announced that Atlas had received 4… More »
Date: 28-02-2012
An overseas visitor recently asked me ‘Why are some of Melbourne’s best cafes and restaurants so difficult to find?’ Her observation was based on the fact often there was little signage, and crowded cafes were located off the main road. In fact if you could say they were in bad locations! Left: Coin Laundry – Armadale More recently, I noticed… More »
Date: 21-02-2012
Whether you like it or not, customers are expressing their opinions on the internet. While professional restaurant critics such as Matthew Evans of Fairfax can be sued , the same rules don’t seem to apply for anonymous online reviewers. Websites like Eatability, Urbanspoon, Trip Advisor and Yelp are so popular, new directory and customer rating websites are springing up every week! There… More »
Date: 09-02-2012
Restaurant marketing trends indicate websites and social media should be key components in best practice restaurant marketing for attracting More Customers. 2 in 5 Australians who use a smart phone use mobile search daily. 40% of mobile search users visit or call businesses they find online. 3 in 5 Australians search for information from their computers. 13 million Australians are… More »
Date: 25-01-2012
People ask how much value there is to Twitter marketing and how much a Tweet could be worth and now we have the answer! Last week Shannon Bennett’s great restaurant, Vue de monde, situated on Level 55 of the Rialto found itself in a bit of a pickle. They had a cancellation for their Chefs table that night and needed… More »
Date: 12-01-2012
As a marketer, I’m often asked ‟How much should I pay for my website?” In the 1990s my corporate website cost over $80,000! Admittedly it was for a large company, but in those days the internet was relatively new. Design was paramount. Flash, rotating images, pop up windows. Websites were to ‟entertain” and convince customers to buy. In those days,… More »
Date: 29-12-2011
Our previous article about No Show charges discussed the increasing problem with No Shows for restaurants across Australia. The issue has heated up in the lead up to Christmas with one Sydney restauranteur seizing the initiative and running with the Twitter hashtag #noshowshame to name and shame people who book and don’t ring to cancel. Bistro Bruno started out by selecting the hashtag and… More »
Date: 13-12-2011
Restaurants and Cafes are increasingly turning to sites such as Groupon, Spreets, Scoopon, Livingsocial and Dealme, all with differing degrees of success. There have been, however some highly publicised coupon marketing horror stories. The Groupon Equation can be highly effective at getting new customers in the door, but unless you have a plan to make a profit out of each… More »
Date: 23-11-2011
Sensis this week announced another 80 redundancies, after sacking 23 back office staff last week. This takes the total layoffs at Sensis to 220 for this year. The Australian Financial Review descri
